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Ordinarily I wouldn't post personal Reddit drama here, but the thread is slow and I'm mad.
Here is a post that I saw on /r/baseball:
Anthony Bass promoting anti-LGBTQ propaganda on his Instagram
You probably noticed that the thread is locked with a moderator message: "The trolls are flooding in, and the conversation has run its course at this point. Friendly reminder to love your neighbor, and that it's not intolerant to oppose bigotry. Everyone have a nice holiday Monday!"
This message was posted only a few minutes after I was permanantly banned from /r/baseball for comments in that very thread! In fact, I believe they are referring to me as one of the "trolls flooding in". Lets take a look under the hood to see what counts as perma-ban and threadlock-worthy comments.
First, the actual article in question. Anthony Bass is a pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. He posted an Instagram story saying Christians should boycott Target and Bud Light. That's it. That's the "anti-LGBTQ propaganda". I posted a top-level comment in the thread sarcastically making this point.
Is this a high-effort comment? No, but if you are familiar with the sports subs at all then you know that this type of low-effort sarcasm is all over the place. That's the posting culture there. I also got involved in another comment thread.
This was the extent of my participation in the thread. I did not expect my comments to be particularly well-received by the Reddit population, but I felt that I pointed out enough legitimate issues that I would be safe from accusations of trolling. I was wrong.
Here is the modmail message I received informing me of my permanent ban, along with the brief conversation we had before they muted me with their absolute power.1 For reference, here are the /r/baseball rules. Would an honest reading of these rules give you any reason at all to think that anything I posted would not be allowed, much less permaban worthy? You would have to be steeped in internet leftist culture to understand that, "Trolling, threatening, harassing, or inciting violence towards individuals or groups will not be tolerated. Racist, sexist, or otherwise intolerant language in both comments and submissions will be removed." means that pointed questions against the progressive consensus will get you tossed out.
I understand why so many subreddits are complete circlejerks now. It's not about echo-chambers and voting dynamics. They literally just banned everyone who disagreed.
1. Here is the source they cited for their "62%" figure. I'll let you decide for yourself whether this poll is applicable
Don't call it the progressive consensus. That implies that a majority of left-leaning people are onboard with it. Call it the progressive orthodoxy.
Not trying to sound condescending but I can't help but think of that one James Franco meme. Reddit in general and Reddit mods in particular have undergone such an intense purity spiral in the last seven years that you're best off just assuming any English-speaking sub which isn't loudly and conspicuously heretical (even ostensibly apolitical hobby and sports subs) has been taken over by woke mods. The site is a lost cause as far as meaningful discussion is concerned.
Hell, even subs that are loudly and conspicuously heretical appear to have been taken over by woke mods. I was permanently banned from /r/ActualPublicFreakouts - Reddit’s current go-to spot for videos of minorities behaving badly - (ostensibly) for making a few (fairly mild) off-color racial jokes. Certainly I would expect an instant ban for doing anything of the sort on a large public-facing sub, but on a sub that seems tailor-made for people who would be into that? It’s the sort of thing that fuels my suspicion that any remaining redoubts of non-progressivism are honeypots designed to corral all the heretics into one place for observation and eventual termination.
Increasingly convinced that I made the right decision uninstalling the Reddit app from my phone. Just about the only sub I still enjoy any more is /r/4chan.
Why wouldn’t you just browse 4chan?
Reddit subs dedicated to 4chan posts are much, much better than going to 4chan because they typically filter out the porn(which is the vast majority of 4chan) and in practice they mostly highlight the better posts(which is definitely not the majority of even the non-porn posts on 4chan).
I strongly disagree with this extremely overbroad assertion.
In the first place, /r/4chan is not a substitute for 4chan. 4chan is a discussion platform that happens to be humorous on occasion, while /r/4chan is focused exclusively on finding humor (not necessarily "the better posts") on 4chan. If you want to read a non-humorous discussion of electric cars or urban planning or Big Yud, you won't find it on /r/4chan—you've got to go to 4chan itself.
In the second place, it is not reasonable to say that pornography "is the vast majority of 4chan". Even assuming for the sake of argument that the statement is technically true—i. e., that, of all posts made on 4chan, "the vast majority" are pornographic (and I do not necessarily accept that premise)—it is not actually possible for a user to browse the entire category of "all posts made on 4chan". In practice, it is extremely easy for a person who uses the catalog view to ignore (1) the obviously-pornographic boards and (2) the few obviously-pornographic threads that are tolerated by the jannies on the non-pornographic boards, and to focus only on threads that actually contain discussion.
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I've tried once or twice but found the user interface impenetrable.
Some would argue that's a feature. The medium is the message.
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Try using the catalog view instead of the default view. And, in the settings, enable the "Inline quote links" option, so that you can follow a conversation without having to bounce up and down the page.
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