[firesteelrain]

I have become cynical on Reddit to the point that I don’t know if these stories are real or just really good creative writing

[nunez]

Fake stories were way less common on Reddit back then, IMO. It wasn't a super popular site back then.

[lnsru]

It might be good creative writing. But a businessman who I knew got stroke and died around the time. His real estate projects became worthless basically in one week. So from the timing I would say, that the writing might be real.