That’s because it’s so impossible to find anything I’d use on a normal Google search that you have to add “Reddit” to your search to find anything relevant.
Of course, post-API debacle, a fair amount of the responses you’d have needed are deleted, but ya know…
It's absolutely real. "Adding Reddit to Google searches to actually find useful information" isn't a meme, it's what people are really doing. And since Google has (allegedly) killed search operators, it's the only way to cut through the uselessness that Google search has become. Although, I do have a sneaking suspicion it's actually added by whatever AI they have on their backend that generates "useful" filters, not something Google itself directly added.
Those were probably genuine, clueless people being clueless. For trolling you don't ask "am I pregnant?", you ask "I'm pregnant and [my brother | my dog | I don't know who] is the father, what should I do?".