Imagine yourself as a normie. Someone who has never used Reddit, but has heard about it. You decide one day to create an account on there to try it out and see what the fuss is all about.
Right off the bat, you notice the shitty UI. It is laggy, cluttered, and annoying to use… but that’s fine, it’s popular for a reason, right? Anyway, you just had an avatar shoved down your throat and your ready to get started.
You go look through the subs and see what’s going on. You see a few that you think are interesting and add them to your feed. Not even 10 seconds later, you get a message in your inbox:
“You’ve been automatically banned from r/vaginas because you subscribed to r/penises. We don’t support misogyny here!”
You think to yourself “wow, that was weird”. But whatever, you decide to move on.
After signing to a few subs, you start scrolling through your feed, and you see an interesting post on r/technology about a new phone that came out. You go into the comments hoping to see what the specs are and instead you see…
- People arguing about Republicans
- People comparing the phone company to Nazi Germany
- A few people downvoted into oblivion for no reason
- Incredibly shallow and unfunny humor
- Random mainstream pop culture references You close the post because you’re not a masochist, and decide to move on.
You stumble upon an another interesting post, this time a discussion about a show that you like on the r/Netflix. You’ve seen a couple of episodes and decide to leave a comment with your opinions on it.
Huh, that’s weird, you got a message in your box almost immediately. It’s too fast to be a reply, so what could it be?
“Your post was automatically removed for not meeting the minimum karma threshold. No, we won’t tell you what it is”
You think “okay, that’s annoying, but I guess I’ll just try a different sub”.
You notice a fun sub where people share their shower thoughts, and some of the posts are funny. You decide to try it out yourself, because why not?
Uh oh, your inbox went off again. What now?
“Your post was removed because it is vaguely similar to this post from 2009.”
Alright now, you’re starting to get pissed off. But you’re still giving this site the benefit of the doubt. You decide to give it one last chance.
You remembered that liked games, and so you go to the gaming sub to see what’s going on. You see a post about GTA, and decide to read the comments when you notice some idiot with hundreds of upvotes saying that they should bring back Big Smoke from GTA III. You leave a little comment correcting them, and decide to leave it at that.
Shortly after, you decided to leave another comment… but you can’t post the second comment for some reason. That’s weird, your internet is fine. Did Reddit go down? You refresh the page, and there it is. The dreaded inbox notification.
“You’ve been permanently banned from r/gaming”
What? You didn’t shit. So you try to ask the mods why they banned you… and you get this:
“You’ve been banned for rule Title 18 r/gaming Code § 81.4 C - bigotry”
Wtf? You didn’t violate that rule. You ask what gives. The mods respond with this:
“You can’t disagree with me on this sub, doing so is bigotry. No, I won’t be lifting your ban. Don’t ever contact us again. Go cry to your mommy loser”
Followed by
“You’ve been temporarily muted from this sub for 28 days, you won’t be able to contact the moderators”
Apparently the idiot you tried to correct was a mod. Even so, this reaction is unwarranted. You think “wow, fuck that guy, what a douche”, and decide to let it go… but you can’t because not even an hour later, you get a new message in your inbox:
“You’ve been permanently banned from Reddit for harassment”
Bonus: You get a reply back from the idiot mod in the GTA post doubling down on Big Smoke being from GTA III. He wanted to get the last word
That’s when you take a deep breath, close your laptop, calmly stand up, walk to the nearest window, and chuck your laptop out.
I mean this from the very bottom of my heart, fuck Reddit.
Is that your actual experience? Cuz I know piling on Reddit is funny and all, but this seems a smidge exaggerated.
I don’t think reddit is just “unfunny”, the problem is the more you spend on reddit, the unfunnier it gets.
You look at a post or a meme or whatever and before you even open the comment section, you can already tell what the comments are: does it somewhere say the exremely funny 69, the comments go wild with spamming nice, because it’s the funniest thing they have seen all day. They had us at the first half… fuck around find out, it’s just all that bland shit. One of the last time i was on reddit, someone said what everyone thought and called it just lazy spam, and the guys answer was basically: you don’t get it, everytime you see this thing you have to spam that thing, people love it and it gets me karma. And that, at least for me is what reddit has become. People waiting for some celebrity to die so they can hop on and post it everywhere. Copy and past comments, and 4 different jokes spread aroud reddit.That aside, fuck their shitty ass power hungry pathetic mods
Exactly who doesn’t subscribe to r/vaginas
I keep trying but it refuses to federate. Can someone help me with /r/vaginas? :(
Perhaps to experience this all in one setting, but these are all common occurrences on reddit.
As fun as it is to dunk on reddit and its moderation, this is definitely exaggerated lol
Yes, most likely but the picture it gives is completely accurate. You have to either submit to the totalitarian reddit rule or you will regret it (not literally but you will at least get negative karma, autobanning you from a lot of subs).
As a mod on reddit, I have a always tried to keep it levelheaded but I have gotten my posts removed on subs for simply correcting someone. So evidently not every mod is good at being civil.
I think the overall representation of this post is spot on. :)
It really depends on the subreddits you use. I was on reddit for almost 10 years and while I saw others complaining about power-trippers I never experienced it myself and that’s after I’ve used several bigger subreddits.
Yes. It absolutely depends. Not only on the subs but also on the time (more recent are the more confrontational outcomes from what I hear) and the type of person you are. Someone who is very accustomed to fitting in will probably have no problem on reddit. The same goes for every other situation in life.
It’s the individualists, minorities and other not-too-adjusted peeps that get problems because we tend to think different, sometimes speak our mind without seeing that it’s the wrong situation to do so.
This happened to me, but a lot slower. I actually used to like Reddit, I decided to quit because my posts kept getting downvoted all the time. u/spez did the big stupid a week later.
At one point, I got permanently banned from r/socialism for stating that China isn’t really communist.
Reddit is being taken over by mods and redditors, that won’t only not read your comment if you disagree with them, but will report you instantly. I had been on reddit for like 9 years, and got a lifetime ban for being transphobic, which I’m not. I commented on a post that went along the lines of " We need more trans people in Government local, state, and national" My comment was literally, “We need the best people in these roles, and if they’re trans that’s just fine, but we shouldn’t be picking leaders based solely on their sexuality.” BAM’ banned for life due to hate speech and transphobia. On a comment on a political sub, that had like 30 upvotes.
Relatable AF.
And that, kids, is why I don’t subscribe to anything.
Doesn’t even list the most fun part of Reddit experience.
You fancy yourself an established user, right? Been there for years. Decade, even. Surely by any reasonable standard you can be trusted to apply common sense and etiquette by now, right? Perhaps it is finally time for you to submit new posts to a subreddit?
Lol, nope, wrong. Every link post to a “popular” domain (e.g. YouTube) gets silently eaten by the spam filter. No, nothing tells you this. If your post has no engagement whatsoever after a day, maybe this is what happened. You can sometimes get the post unstuck by messaging the moderators. Which is sometimes fruitful. Sometimes not. Because the individual moderators making these decisions might have differing opinions on prevailing submission standards and this is about the most polite way I can put this, I’d have more colourful explanation for this but it’s late and I’m kinda tired.
But never worry! If most of these links get eaten by the spam filter, it might be just that you’re using the old interface. Try using the new interface instead! It eats only 80% of submissions silently. The rest might even get feedback on why they got automatically rejected! Like “you haven’t linked your account to Twitter, so you’re clearly a suspicious noob.” (…I’m confused, I thought only noobs linked their accounts to Twitter. I mean, what’s the point of that to begin with?)
I got rid of those power-tripping mods because they were tripping on MY POWER, NOT YOURS. So, I replaced them to keep the status quo: SPEZ FIRST, USER LAST.
