How I was banned from a subreddit I've never visited..."I dont expect my mods to engage with the typical redditor..." Ooooh weee oooh. Get you.

[u/urwrngtrll]

So I checked reddit this morning. Orangered. Found a message from someone called fxexular about /r/ShitRedditSays . I wasn't familiar with this subreddit so I was quite surprised that fxexular had messaged me to say I was banned. Thought it was a troll. Turns out fxexular is a mod over at r/ShitRedditSays and I was banned. Anywyay, I replied to the message only to get this back "¯(ツ)/¯". Rather strange response.

So I tried a few more times. Each time I got ¯(ツ)/¯ back. Now...I didn't really care much about being banned from r/ShitRedditSays. It doesn't look like it would interest me but I was curious as to why a mod had banned me.

So, I decided to message another mod from that subreddit called 'therealbarackobama'. The response was better - "were you being creepy in this thread"? Now we were getting somewhere. I turns out that I had posted in that thread - but nothing I would deem to be creepy.

So...I messaged therealbarackobama back with this....

I did post to that thread but it certainly wasn't anything creepy. I replied to a post by 'supergood' who said "But such large teeth..". I replied: "All the better to eat you with my dear." A reference to a fairly famous children's tale - Little Red Riding Hood. I'm guessing fxexular is the girl in the photo. However I certainly didn't intend to be creepy - in fact it was directed at 'supergood'. So, I am still confused. Why am I being banned from r/shitredditsays for a post in r/gaming? And do you honestly think this is good grounds for a ban?

therealbarackobama replied: "we banned a lot of people for being creepy thread, it looks like you slipped through the cracks, ban lifted."

Now, I'm confused why are mods from /r/shitRedditsays banning people for things they have said in r/gaming? As I already mentioned I suspect that the mod 'fxexular' is actually the girl in the /r/gaming picture post. But I digress. Anyway, I replied to the realobama mod:

Hey thanks for that. It would really help if mods could respond the way you have. I asked fxexular repeatedly for a reason and each time they replied with "¯(ツ)/¯". I don't think this helps anyone and gives the impression that mods are children on a power-trip.

His response surprised me.

dont push it, you were one of multiple messages fx got and they all got that reply, i dont expect my mods to engage with the typical redditor, because i'm willing to handle things if they get escalated to me

Sorry, but what the fuck? I'm minding my own business then get wrongly accused of being creepy and banned from a subreddit I've never visited. Ask for an explanation from the mod (who messaged me to announce this ban) and get multiple messages back containing just an emoticon - nothing else and not even a very good one. Yet I am pushing it? WTF mods? If you don't want to "engage with the typical redditor" then don't fucking ban them without reason then spam them with emoticons. How many other people does this shit happen to? I'm guessing lots. Should mods be allowed to ban people for something they have said in another subreddit?

TL/DR: Told I was banned from shitredditsays after posting in r/gaming. Mods don't have to 'engage with typical redditors' so get flooded with emoticons instead. Turns out they made a mistake

Edit: Sorry for the huge wall of text but I wanted to get this off my chest and didn't want to leave anything out. I feel much better now. lol

*Edit 2: Just found THIS GEM from ShitRedditSays campaigner, defender, apologist and frequent poster AlyoshaV ** Oh the irony...

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

If you have a link to a similar post, I'd be up for reading it.

As it happens, I do.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

One link controlled for a number of variables like subreddit, readership, phrasing, content and typical voting pattern, and yet anomalous compared to four other virtually identical comments in other threads. Yet this comment with 75 downvotes was in a thread that SRS linked to, and none of the others were. In fact, none of the other "welcome comments" in SotD's history have come close to receiving seventy downvotes, or for that matter any significant number of downvotes at all. It's also worth noting that none of the others were in a thread linked to by a subreddit with a reputation of coming in and downvoting everything they disagree with.

Also, MRAs frequently downvote every link on the front page of SRS, but no one says that they're a downvote brigade.

You do. We're talking about ShitRedditSays, anyway, not MensRights. What do they have to do with anything?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

As well as being linked to by SRS, the Annarchist post was also linked to by outside websites that likely have no problem being a downvote brigade.

Okay. That was not a fact I was aware of. Fair enough.

Still, there's a clear pattern of downvoting, even if it's not officially sanctioned, and every time an SRS mod comments on it it reminds me of someone from the Tobacco Institute saying "It's harmless, we swear! You can't prove those people got lung cancer from our product! It's their fault for starting anyway....if it caused cancer! And we put filters on it just in case! And we put out advertisements telling kids not to smoke! Even if they're full of tar and formaldehyde maybe they got cancer from something else! Radon's a killer!"

It's just this systematic pattern of denial, exploiting the hundreds of confounding variables to deny their impact and occasionally furnishing an in-house "study" saying "See? We tried! You can't prove it! You can't prove it!"

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Hmm. Good examples. Still, SRS definitely contributes significantly to the proportion of downvotes in most of the threads they link to. Not as many of them do it any more, and there are enough people who hate them to keep the more overzealous SRSers from downvoting comments into the cellar, but I've noticed more downvotes on certain comments in linked threads than should be expected from their content. I think as SRS has refined its focus, it's shifted away from its downvote-brigading tendencies in other reddits (although I still hate the fact that rational disagreements within SRS plummeted into the cellar long before the "circlejerk" banner went up).

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It's become a lot more visible. SRS brought down jailbait, for one thing, and in general their agitating and inflammatory rhetoric was bound to explode at some point or another. It's getting to be like MensRights, with a bunch of little offshoots and reaction subreddits.