I think the “Reddit one-upsmanship” that the parent was referring to was actually in the other direction; i.e., people “one-upping” how long it took them to read it.
Exactly. You post about how you broke your something playing sports in hihh school and it's never been quite the same. Someone else posts about how they hurt themselves worse. Seven nested comments later you've got someone trying to score virtue points by claiming they had a wood chipper accident now they're a head floating in a jar like in Futurama. It's bizarre.