The dispute, both about the post itself and the way the post has been handled all over Reddit, has turned into a brawl between the platform's users and its moderators. A pattern took hold: The list gets posted and then deleted - sometimes because it doesn't follow subreddit rules, other times because it causes uncivil conversations, or for no stated reason at all - and then gets posted somewhere else. That was May 12, which was approximately when things went haywire. Soon after, rootin-tootin_putin faced other bans and was eventually suspended from Reddit altogether.
(Yet.) They were banned from r/comedyheaven, a subreddit "which I hadn't posted in or referenced in months." One of the sub's moderators? Cyxie. But rootin-tootin_putin wasn't banned from the places they'd posted. Rootin-tootin_putin's post was quickly removed, without much explanation, and they got a notice they'd been banned from a subreddit. The post promptly went viral - at one point it was among the most popular posts on Reddit.
#Reddit gay twink gets fucked video mods#
"I saw a link to it somewhere," rootin-tootin_putin told me, "which caught my attention due to negative run-ins with mods before." Those three subreddits have almost 9 million subscribers among them. The list hit the big time when a Redditor named rootin-tootin_putin posted it to r/ThatsInsane, r/mildlyinfuriating and r/interestingasfuck. It went to weird places, like subreddits devoted to Philip DeFranco and Lil Uzi Vert. It hit conspiracy-minded ones, like r/conspiracy-commons, r/conspiracies and r/topconspiracy. It hit other Reddit-hating subreddits (which are surprisingly common), like r/subredditcancer and r/DeclineIntoCensorship. Over the next several weeks, the list rocketed around Reddit. But that fact paled next to the post's ominous subtext: These are the people who run Reddit.
The list was at best deeply misleading those subreddits often have dozens of moderators, and all Steve_Cuckman1312 had done was cherry-pick names. The name Siouxsie_siousv2 appeared 14 times Merari01 20 times Gallowboob 23 times Awkwardtheturtle 24 times and Cyxie a whopping 45 times. It was titled "92 of top 500 subreddits are controlled by just 4 people." There were actually five Redditors in the table. The post was simple: a screenshot of a table, listing popular subreddits in one column and moderators in another. It came from a user named Steve_Cuckman1312. The first version I found was from March 16, posted to a subreddit called r/WatchRedditDie (users refer to subreddits as "r WhateverTheNameIs," and write them with a slash in between). But the fight that has consumed the platform in recent weeks definitely started well before it went viral.
" I've heard wonderful things of The Trevor Project," he wrote, "who provide a 24/7 suicide and crisis prevention hotline for LGBTQ youth.As with anything on Reddit, it's hard to know exactly how it all started. He was appreciative, at first, but then suggested a better use of well-wishers' funds: Giving to a charitable organization. We talked for a bit while finishing our dinner about how I can't emphasize enough that I love him regardless of which gender he loves etc."Ĭountless Redditors were bestowing gold (fictitious currency) onto the dad. " even started to cry on my shoulder and because of that I couldn't help myself but shed a couple tears. That night, after a few seconds of silence, the son told his father, "I'm gay." Dad got up, "and gave him a huge hug," he wrote. "At this point he sort of looked at me slightly confused, I'm not 100% sure why, but I'm assuming it is because I said 'lucky person rather than lucky girl, " continued dad.Īt that point, he "dropped the conversation," but in doing so, he told his son, "Well, whoever it is, they should be so lucky to have you as a boyfriend."