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“”Reddit has done well in getting interest from the mainstream[.] I just wonder if [...] allowing these children to run rampant and post whatever they feel will cause the most collateral damage.

—William Shatner[2]

Reddit is a social media content aggregation website that bills itself as "the Front Page of the Internet" (for trolls, it certainly is). It is incredibly popular, having over 37 billion views and 400 million unique visitors in 2012 alone,^[3] even though it can't make itself profitable.^[4]

Reddit works by having users, or "Redditors", submit links to other websites, upload images, or provide textual content, or "self-posts". These posts and their comments are all voted up or down by other Redditors. Reddit displays more recent and more upvoted content higher so "good" posts get visibility while "bad" posts fall away. The site is divided into smaller sections, or "subreddits", that each focus on a particular subject. Any somewhat established Redditor can create one; subreddit creators automatically become moderators on those subreddits. Moderators (normal users) effectively run most of the website.

Reddit admins used to take a very hands-off approach. This is partially because one of their celebrity activist founders (Aaron Swartz) was a free speech absolutist who believed, "words don't hurt people, interpretation does", paraphrased.^[5] Nowadays, Reddit is very censorial, banning subreddits left and right, be they legal porn subreddits, hate speech subreddits, and a wide variety of other subreddits. They will ban communities of thousands without notice and without giving the owner a backup. Given that Reddit is absolutely huge,^[6] it's attracted an absolutely huge number of cranks and idiots, as documented below.

Despite its reputation of being a left-leaning site, there are at least as many people complaining about the progressives present on the site as there are people who actually have left-leaning views. (The same might be said about atheists.)

Whence the awfulness?[edit]

In many ways, Reddit represents one of the worst possible results of enormous popularity, coupled with an immense and only loosely connected pile of mostly self-governing communities (take care not to assume a coherence that really isn't there). A sliver of any website's traffic will consist of cranks and malcontents; the jaw-dropping amount of traffic Reddit receives means that this subpopulation can number in the thousands or tens/hundreds of thousands. These cranks then either set up their own subreddit or join an existing one that supports their ideas, which can (and do) turn into veritable echo chambers for their viewpoints, as any opposing post can get removed and the poster is then banned (it's not like the whole website was like that). Any Redditor that posts a comment contradicting the prevailing opinion within any of the nastier subreddits often finds all their comments and posts (which are accessible via their public profile) downvoted across all subreddits in retaliation (the software attempts to counteract this to some extent; if the user downvotes comments on the public profile page itself, these votes are ignored for karma calculation purposes). While it's not a significant impact by itself, floods of this sort of retaliatory voting can marginalize sensible Redditors, not just on the crank subreddit, but also across unrelated subreddits (although sockpuppet and throwaway accounts cost only a few clicks/keystrokes, so this "problem" is easily manageable).

Unfortunately, the site's structure further encourages the spread of these ideas into any neutral or "good" subreddits. Cross-pollination of users and topics between related subreddits can grow and strengthen the various crank communities and drive away more sensible users. Any thread that vaguely touches on crank Redditors' hobbyhorses can be swiftly hijacked by a sufficiently large population of cranks voting as a bloc. Subreddit moderators are often too apathetic, incompetent, or afraid of being too aggressive and alienating their own community to take any action, further encouraging crank Redditors to continue colonizing other subreddits.^[8] This is made worse when moderators across seemingly disparate or only tangentially related subreddits are sympathetic to these crank ideas and tolerate them, much to the community's detriment. For example, /r/ronpaul Redditors spread into the /r/libertarianism subreddit, which then spread into the /r/politics subreddit, eventually turning the entire site into an incredibly noisy fanbase for Paul's presidential campaigns. After the 2012 election, when it became clear that Paul wouldn't run again, the "Ron Paul 2012!!!!!11!" brigade was downvoted to virtual invisibility in many instances... only for the cycle to repeat in 2016 and 2020 with the diehard fans of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and Tulsi Gabbard.

Anti-censorship?[edit]

Reddit also has a strong culture (though by no means a universal one) present of subreddits opposing any form of moderation and believing that upvotes and downvotes should be the sole judge of whether content is any good in the name of free speech, and that consequently, any form of active moderation beyond that prescribed by Reddit itself is censorship. This extends to things such as prohibiting harassment, racism, sexism, image macros, rage comics, and other such things; the primary argument is that if these things are really repulsive, they will be downvoted, and if they aren't, that means the subreddit's readers want them there. This rather peculiar form of the just world hypothesis ignores the fact that all evidence available shows that if you have no form of an enforced quality bar on an online community, it will quite rapidly become filled with low-effort content and become subject quite dramatically to the dickwad theory. A demonstration of this can be seen by the stunning quality of strictly-moderated subreddits, such as /r/AskHistorians, compared to, well, take your pick.

However, this paper-thin veneer of general alt-right nuttery principled free speech breaks down when it comes to anything that might be critical of Reddit or Redditors' particular hobbyhorses. For insight, CEO Steve Huffman is a doomsday prepper who frequently attends Burning Man, a yearly gathering for filthy-rich libertarians in the Nevada desert.^[9] This might explain why /r/The_Donald wasn't banned until June 2020, long after most of its users had already left Reddit in anticipation of the sub's banning.

Meanwhile, calls are regularly made to close or ban /r/AgainstHateSubreddits, a subreddit that overall does nothing other than providing links to examples of what it sees as bigotry or reactionary hatred across Reddit. Needless to say, MRAs and racists treat them as the bogeyman, claiming that either all the noxious and rule-violating content on their websites is actually false flags put there by /r/AHS users to make them look bad, or the subreddit was flooded with child pornography by /r/AHS users in an attempt to get them banned. /r/ShitRedditSays used to fulfill the purpose of making fun of these communities, albeit in a more circlejerk fashion, though that subreddit is considered dead nowadays.

#RedditRevolt[edit]

In June 2015, Reddit shut down several breathtakingly odious subreddits that weren't just saying hideous things or brigading other subreddits, but also operating as bases for harassment off-site.^[10] This included the infamous /r/FatPeopleHate subreddit, which had over 100,000 subscribers before its ban. Ironically, it was one of the more censored subreddits on the site, as showing sympathy or empathy towards fat people quickly earned the speaker a warning or a ban. Upset FPH readers proclaimed the Reddit admins a pack of censoring Nazis (also either blaming /r/ShitRedditSays or demanding its banning as usual),^{[note 1]} and many decamped to Reddit for a newer similarly-structured site called Voat,^[11][12] which promptly melted under the load.

Much of the hatred, centered on the hashtag #RedditRevolt, surrounded Reddit's interim CEO Ellen Pao, whose sexual discrimination lawsuit against her former employer Kleiner Perkins made waves in Silicon Valley. Thus, the Chinese-American feminist in charge of the site was made into a perfect target by Reddit's "disenfranchised" assholes. In addition to being compared to China's Cold War dictator Mao Zedong (with the epithet "Chairman Pao"), as well as the usual cries of "Nazi" because a handful of subreddits exclusively formed to harass other people were banned, a petition was made calling for her removal as CEO. Unshockingly, all of this was pretty blatant harassment, racism, and sexism levied at her until a popular Reddit staff member was fired in July 2015, leading to #RedditRevolt's revitalization as a form of solidarity with the former employee following a voluntary blackout of several Reddit boards. The petition for Pao's removal surged in popularity, and comment sections across the Internet seemed to think that #RedditRevolt, which had its origins in June, only started in July in response to the firing.^[13][14][15] One commentator on a DOTA2 website, of all places, even noticed an apparent connection between the people pushing #RedditRevolt and Gamergate, pointing out that a feminist woman banning hateful communities is everything 4chan could have ever wanted in a controversy.^[16]

Pao ultimately resigned from her position during this shitstorm,^[17] even though another member of the executive board, who was one of the site's founders, was actually responsible for the popular employee's firing.^[18] But the real bombshell comes from former CEO Yishan Wong, who first suggested that Reddit's co-founder Alexis Ohanian had set Pao up to take the fall for his actions.^[19] Reddit's chief engineer Bethanye Blount also echoed these sentiments when she quit following Pao's resignation.^[20][21] After the new CEO announced an AMA ("ask me anything") to handle questions about how Reddit was changing with Pao's departure, Wong appeared again and revealed that Pao was the only member of Reddit's executive board arguing in favor of all of the website's most toxic communities. According to Wong, the board had pressured Pao to "outright ban ALL the hate subreddits in a sweeping purge", but she resisted, knowing it would result in a "shitshow".

Now that #RedditRevolt had ousted Pao, who turned out to be the one person at Reddit who had their back, nothing stopped new CEO Steve Huffman from going through with this purge. Wong stated that Huffman had previously confided in him that he would have banned such hateful communities outright.^[22] What actually happened was that Huffman decided that all of the terrible communities shouldn't be banned entirely and instead be put behind registration walls. Within those new walled gardens, they had no advertisements whatsoever. He's also fully embodied the libertarian hands-off approach; in response to a question concerning the growth of white supremacist subreddit /r/CoonTown since the new rules were put in place, he responded, "Horrible, actually, but I don't think you can win an argument by simply silencing the opposition."^[23] Several more subreddits were banned the following week, such as ones for lolicon, but more importantly, /r/CoonTown and its various satellite subreddits;^[24] however, these were not banned for being racist, but because they were damaging to Reddit's reputation.^[25]

Tankie infestation of leftist communities[edit]

Seemingly out to prove that cranks on Reddit are not exclusive to the far right, numerous left-wing subreddits tend to fall towards supporting tankies. While the open stalin apologia of /r/FULLCOMMUNISM^[26] can be regarded as not entirely unexpected, tankies notably manage to pop up in multiple left-wing communities such as /r/ShitLiberalsSay (which accuses anyone who does not make out with Stalin's casket of being a liberal), /r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM (which does the same thing as SLS but with centrists), to the hobby subreddits such as /r/sigmarxism (a Warhammer 40K subreddit for socialist fans of the franchise). A common thread between these subreddits is not that tankies are explicitly allowed, but rather that it is forbidden to call out tankies in the rules of the subreddit under the false pretense of "Left Unity".^{[note 2]} These usually take the phrasing as "don't punch left", with the alleged reasoning being to "prevent liberals from taking over the subreddit".^{[note 3]} In practice, the rule results in tankies being able to post tankie-related content and those that contest the concept of supporting authoritarian dictators getting their comments removed and banned — the leftist subreddits which have escaped this fate have chiefly done so by explicitly banning tankies and tankie-related content.

Apollo and Reddit's 2023 API Changes[edit]

When Elon Musk decided to drastically jack up the rate of API calls to Twitter, most reasonable individuals and users of Twitter called this "stupid", and rightfully so.^[27] However, CEO Steve Huffman looked at what Elon's Twitter was doing and instead of seeing something stupid, he saw something ingenious.^[28] As such, Reddit decided to update its policy with regards to prices for utilizing Reddit's API. Reddit's API is called by mainly bots and third party applications, like Apollo. Apollo is considered a hallmark of a third-party application for a social media site, and even received a shout-out from Apple of all companies.^[29] Since the site's founding, Reddit's API could be used free of charge, and many apps like Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and others sprang up when it became clear that Reddit's Official App was not really a good app (being full of ads and promoted content that users might not want to see). However, Apollo announced that the API changes would raise their cost of API access from free to $20 million a year!^[30] Every single third-party Reddit app was given similar price tags for continued API access, and none of them could pay it. Almost immediately, accusations of utilizing insane API prices to drive all competitors to the official app out of business sprang up. Steve Hoffman countered by saying that Apollo tried to extort them, and this was just Reddit not backing down.^[31]

On top of this, Reddit also shut off access to NSFW content through the API,^[32] making it borderline impossible for 18+ subreddits to properly moderate themselves with bots. The changes also caused issues with disability access, due to the official app falling well short of web disability guidelines.^[33] Consequently, Reddit rose up against the changes. Numerous subreddits in protest to the API changes, big and small, agreed to hold a black-out, where they would make their subreddits private for a period of time in protest.^[34] However, this protest ended up falling on its face for really two reasons. The first was that this protest had a planned end date. Many subreddits made a commitment to opening back up after two days or a week, meaning that Reddit executives could just wait until the storm blew over and business would resume as normal. After all, they were on the verge of making their official app the only way to access Reddit on mobile devices, which was well worth it for a few days of flak. The second is that the subs that didn't set a date to open back up were being threatened by Reddit execs to open back up or have their entire mod teams replaced.^[35]

On top of Redditors expressing anger over the black-out preventing them from using Reddit, to moderators not really wanting to commit to the protest themselves and only doing so because their communities wanted it,^{[note 4]} the protest seemingly didn't really change much. Reddit made strides to address the disability concerns, but in general, the black-out didn't change anyone's minds in Reddit's executive circle. So as subs began to re-open, some decided to strike out at Reddit's ad wallets. You see, advertisers do not appear on NSFW subreddits, meaning that Reddit earns no money from them. So some subreddits from /r/formula1, to /r/MildlyInteresting, to many others, went NSFW or just abandoned moderating their subreddits and let their users do whatever they wanted.^[36] The hope here is that if Reddit loses enough money from this change, they will back off. Yet, with the changes set to go into effect on July 1st, it still seems Reddit is going full-steam ahead on these changes.

Prominent terrible subreddits[edit]

/r/Atheism[edit]

Ah, the embarrassing misadventures of angsty adolescence. Back when you could just throw on a black trenchcoat and give a middle finger to religion because there wasn't a single other problem in your life to be upset about. Not as relentlessly awful as some, but a good demonstration that not believing in a god or gods in no way implies any capacity for joined-up thinking or not being a horrible person. The average user is significantly younger than on other atheism-related sites and so fairly new to the whole non-belief sphere;^[37] thus, the entire thing is more of a celebration of the new-found ability to blaspheme without guilt and/or advocate for the genocide of religious people. Because of this, a large number of posts end up being cross-posted to the self-explanatory subreddit /r/cringe. The fedora neckbeard meme is also heavily associated with this subreddit, so far as to specifically include its prohibition in the rules. It is worth noting that not all atheists on Reddit are subscribed to /r/atheism. In fact, many atheist redditors hate /r/atheism for how obnoxious and intolerant the subreddit is.

Early in 2013, there was a little coup d'etat among the moderators at /r/atheism, where the subreddit founder was forced out.^{[note 5]} The first assistant moderator that the founder had invited to help with the subreddit became the chief moderator. Afterward, many new policies were implemented, leading to the wailing and gnashing of teeth among most members. The founder then created a new subreddit called /r/atheismrebooted (which is just like it sounds: a rehash of the best and worst of /r/atheism's original format). Yada, yada, yada. One of the users at /r/atheismrebooted was kind enough to post a timeline of their grand soap opera here.

Anyway, it all became so annoying to the Reddit admins that they woke up for once and took /r/atheism off the default subreddit list.^[38] However, by the end of 2014, the commotion had died down, and /r/atheism had been (very quietly) restored to the default list.

/r/Conservative[edit]

One of the more infamous subreddits, even among other Redditors, as it's known for being something of a self-parody of conservatives and a crackpot magnet. Written from an American conservative point of view (Londonistani European conservatives are generally not regarded as conservative enough),^[39] it is known for their mocking of "SJWs" and "safe spaces," made even more ironic by the fact that many of their posts can only be commented on by designated users that they have approved. It is also one of the most ban-happy subs on Reddit, with even any mention of the Southern Strategy being a damnable and bannable lie.^[40] On slow days, the mods blanket-ban anyone who criticizes their views, even if they've never posted in the sub. We're talking about a group of people with so little going on in their lives that they actually feel the need to comb over entirely different subreddits just looking for people they can ban from their hugbox.

Other shenanigans include the pro-fetus wing of r/con seeing fit to weigh in on bacterial life on Mars (as if it somehow relates to a fertilized human egg),^[41] believing guys like Mitch freaking McConnell aren't true conservatives,^[42] and linking to/having a massive overlap with /r/theredpill.^[43] In fairness, they will sometimes stop short of endorsing some more absurd conspiracy theories and, shockingly enough, usually accept climate change to some degree (though the libruls obviously exaggerate it), so it's a bit better than Conservapedia, just not by much.

r/ShitRConservativesays was a rival conservative subreddit in the European-style, set up to monitor the unusually-high proportion of anti-science, racist screeds and PRATTs pouring out of Reddit, but the head mod eventually succumbed to the same No True Scotsman and persecution paranoia that pervades RCon, ultimately turning the sub into a wasteland where a dozen True Conservatives whine about the other conservative sub they were banned from while banning 90% of their users for not being True Conservatives. It is now banned due to being unmoderated.

/r/Conspiracy[edit]

The front page of paranoia on the Internet. Run by a white supremacist moderator who worships Timothy McVeigh, they made Hitler Did Nothing Wrong their official documentary long before Trump ever had a chance at being president. Theories discussed here run the gamut from 9/11 to chemtrails to lizard people. Watching the history of a long-time user can sometimes be an insightful observation of how someone can go from "9/11 is an inside Job" to "Everything is wrong and the world is a simulation" in the span of a year.

/r/conspiracy has a large subscription base, but is considered by many to be the laughingstock of the site, with regulars routinely accusing anyone who disrupts their echo chamber of panicking of being a "shill" or an evil impostor working for the government/Jewish overlords/reptilians. Despite being presented as an open forum and "thinking ground" which "respects people of all religions and creeds", we dare you to try to question prolific appearances of Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Alex Jones. Lastly, anytime there is a mass shooting or a terrorist attack or anything horrible where many people die or are injured, it is automatically considered a false flag perpetrated by the United States government. No exceptions.

Many /r/conspiracy regulars actually believe that most of Reddit is paid government employees watching them (and yet they still go there, which might prove there is a genuine need for it and/or it is simply addictive). Due to its insanity and hostility, other subreddits such as /r/conspiratard and /r/actualconspiracies have been set up to take a slightly more rational approach to conspiracy discussion. Meanwhile, people interested in woo but not politics have mostly fled to /r/ConspiracyII after the mods all but pledged their loyalty to Trump to such a degree that even mild criticism of him would lead to an immediate ban.

In September 2014, the subreddit showed how anti-Semitic it really was by posting the documentary Hitler: The Greatest Story Never Told in their sidebar (which included a big picture of Hitler's face). The move caused significant controversy and was heavily panned by /r/conspiratard and /r/subredditdrama.^[44] Despite everything (though it shouldn't be any surprise), the documentary stayed up, and anyone who didn't like it were deemed Zionist Shills.

It is regularly featured on r/TopMindsOfReddit, another watchdog sub.

In early January, 2021, the top moderator of r/conspiracy, axolotl_peyotl, was permanently suspended by Reddit. He was a far right, extreme pro-Trump, anti-vaxx, anti-Semitic moderator^[45] and was notorious for their itchy trigger finger on the ban button, often spamming multiple posts for their lord and saviour Donald Trump and silencing dissent at mach speed with the click of a button.^[46]

/r/The_Donald[edit]

Now defunct, this was the main place for Trump supporters to gather on Reddit. Reddit had quarantined it due to inciting violence against law enforcement officials in the wake of the 2019 Republican Senator walkout from climate change legislation in Oregon.^[47] This action led to its slow decline, which lasted until the whole thing got banned. The majority of this sub didn't really seem to have any defined political stance and could change with the wind depending on what Trump does/says. People rarely spoke out if they disagreed on something that he did and would tie themselves into knots to defend anything the alt-right does. Next thing you know, paying $5 for a gallon of water will be good for America, and bread lines are going to be "alpha".

Users of /r/The_Donald were known for brigading all over Reddit. It was a mystery why the sub was allowed to exist for so long when it frequently broke the site's terms of service (it had, however, been sanctioned in the past), although they would often purchase a lot of Gold (stickied posts paid for by debit), so that might have something to do with it. They spawned a half dozen splinter subs, among them being r/The_Farage, r/The_Ivanka, /r/The_Congress (focused on U.S. legislative races), and r/Le_Pen. Milo "Raspberry Reich" Yiannopoulos was a mod for the sub until he was caught scamming money off of it. (This was his second scam: He also raised $100,000 for a "white male" scholarship fund and then pocketed the money.)

On March 5, 2020, the subreddit went on lockdown by the mods, claiming that the Reddit admins are liberally biased and hate Trump after the admins removed several moderators for harassing Reddit employees and stickying rule-breaking content and the admins instated stricter rules for assigning new moderators. The subsequent result is that the /u/reddit account (usually only used for corporate announcements and sending automated messages to users) was used to sticky an "application thread" on the_donald, which led to two more mod removals (who tried to unsticky and remove the post respectively.) Due to a coincidence, this resulted in the removal of all moderators who had opposed the explicit push for a move towards the site TheDonald.win (later retitled Patriots.win), another link aggregator set up by The_Donald mods, which was aggressively pushed in the wake of these removals.

As a result of this, the subreddit has been by and large replaced by /r/Trump, with /r/The_Donald itself getting banned on June 29, 2020 for promoting hate speech,^[48] with The_Donald being a shell of its former self at that point. A related Trump subreddit, /r/Donald_Trump was banned after playing a part in inciting the domestic terror attack on the Capitol in January 2021.^[49]

TheDonald.win[edit]

After r/The_Donald was quarantined, the moderators of the subreddit decided to create TheDonald.win now known as Patriots.win. It was created on November 21, 2019. It is similar to other pro-Trump alt-tech websites like Gab and Bitchute.^[50], TheDonald.win was among the platforms that was used to plan 2021 U.S. coup attempt.^[51] An internal conflict and pressure from their domain registrar led its moderators to rebel, rebranding the site to Patriots.win; they were not happy with the previous domain owner, and went to Epik for domain services this time.^[52][53] In late January 2021, in response to the GameStop short squeeze carried out by the subreddit r/WallStreetBets, Patriots.win created an unofficial backup of the subreddit in an attempt to gain new users — though r/WallStreetBets has never since been banned.^[54] On August 27, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives select committee investigating the Capitol attack demanded records from Patriots.win (alongside 14 other social media companies) going back to the spring of 2020.^[55]

/r/ChapoTrapHouse[edit]

A sub initially devoted to the left-wing comedy podcast of the same name, but eventually devolved into its own comedy subreddit. As /r/CTH grew, its users' "ironic" support for Juche and The Lion of Damascus got mistaken for the real item by Tankies, who thought that they were in good company, turned the sub into a poor man's /r/FULLCOMMUNISM, and finally got quarantined for many, many instances of its users inciting violence.^[56]

The sub was known for being kind of a boogeyman across the site, but was also known for being so insanely sectarian that even the podcast's own hosts grew a distaste for it. The sub gained a lot of its notoriety for having a fuckton of spinoffs and backup subreddits. Most, if not all, would later be caught in the banwave of June 29, 2020.

A common consensus that came up was that "if /r/The_Donald were ever to be banned on Reddit, then so would Chapo". Coincidentally, on June 29, 2020, Chapo was one of the most prominent subreddits to be caught in the New-Policy Banwave for "Promoting hate," alongside /r/The_Donald.^[57] After the Banwave, most of its users migrated to Chapo.Chat.

/r/KotakuInAction[edit]

A bunch of whiny manchildren who take Gamergate way too seriously. The members of this subreddit believe that there is a widespread feminist conspiracy to censor or ruin entertainment for everyone, that feminism will bring about the end of men everywhere, and that Gamergate is literally class warfare. All this... over video games. KotakuInAction itself spun off into /r/WikiInAction, where everyone on KotakuInAction went to complain about Gamergate stuff on Wikipedia and RationalWiki. Nathan Larson realized that /r/WikiInAction was unmoderated and got Reddit to restrict posting there by spamming it with child pornography in the hope of having it banned.^[58] A few months later, /u/YangWenli1 took over the subreddit via /r/RedditRequest and turned it into a subreddit for mocking Conservapedia.^[59]

In July 2018, /u/david-me, its creator, decided (perhaps a bit too late) to end the subreddit, calling it "one of the many cancerous growths that have infiltrated Reddit", citing "racism and sexism .... and other ism's". But unfortunately for him, and lucky for hate speech free speech advocates, Reddit employees responded in less than an hour, and it was back up.^[60]

The subreddit r/GamerGhazi was created as a response to this sub and GamerGate.

/r/TheRedPill[edit]

Similar to /r/MensRights, but actually worse, to the point where even /r/MensRights denounced them as misogynist.^[61] While /r/MensRights tries to mask its hatred of women in the language of anti-feminism, the folks at /r/theredpill are far more open about it. They reserve just as much hate for "betas", with quoting and mocking what male posters say on /r/relationships. Described on /r/TrollXChromosomes as "a place where bitter divorcees and young ugly dudes meet up to discuss strategies of making themselves feel better".^[62] When you're so toxic that even the bottom 10% of MRAs don't want you, it's a sad day for you.

/r/RedPillWomen is another thriving subreddit. There are so many women who actually believe that they're lesser than men. (If he's flirting with other women, it's just because he's alpha. Make sure that he knows he's the king!)

We're not joking when we say /r/theredpill is worse than /r/Conservative.

/r/CringeAnarchy[edit]

One of the more famous examples of a hate sub throughout the site's history, this group started as an uncensored off-shoot to /r/cringe (hence the title 'CringeAnarchy'). As is the case with much of cringe culture, it became a haven for queerphobes, Alt-Righters, and edgelords.^[63] The subreddit was quarantined in September 2018, at which point it had reached over 400,000 followers.

Following the Christchurch mosque attack in 2019, more and more islamophobic^[64] and antisemitic^[65] content started polluting the subreddit. It was banned on 25 April 2019 for posts explicitly calling for violence.

Later on, r/Cringetopia followed a similar trajectory before moving off-site and going private.^[66]

/r/AskGayBros[edit]

Despite this name, this sub seems to not be supportive of LGBT rights, but just the G. Transphobia is frequent and trans men are referred to as confused women.

/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion[edit]

A subreddit similar to r/unpopularopinion, but even more pandering to far right and conservative opinions.^[67] It is host to some of the most absurd ^[68] and stupid ^[69] opinions there are. This subreddit is the epitome of a conservative hugbox. [This is a special kind of horrid opinion.]

Other fairly awful subreddits[edit]

Reddit has many users. Reddit makes it easy to create splinter communities. As a result, Reddit hosts innumerable small, dedicated, and truly horrifying communities.

Conspiracy nuts[edit]

/r/911Truth

The subreddit's Truthers scrape the bottom of the conspiracist barrel. Case A: 9/11 terrorists ate pizza = secret government code words.^[70] Case B: Linking to globalresearch.ca.^[71] Case C: Shitty memes. Like, really shitty.^[72] Case D: It's an echo chamber. The sidebar states, "Submissions [...] supporting the official version [...] are considered off-topic here." (No quotemine.)^[73]

/r/somethingiswrong2024

An election denial subreddit consisting of liberals formed after Kamala Harris' loss during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Many members on the subreddit claim that either Donald Trump or Elon Musk engaging in election interference, with a common conspiracy involving the SpaceX satellite Starlink somehow interfering with the results. Many see it for what it really is, a coping mechanism from many liberals and leftists who simply can't accept the fact that America really is stupid and full of enough hatred to vote for a convicted felon.

Pseudoscientists[edit]

/r/Collapse

The extreme opposite of /r/ClimateSkeptics, this subreddit fetishizes the collapse of human civilization. Its focus on climate change is rather recent, as it previously focused on economic or political collapse. They also tend to be very misanthropic (which, given their aforementioned glee at the idea of civilization crumbling to dust, should not come as a surprise) as well as having eco-fascist undertones with its invocation of Malthusian ideas.

/r/WallStreetSilver

Wonder where some of the goldbugs and silverites went online after the death of the Tea Party Movement? Well, look no further than r/WallStreetSilver. Come for the posts of silverites stashes, and stay for the occasional conspiracy theory promoting the idea that central banking was a plot to enslave us all. Heavy promoters of Austrian Economics, sound money, and a Gold standard.

Tankies and Campists[edit]

/r/antiwar, /r/EndlessWar, and r/GreenandPleasant

Claim to be "anti-war", but instead are pro-Russia, pro-Putin, pro-war subreddits that fully condone and support Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Their solution is for Ukraine to unconditionally surrender to Russia immediately.

/r/Communism

The USSR to r/DarkEnlightenment's Reich. Its mods are avowed Stalin apologists, and it links to articles defending Enver Hoxha and North Korea.

/r/FULLCOMMUNISM

Seizing the memes of production. Notorious for having entire comment threads reading "Stalin did nothing wrong. Kulaks deserved it."^[26] The moderators are proudly authoritarian, defending everything up to and including the Berlin Wall. Quarantined in the fall of 2018, just one victim of a wide-scale purge of embarrassing subreddits.

/r/Sino

CCP stans, most of them foreign-born. Also known to decry Asian women race-mixing, a la /r/aznidentity. Frequently promotes justification and/or denial of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and abuses against the Uighurs. Attacks the entire pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong based on the views of a fringe minority, is hostile to Vietnam due to nationalist reasons,^[74] and psychotically hates Taiwan and supporters of Taiwanese independence. The mods on this sub are so fragile that being banned from their subreddit has become a rite of passage among libertarian/an-cap circles.

/r/LateStageCapitalism

On the surface, a subreddit for posting memes critical of capitalism. Below the surface, the sub betrays a storied history of — amongst other things — defending the CCP^[75] and moderators outright saying "Stalin did nothing wrong".^[76]

/r/ShitLiberalsSay

A place where Tankies mock "liberals" (read: anyone who slightly disagrees with them) and anyone to the right of them, from anarchists, democratic socialists, and social democrats to centrist liberals and conservatives. If you dare mock, or even mildly criticize, China in any way, they will call you a sinophobic racist (even though China's economy is not really socialist, and is instead capitalist in all but name). Frequently promotes Holodomor denial and Uighur genocide denial. It pays lip service to "left unity," but in practice it sides with Tankies over anarchists without fail.

/r/lostgeneration

A rather depressing subreddit for people who "did everything our parents told us to [and yet still failed]..." The subreddit is also an echo chamber that shares many of its users and talking points with r/communism, r/anarchism, and r/collapse.

r/TheRightCantMeme

Originally created as a "no u" to right-wingers who alleged that the left was 'unable to meme', the subreddit was at one point a place where non-conservatives could come together and share the most outlandish and strawmannish right-wing memes until tankie moderators took over and exiled all capitalist pigs social democrats through the use of ban bots and censorship.

r/GenZedong

Very radical subreddit whose members consist largely of western teenagers and young adults with a bizarre cult like admiration for Joseph Stalin and more importantly the CCP, and in order to be admired by them, you simply need to be allied with the Chinese Communist Party (and if you don't have a portrait of Xi Jinping on your bedroom wall, they probably want you executed), which was well demonstrated when they praised Rodrigo Duterte for killing Maoists who oppose the current Chinese government. When asked about the worst actions of the CCP or the Soviet Union under Lenin or Stalin, they will deny it happened, or attempt to downplay it, or claim the US was responsible somehow, or outright state that the victims deserved it. This subreddit has been involved in numerous brigading campaigns, such as the one which resulted in the infiltration and subsequent privatization of r/GenZAnarchist. Quarantined in 2022 for promoting Russian disinformation and propaganda about the war in Ukraine.

Anarchists[edit]

/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut

Polar opposite to law enforcement support subreddit /r/ProtectAndServe (which whackers and wannabes are particularly fond of). While it does fairly thoroughly document cases of police brutality, it comes with an incredibly deep undercurrent of hatred, paranoia, and conspiracy-mindedness towards law enforcement "roving gangs of militias instituted by local warlords we call sheriffs." Also often calls for violence against cops, jurors, and their families,^{[77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86]} doxxing jurors and cops,^[87][88] and has an overall extreme tendency to talk about violence against cops. They also engage in the promulgation of conspiracy theories around the 1993 Waco Siege that the FBI/ATF deliberately killed the Branch Davidians in their compound^[89][90][91] and frequently post content from The Free Thought Project,^[92] Ludwig von Mises Institute,^[93] the Daily Mail, Globalresearch,^[94] as well as other Crank websites.

/r/Anarchism

Edgy kids who spend most of their time enjoying stories of police officers being attacked/killed for being "fascists".^[95] Has a reputation for being extremely overdramatic and incapable of handling views that deviate even slightly from their own.^[96] This has effectively scared off many of the more reasonable posters and left behind only the most extreme. While they can talk a big game, it is increasingly just nihilism and misanthropy hiding behind anarchism. Some users got tired of the constant "edginess" and founded /r/leftwithoutedge for a place to discuss anarchist theory and politics without constant bloodthirst. In retaliation, the worst parts of /r/anarchism founded /r/leftwithsharpedge.

Alt-righters and nationalists[edit]

/r/4chan

4chan if it was on Reddit. Mainly a mix of /pol/ and /b/ threads, with all the buffoonery, bullshit, and brain-blistering bigotry that implies. It's honestly impressive how long this sub has lasted for and how gargantuan it has grown, despite being so openly reactionary and racist, or the fact that it isn't at least Quarantined.

/r/ActualPublicFreakouts

Ostensibly created because /r/PublicFreakouts had too much content with people not acting hysterical enough. In practice, it contains nothing but out-of-context video clips of black people acting violent and comment sections full of blatantly unmasked racism. It also encourages posters to have a flair that shows their political alignment, an odd feature for a sub that theoretically should be apolitical.

/r/Anarcho_Capitalism

They have never been anything besides pseudo-intellectual dumbfucks devoid of empathy. Somewhat of a lolcow subreddit with subs like /r/EnoughLibertarianSpam, /r/AnCapMemes, /r/shitancapssay, and /r/FragileAncaps mocking it.

/r/AskThe_Donald

Basically a near clone of the now-banned /r/the_donald subreddit, originally hid behind a thin veil of being a subreddit to ask Trump supporters about their views (a void now filled by r/AskTrumpSupporters after r/AskThe_Donald went fully mask off).

/r/China

The polar opposite of r/Sino, the subreddit is filled with non-Chinese who lean towards the radical right. Claims to be anti-CCP yet is filled with actual rampant and negative stereotypes against mainland Chinese people in particular. Often downplay Sinophobia in the Western world as "CCP propaganda", but welcome Nanjing Massacre denial.

/r/ChonglangTV

A now-deleted Chinese-speaking subreddit that was pretty much the same as /r/China; Most of its users moved to /r/CLTV after it was banned.^{[citation needed]}

/r/firearms

Basically a subreddit for the Fox News audience, the sub spends a lot of time talking about non-firearm related conspiracy theories, like "liberal elitists trying to spread the woke agenda." Unsurprisingly, it is notoriously bigoted and homophobic. Its conspiracy theories are par for the course for a conservative subreddit, claiming that "the LGBTQ organization is trying to infiltrate schools to groom our children."

/r/IndiaSpeaks

r/The_Donald of Indian subreddits. Started out due to r/India not entertaining bigotry and support for the authoritarian right-wing government. Its moderators have a history of brigading and DM harassment.^[97] It was promoted by r/Chodi (a popular Indian alt-right^[98] subreddit, banned in March 23, 2022) and its offshoot, r/DesiMeta, who call for brigading the mainstream r/India subreddit for being “leftist propaganda”.^[99] The sub seems to be in full denial of the coronavirus crisis in India, removing and downvoting any posts criticizing the government’s handling of the situation to “discourage people from spreading “panic and negativity””.^[100] r/Norway and r/IndiaSpeaks had once organized a cultural exchange, which turned out to be a terrible idea and a complete cringefest.^[101] History of bigotry and Islamophobia is all the same in all these subreddits.^[102][103]

/r/IndiaNews

Earlier known as r/DesiNews,^[104] then rebranded as r/IndiaNews and as the “official subreddit” for Indian news. Except, it doesn’t always consist of posts relating to India, it isn’t “official” by any means, and nor does it consist of much news either. It is mostly a place for crossposts from other Indian alt-right subreddits, youtube videos from Hindutva “intellectuals”, and month-old links to Hindu nationalist news sites blogs like OpIndia, SwarajaMag etc., and even shitty memes.^[105] Crossposting from r/IndiaNews is banned in r/India due to reports of witch-hunting, doxxing, and brigading with minimal intervention from the moderators.^[106] It has also spread hate^[107] and bigotry.^[108][109]

r/IndianDankMemes

Unfunny misogynist^[110] and anti-feminist meme subreddit. Also somehow happens to host literal child porn???^[111][112] Justifies its hateful content in the name of being “dank,” but loses its shit when Hinduism or India’s great leader is criticised.^[113][114]

r/Russia

A subreddit to discuss, obviously, Russia. Unsurprisingly, it is filled with pro-Putin and anti-Western shills and bot accounts spreading propaganda. It was quarantined in February 2022 for spreading misinformation and propaganda relating to the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

/r/PoliticalCompassMemes

In a fate similar to /r/GamersRiseUp, it was a satire of political discourse on the internet and the compass itself. Over time, it eventually became worse as its humor is entirely devoid of any self-awareness and repeatedly makes low-quality posts against the Libertarian Left square. Anything supportive of any basic human rights will automatically be labelled "LibLeft" regardless of economic beliefs. It mostly consists of Internet-Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists circle-jerking, and "LibLefts" that just really don't like Antifa and "wokeism". The sub has, especially recently, been filled with flat-out bigotry and fascist apologia in coloured highlighter form, much of which has been documented on the opposition sub r/EnoughPCMSpam. It has also become very homophobic, with many users promoting the "gays are groomers" bullshit.

Anti-Feminists, incels, femcels, MRAs, TERFs, and SWERFs[edit]

/r/MensRights

One of the top gathering points for MRAs, because they really needed more of those. Notably, /r/mensrights was flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center in a report about online misogyny.^[115] Essentially full of outdated anti-feminist conspiracy theories, their contest to find the worst woman on the planet, and whining about any joke ever made with men as the punchline, while contributing fuckall to any gender debate. RationalWiki also annoys them.

/r/PussyPassDenied

As above, with a side of fetishizing violence against women (ostensibly in self-defence, of course). Think the worst elements of r/PussyPass, r/InstantKarma, and r/Trashy combined.

/r/FemaleDatingStrategy

A subreddit that claims to offer dating advice to women. In reality, it is TERF propaganda disguised as dating advice for women and is essentially intended to be the TERF equivalent of Manosphere subreddits such as /r/theredpill and /r/MGTOW. Beyond advising women to pick partners who exist only to serve them and do anything for them, there isn't much of a "dating strategy" being discussed here; it mostly consists of misandrist bashing of men, misogynistic bashing of women who stray from its ideology, and the shaming of people who like BDSM, pornography, open marriages, and even anime and video games.^[116] The subreddit also bans transgender people.

/r/Vindicta

A pink pill, poorly closeted femcel sub (judging by the heavy use of "-maxx" words) that has a system of "halos" and "failos", which they refer to as "objective beauty standards". Shows a similar amount of obsession with certain facial features as incels. Funny enough they had to make a rule of banning people who find these so-called "failos" attractive and disagree with their beauty standards, showing just how "objective" they really are.

/r/AskFeminists

A seemingly mainstream feminist sub that has a fairly high proportion of SWERFs. An anti-pornography sentiment is common on the sub.

Religious extremists[edit]

r/Catholicism

Basically opposes anything that Pope Francis is trying to push forward that is loving and accepting. Favors of "traditionalist" approaches (read: force, violence, hatred of Muslims and gays, etc). Incredibly antisemitic. Avoid at all costs.

r/Izlam

The meme version of r/Islam. Frequently promotes religious bigotry, especially making fun of Islam and making homophobic jokes.

Miscellaneous[edit]

/r/Memes

The front page for memes on Reddit, one of the largest subs. A look into its history displays a number of "edgy" "un-PC" memes that the mods refuse to remove and most users refuse to condemn.

/r/Christianity

Probably as diverse as Christianity itself. Mainly spends its time arguing with r/atheism users who come to argue and troll and babysitting the more mentally ill members who can't afford (or don't want) a therapist. Expect "Is x a sin" posts at least once a day with very mixed answers. r/truechristian believes they're liberal heretics and r/openchristian thinks they don't ban the more judgemental users enough. The general atmosphere is one of acceptance without tolerance, but some popular posts fly in the face of your average fundamentalist. Others are either by people who live in fear or prey on those who live in fear, not the "fear of the Lord" type of fear but the "If I watch Star Wars is it a sin?" type of fear. More fundamentalist Christians on the site don't often like it here and like to make posts letting everyone know this. They usually get away with this. The mods are very patient, but once you're out, you're out.

/r/arabfunny

Arabfunny is a meme subreddit that revolves around making parodies of low-quality social media content produced in the Middle East and South Asia. The posts that are being parodied are often seen as absurd and emulating a fever dream by foreigners, which is a valid point of view to take. The subreddit was originally a largely harmless ironic meme page. Unfortunately, the mod team and ownership of r/arabfunny have historically been vehemently racist, and the subreddit has gone through multiple upheavals of leadership. As a result of the aforementioned, many posters on arabfunny display genuine racism, and a common trope is to roleplay as Jew-hating Muslims due to apathetic moderation. Additionally, the meme format that the subreddit is centered upon creates an easy target of ridicule.

/r/Circlejerk

Originally a subreddit parodying the meta, over the years, they had developed a view that anyone who criticizes America, Trump, or the Republican Party is only doing so for karma, ignoring the spaces where such subjects are highly praised and upvoted. Many posts contain the overused "orange man bad" phrase co-opted by conservatives, and it also has a large group of users overlapping with right-leaning spaces. Some genuinely funny posts satirize the userbase in general, but there are much better alternatives that achieve the same mission. Tread carefully.

/r/Drama

The bastard lovechild of 4chan's /b/ and /r/SubredditDrama (or at least it was such until August 2020, when the admins banned /r/Drama from linking to any Reddit URLs). Begat the now-banned /r/DeuxRama. Has occasionally made mainstream news, such as when it baited a certain Star Trek actor into angrily tweeting about them,^[117] and, most notably, when its users put on their Sherlock Holmes hats and debunked a fake nude of AOC. We aren't making this up.^[118] Because Reddit finally got tired of their bollocks, they moved offsite to rdrama.net, where they have sometimes generated Internet hoaxes, even creating fake subreddits such as r/transparenttranskid, r/transpets, and something about "abortion bounty hunters".^{[119][120][121]}

/r/GoodAnimemes

Founded in protest to a controversy fueled by transphobia (see below), /r/GoodAnimemes is exactly what you would expect. When it’s not being transphobic, you can also expect lots of pedophilia and a strange form of anti-westernism as well, which is ironic considering that most of the users are westerners themselves.

/r/LegalAdvice

Proof that legal advice should never be given on the internet. Many of their moderators are cops, which leads to severe downplaying and censorship on police-related violence and issues. Similarly, the subreddit has issues with an "in-crowd" of Quality Contributors who are given preferential treatment when it comes to giving advice, even if said advice is completely wrong. On the other end, the people who post on the subreddit tend to either ask how to get away with actual crimes or ask for situations where the best advice that is given is "talk to a lawyer".

/r/UnpopularOpinion

A "free speech" subreddit where people can post "unpopular opinions". Popular topics on the subreddit include anti-LGBT, fat people bashing, far-right conservatism, anarchism, and religious fundamentalism

/r/WallStreetBets

A stock trading advice subreddit. Colloquially described as "like 4chan got access to a Bloomberg Terminal", most of its members pride themselves on losing as much money as possible. The subreddit has been subjected to several scams and has reached media fame a few times. The subreddit achieved mainstream attention when its members decided to pump and dump Gamestop shares to stick it to hedge funds who had intended to "short" the company (essentially betting that the shares would go down).

/r/antiwork

A subreddit that is supposed to critique workplace culture under capitalism. The subreddit says that it wants "unemployment for all, not just the rich". While there are some genuine criticisms of work culture, the loudest voices of the subreddit often glorify being lazy and not working at all rather than work culture reform. One of the subreddit's moderators did an interview on Fox News that was heavily criticized by the r/antiwork community. The fallout from this interview led to the subreddit going private for a while, some of the old moderators being removed, and a spin-off community called r/WorkReform to be created.^[122]

/r/superstonk & /r/amcstock

A subreddit similar to r/WallStreetBets, but devoted solely to Gamestop*/AMC. Members refer to each other as 'Apes'. The subreddit is a mixed bag of "research"/discussion about Gamestop/AMC, other financial discussion (Student Loan Asset Backed Securities and more), and a reassuring echo chamber for people so convinced that $GME/$AMC will rapidly increase in value during another short squeeze (if it happens ^{Do You Believe That?}) that they make it their plan for retirement without any sort of exit strategy or backup plan. The subreddit has turned more violent with time, with awarded and upvoted posts including calls for violence against the "financial terrorists" (amcstock)^[123] and including guns and ammunition on pictures of DRS letters (superstonk).^[124]

/r/JustUnsubbed

A subreddit where you announce the reason that you have unsubscribed from a subreddit. A lot of the users of this subreddit seem to leave for either strange reasons or seemingly normal occurances, either that or insensitive and/or controversial remarks that the user that justunsubbed was called out for, or simply hearing things that they don't want to hear.^{[note 6][citation needed]}

WTF?[edit]

/r/drugs

A place that treats mind-altering substances that can change your life substantially at best, kill you at worst like picking your favorite brand of candy.

/r/DXM

A bunch of people addicted to Over-the-Counter cough syrup. And it isn't Codeine.

/r/cocaine

A place where people post pictures of cocaine and talk about getting high on cocaine. Yes, really.

/r/opiates

A strong contender for "most depressing large community on Reddit". It contains very little useful advice on harm reduction or for people who want to get clean. Has previously played host to scammers, including an especially nasty blackmailer who earned users' trust, got their personal information, and then extorted them with threats to expose them as addicts to employers, partners, etc.^[125] The mods started running a tighter ship (by online opium den standards) after this incident. Still, the rules meant to protect users continue to be broken.

/r/psychonaut

Acidheads who believe the answers of life, the universe, and everything come from LSD, shrooms, and any other psychedelic under the sun. Many are likely mentally ill though staggeringly lucid.

/r/meth

Usually posts about how great their badly-made neurotoxic street drug is or stim-induced psychotic rants by those who didn't graduate to roaming the streets at 2 am yet. Drugs are surprisingly popular on Reddit.

/r/SlaveLabour

Although you'd think from the title that it's an actual slavery market of some kind, it's for people looking to work for very little pay.^[126] Still kind of sad.

r/singularity

As the name suggests, the subreddit is dedicated to promoting singularity and other bullshit sci-fi fantasies peddled by Silicon Valley elites. Members have literally advocated for, among other things, robots to replace human jobs and some have even gone on to advocate for the end of humanity^{[No, not The Onion]}. Don't be surprised to see it's members engage in cult-like behaviour

The mass grave of banned and closed subs aka "WTF took you so long?!"[edit]

After years of tolerating utter garbage and incubating some of the most toxic communities the world wide web has ever known, Reddit finally cracked down on the spread of hate speech on their site in June 2020. Not that subs didn't get banned before that point of course, but the new policy specifically outlawing hate speech led to the biggest banning of hate subreddits to date — most notably the aforementioned r/The_Donald and /r/GenderCritical. A lot of lesser-known subs were also banninated that day — what follows is a reminder of what happens when a social media giant sits on its backside and allows everything to slide into decay before eventually deciding to get up and do something.

Other controversies[edit]

Gullibility[edit]

Redditors, like most massive online communities, are known for being particularly gullible and easily sent into a frenzy. As many Redditors are "passive content consumers" who only read the title and then upvote or downvote accordingly, without reading or participating in the comments, many posts with extremely misleading or false titles are upvoted to the front page of Reddit. It is common to see a highly upvoted article on the front page, only for the top upvoted comment in the thread to provide a detailed debunking of the article's claims. Reddit is at least as susceptible as the Twitterati to hoaxes about pet topics like Republicans, marijuana, gun control, Bitcoin, feminists, workers' rights, and so forth.

In a well-known example, Redditors fell for a hoax involving a user named "LucidEnding," who claimed to be about to use Oregon's right-to-death laws to perform assisted suicide. After redditors sent him thousands of comments and well-wishes, some users finally discovered his alleged mode of suicide (IV therapy) is not legal in Oregon. In the first of many incidents, Gawker writer Adrian Chen joked that he was behind the LucidEnding profile.^[182]

Violentacrez, jailbait and creepshots[edit]

Violentacrez was a Reddit user responsible for creating and moderating many of the NSFW subreddits, including /r/jailbait and later, /r/creepshots.

/r/jailbait (2007 to 2011) was a vastly popular subreddit devoted to images of "clothed" (often naked but with no genitalia showing) teenage girls, often heavily sexualized and taken from Facebook or Photobucket pages without the subject's knowledge. In October 2011, /r/ShitRedditSays brought attention to the existence of /r/jailbait, and the mainstream media got involved; after an exposé by Anderson Cooper of CNN, Reddit shut the sub down. A noisy portion of Reddit now despises Cooper for doing his job.^[183]

/r/creepshots was a subreddit devoted to posting images of women taken without their consent. Although "upskirt" shots were later banned, hundreds were posted here. Notably, a high school teacher was arrested and fired after posting images of girls in his class on /r/creepshots. Like /r/jailbait, /r/creepshots was brought to the mainstream media's attention by /r/ShitRedditSays and was later shut down during the public relations debacle involving Violentacrez.

Violentacrez posted hundreds, perhaps thousands of images to Reddit. He also regularly made outlandish comments about his sexual history, most notably claiming in an Ask Me Anything session that he had sex with his stepdaughter. In October 2012, Gawker writer Adrian Chen obtained Violentacrez's real identity, that of 49-year-old Michael Brutsch from Arlington, Texas, from a disgruntled former friend who met Brutsch at a Reddit meetup and became disillusioned with his disturbing sexual behavior. Chen contacted Brutsch and informed him that he would be writing an article about Brutsch's online behavior. On October 12, 2012, this article was posted.

War was declared.

/r/ShitRedditSays[edit]

A subreddit devoted to criticizing, making fun of, and drawing attention to the ignorant and otherwise disturbing content that some Redditors shower with upvotes. SRS users typically find upvoted comments, post them to SRS, and then make fun of or heavily criticize the users involved. SRS was originally designed as a subreddit to try and educate these users, but when those attempts were met with severe downvoting, the users decided to turn the subreddit into the "circlejerk" it is known for today. Because SRS is supposed to be a safe space for marginalized groups to talk without fear of downvotes, those who violate the circlejerk or attempt to argue their viewpoint find themselves swiftly banned, ostensibly to preserve the "safe space" for people who would get downvoted elsewhere on Reddit.^{[note 12]} This practice tends to upset other subreddits, which typically have a much more tolerant policy on speech and are less likely to issue bans (Yes, even /r/mensrights has a better speech record than /r/ShitRedditSays), and users who believe they have been unfairly banned.

This results in /r/ShitRedditSays being blamed for all manner of things by all manner of people in Reddit, such as vote brigading, publishing personal information on other users, and conducting campaigns of harassment against other Redditors. The fact that there is no definitive proof of an SRS-wide conspiracy for anything worse than cynical insults kept strictly within the subreddit itself,^{[note 13]} which is continuously emphasized by the admins of Reddit,^[184] does not seem to stop them being viewed as a mystical boogeyman or part of an even greater conspiracy encompassing the Reddit Admins (particularly former interim CEO Ellen Pao), who allegedly turned a blind eye.

One such conspiracy that seems to pop up as proof perennially is the doxing of Youtube comedians Jon "JonTron" Jafari and Stephen "Boogie2988" Williams by someone claiming to be from the SRS IRC chatroom over their support of Gamergate, despite one of them (Williams) having had little to do with Gamergate at the time of the doxxing. However, the main piece of evidence claimed to prove this conspiracy is a screenshot of a now-deleted anonymous post on Pastebin (a service that anyone can post text to) signed with the SRS IRC address at the bottom of the page. No IRC logs, SRS posts, etc., have been found corroborating the allegation that SRS members had posted it. The style of the doxxing is more consistent with a false flag operation against SRS than a malicious act by SRS users.^[185]

/r/creepyPMs[edit]

Another "safe space" for people, largely women, who are creeped upon or harassed via text/SMS or private messages on social media. Reddit's personal messaging system is one of their sources: that is to say if a photo of yourself (no matter the context) goes to the front page — and you look any bit attractive to the hivemind — expect a veritable flood of sexual advances from a large number of the single 20/30-year-olds that inhabit the site.^[186]

/r/fatpeoplehate[edit]

/r/fatpeoplehate, as its name implies, was set up for people who are so completely enveloped with rage about other people being fat that they have to post about it on the Internet, this obviously being a rational activity engaged in by only the most well-adjusted of individuals. Naturally, with Reddit management not caring about any shitty content on their servers (unless it somehow causes negative consequences to Reddit itself), it was allowed to live until the point it was determined that it was being used to harass other people both on and off Reddit and that its moderators were not banning users who were engaging in this behavior, which included harassing a fat person on a suicide support subreddit and mocking and attacking the staff of Imgur.^[187] This, naturally, led to a huge fit amongst the Reddit userbase, who was convinced that, as opposed to this being an expression of one of Reddit's famous few hard and fast rules ("if you're harassing people or brigading other subreddits, we will ban the shit out of you"), it was actually a "politically correct" judgment on the content of /r/FatPeopleHate itself. This, clearly, makes no sense, as Reddit left up myriad other subreddits that don't brigade while also being filled with all manner of racism, misogyny, and rape advocacy, as well as the non-FPH-affiliated /r/FatPeopleStories, which has not engaged in any harassing behavior of note (while, it must be said, also being somewhat lighter on the "hatred" aspect). Simultaneously, FPH's defenders also tried the old "but SRS brigades too" argument, which, as previously noted, doesn't work, because SRS doesn't brigade. However, SRS did take credit for the banning on the basis that everyone would blame them anyway and that it was funny.

The result of this was of FPH users creating new replacement FatPeopleHate subreddits (which were promptly banned). It also resulted in them invading existing subreddits such as two whale watching communities which were accidentally banned on suspicions of being FPH clones after FPHers started making threads there and were later unbanned when the subreddits' moderators explained the situation to an administrator.^[188]) With the administrators cracking down on any attempts to make a new FatPeopleHate subreddit, FPH users began posting obesity-related content to other subreddits (which was promptly deleted).^[189] When FPH users realized that their tantrum did not work, they began threatening to up sticks and move to Voat, a Reddit clone which promised a completely hands-off approach to hosting content and is, as such, beloved by racists, misogynists, etc. The consensus was that they were more than welcome to do so and were encouraged to follow through. Voat's instability led the FPH users on a brief exodus to 8chan before returning to Voat as their site of choice to stew in their hatred. Not content with just ersatz Reddit, an FPH member also created their own Imgur clones because Imgur had been removing FPH uploads; the first was called Slimgur (which was shut down after someone uploaded child pornography), and the current one is called SLiMG.^[190]

/r/Games and /r/BlackPeopleTwitter April Fools acts[edit]

On April 1, 2019, the moderators of the /r/Games subreddit made an, ironically, completely serious post to the subreddit^[191] announcing that the subreddit would be locked from posting and commenting for the day, to shed light on what they perceived to be serious issues regarding behavior and postings of many of the users in the subreddit. As expected, whenever they are called out on their actions, users ran to their respective subreddits^[192][193] to complain about how being locked out of a subreddit they probably never used for 24 hours is a complete and utter injustice. Hilariously, and what can only be described as pure, unadulterated irony, the r/pcgaming post concerning the matter ended up being locked by the sub's moderators because, as they put it, the comments and behavior being demonstrated in the thread were literally proving r/Games' arguments right about toxicity in gaming culture.

Similarly, the moderators of /r/BlackPeopleTwitter, a subreddit about funny and relatable social media postings from people of color, made the announcement that they were closing the subreddit to only black Redditors, requiring photo proof to participate.^[194] This was done to bring attention to the level of racism, both casual and direct, that was being shared on the sub. It went over about as well as one would expect. Before the reopening of the subreddit and the follow-up post from the BPT mods,^[195] dozens of threads from white users angry about the announcement sprouted in the more toxic parts of Reddit,^[196] including the creation of a brand new subreddit titled /r/SubForWhitePeopleOnly, which was swiftly "quarantined" by Reddit admins from the level of racist and white supremacist material that immediately sprung from it.

/r/Animemes and /r/GoodAnimemes[edit]

/r/Animemes, as the name implies, is a subreddit for anime memes. Most of the memes are unfunny, dull, and were sometimes rather sexist or transphobic, yet it received a big amount of members from the broader anime community. On August 5, 2020, the moderators of the subreddit decided to ban the word "trap". Any meme using the word was to be removed and the user punished for rule violation. Now, to many anime fans, the usage of the word "trap" has a rather long history, and the denotation of the word "trap" as a slur by the non-anime public only started in 2016. Some probably didn't see the reason why a word they were so used to using for so long was banned. But regardless of if they were misinformed of the status of the word in the broader transgender community or just ignored it, many didn't like this change. So, many users of the subreddit "revolted" against the moderators over the ban.^[197] At first it was just a bunch of users protesting, whining about how the mods were "forcing politics down their throats" and that they "weren't given a say", as well as several memes which either mocked or blatantly violated the new rule. Then it got really ugly; several moderators were doxxed, one was allegedly SWATted, and another contemplated suicide. As a result, the subreddit was made private for a whole month.^[198]

At the same time as the police were busy kicking down the doors of some random moderator who's only crime was banning a word, certain members of /r/Animemes left to create their own subreddit, /r/GoodAnimemes, where "politics" were banned and people would be free to use any transphobic slur they wanted in their bad memes. Eventually, the subreddit re-opened and went back to generally being a place for stupid and unfunny anime memes, while /r/GoodAnimemes became the same thing but with more transphobia and sexism.

However, in June of 2021, the moderators of /r/GoodAnimemes, to counter accusations of their subreddit being transphobic, decided to change the its banner to one celebrating Pride Month. A lot of the members of the subreddit didn't like this change, and so, like they did almost a year prior, they "revolted". Multiple posts were created, saying that the moderators were "shoving politics" into a "no politics allowed" subreddit.^[199] Eventually, the moderators bent to the will of the users and took the banner down. This is a great example of just how bad a certain, yet sizeable portion of the anime-fan community can get. On the other hand, the moderators of /r/Animemes seem to be supportive of the LGBT community, with them putting up their own pride banner and having a pride month celebration. The community seems to also have gotten supportive of the LGBT because since there haven't been any major blowouts or "revolts" in regards to banner changes.

Not all bad[edit]

EVERYBODY on the internet loves cats.^{[citation NOT needed]} Reddit is no exception.

Thankfully, the particularly notorious subreddits are firmly in the minority (although the denizens of these places do occasionally leak). For every hateful, science-denying bigot one might encounter on the platform, there are millions of good, decent users who post positive, high-quality content. Some of the communities worth checking out are:

• Subs that actively counter misinformation and hate, such as r/skeptic and r/AgainstHateSubreddits.
• Places dedicated to satirising awfulness, such as r/RightJerk, r/ToiletPaperUSA and r/TopMindsOfReddit. If one ever gets tired of arguing with the morons online, pointing and laughing is always a viable alternative.
  • Speaking of satire, a lot of hobby-related "circlejerk" subreddits (i.e. r/Gamingcirclejerk, /r/nbacirclejerk, /r/vinyljerk, /r/animecirclejerk) are great places to go if you want to mock low-quality posts and repeated opinions from those communities.
• The ones with unbelievably adorable posts, like r/aww, r/Eyebleach, r/rarepuppers/, r/torties, and r/AliveNamedCats. Highly recommended for the weary internet traveller in need of a reminder that the world isn't all doom and gloom, and that the revolting little shits polluting the web are outnumbered by the people who just love cute things.
• Supportive places for people facing discrimination and abuse, and who quit religion. The likes of r/asktransgender, r/ADHD, r/actuallesbians, r/raisedbynarcissists, r/lgbt, and for example r/exchristian for former Christians, are just a few example of well-moderated spaces for those in need of a kind word or some advice.
• High quality nerd crap, like r/spaceporn, r/AskHistorians and r/badeconomics.
• And of course the greatest subreddit known to humanity where most RatWiki editors spend their time, r/rationalwiki r/GOATS. Saved the best for last.

See also[edit]

• 4chan
• TVTropes
• Boston Marathon bombing, in which Reddit was instrumental in spreading false information about the culprit
• DCinside
• Youtube, Even more cranks

External links[edit]

• What is this thing called Reddit?, BBC News
• Reddit is a failed state, The Verge
• Can Reddit Grow Up?, The New York Times
• Reddit or Stormfront?
• Let's play Reddit's Controversial Opinions Bingo! - Or if you want to lose your faith in humanity, enter these terms into the search bar.
• Anatomy of a Circlejerk, or A Grand Unified Theory of Redditors: A decent (if generalized) explanation of the mindset of not just Redditors, but the comments section of some other popular sites as well (it helps that they tend to overlap in commentators).
• You are banned from r/conservative
• Reddit Masstagger: A tool that automatically tags posters in extremist subreddits.
• Reddit is Fun Error Forbidden: What It Means and How to Fix It so you can read this also

Notes[edit]

References[edit]