Memes

I don’t think they reacted incorrectly tbh. The thing of it was that this was one of the first times it became “mainstream” and was mentioned in MSM on the likes of CNN. So it brought an influx of users, more so than past surges. This overall the culture changed quite a lot.

Prior you could use Reddit as a news source. In fact MSM was using stuff trending there to “break” news to larger audiences. They did similar with Boston…and got it wrong.

Overall once that happened it shined a spotlight on the site. And some of the unsavory subreddits were reported on. But more importantly witch hunts became MUCH more prevalent. Anyone feeling slighted would try and engage Reddit to harass people. And more and more joined.

There were times where this happened before. It happened to a user named Saydrah in the earlier days who was a mod of some subreddit. But it was much more prevalent and frankly dangerous. Instead of sending pizzas to a house it was all night harassment and death threats.

So the admins started curating the main page. Making sure the likes of creepshots subreddits werent there. Or super emergent news wasn’t there, because the Chris Dorner thing didn’t help either. Overall it just changed the culture from one of a series of communities to something a bit more…risky.

Hell I have had people that disagreed with my stances around that time. Thankfully I practiced some basic opsec, but they certainly harassed some poor person thinking it was me. It’s made me very cagey about being online and frankly being honest with my opinions that may be less….mainstream.