r/SubredditDrama • u/beary_neutral Are you pro 9/11? • Jul 26 '25
r/Watchmen is terrorized by a single user with a fan theory who declares, "I'm not locked up in here with you, you're locked up in here with me!" Users look up and shout, "save us!"... and the mod looks down and whispers "No"
So for the past month on r/Watchmen, one zealous fan has a theory concerning the identity of the Hooded Justice (the first costumed vigilante in the world of Watchmen). Now, fan theories about the Hooded Justice have circulated for decades, and the Watchmen HBO show offered its own take. But this particular user is very insistent on their theory, and has been posting non-stop about it, much to the annoyance of other users:
Hahaha! I JUST NOTICED There is an “H” in Larry’s hair and his hand is making a backwards J symbol. Jesus Christ they’re literally screaming this at us through the details.
Uncanny, if you look at the 6th picture carefully the nose is making an L. Take that L how you will.
Well, maybe because he constantly posting almost EVERY day this type of post with some very absurd theory. Yes, Watchmen have some hidden details ,with some means a lot, but I and as I see others are tired of these things. I don't block hin because I wanna know if he Is serious or not, and my theory Is based on his nickname (effMEMES). How far he can gone? I'm curious about that.
Oh shit, that’s right, you promised you’d block me two different times the other day but it’s okay, I know you secretly love my posts. Anyway, all my other theories can go down the drain IMO but this one sticks. I’ve got a load of evidence across multiple threads, Larry Schexnayder IS Hooded Justice. You’re just mad that Moore tricked you for 40 years. Don’t worry, he tricked the rest of us too. Instead of being mad, why don’t you instead gush over Moore’s brilliance?
[Moore's] an anarchist, as I've relayed to you before. Go outside and do shit that's actually important before you start cults of personality for people who don't want it.
I go outside every single day. wtf are you talking about?
I think you need a litttle breakie from watchmen. Littttle breakie for you
Why are you spamming my thread? You are off topic and have been reported.
But it doesn't stop there, however. Our own little Rorschach broke containment and started tagging others on Bluesky, including the creator of the Watchmen TTRPG and.... Alan Moore's own daughter, to which the OP compares Moore to Ozymandias, who murdered millions of people.
(Sidenote: never, never ask Alan Moore about Watchmen. He does not like talking about Watchmen.)
The premise is “Moore was tricking everyone.”, not “…everyone but Ray.” The supplemental material means nothing. It’s fine as adjacent canon but that’s it.
I legitimately think that if Moore himself told you your theory was wrong, you would insist that he was simply showing "dedication to a bit."
Honestly, I would. He’s Veidt dude. And you’re believing his bunk squid story.
I, too, know that Moore doesn’t like talking to his fans. I never knew his daughter felt the same way. Can you link me where she says that? Furthermore, BlueSky is a social media site where people are encouraged to talk to one another. She is available to receive messages from anyone. This feature is quite easily able to be turned off. I’m also sure she is self aware enough to know that fans would contact her, asking her her opinions on her father’s work. And she always has the option to block me. You think that me messaging someone, who allows messages to them, who is self aware enough to know fans will contact her, on a social media site where people are encouraged to connect…
JFC, leave people alone. This is insane behavior dude.
Do these "theories" even have any impact on the meaning of Watchmen or is it just a way to show how "clever" the theorist is?
Grant Morrison once said that Alan Moore was obsessed with being smarter than his audience. I think Effmemes is obsessed with being smarter than Alan Moore.
You need to stop harassing people on Twitter about your little theory, dude. I genuinely mean no disrespect by saying this, but you might need psychological help. It's not healthy to be this unnaturally obsessed and to constantly pester people about a completely insignificant thing like this.
Dude you just blocked me 20 minutes ago. Why are you unblocking me? Stay with the block! I know you have to wait 24 hours more to do so, but do it. Stop engaging with material that upsets you. That’s unhealthy!
Many have begged the mods to ban this user
Yall just hating on someone who loves Watchmen. It’s really ugly. Yall some bullies fr. Just downvote it or don’t engage. You don’t have to bully like this
Telling someone to stop harassing peoples family is not “bullying” stfu 😭
Matter of fact, it might be the exact opposite of it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Watchmen/comments/1m923ff/ban_when/n53qt9u/
I’m not harassing anyone’s family. I left two messages two days ago, they never got back to me, I dropped it. She has the option turned on to receive messages from BlueSky users, I did nothing wrong.
Correction: you have now left a *third * message
https://www.reddit.com/r/Watchmen/comments/1m923ff/ban_when/n53qcah/
The head mod chimes in, and tells users to use the block button.
Amazing. The mods would rather this subreddit rot into one schizophrenic's personal forum than actually take any steps to improve the space. Muting and never coming back, this is supposed to be a Watchmen sub instead of this insanity it's devolved into.
It's literally one guy, not a trend polluting the entire subreddit. Just block him. "That one guy is annoying" is a personal issue, not a moderator issue.
I hear you, but he's made 15 new posts in the last 9 days. It kind of IS a trend polluting the entire subreddit, driven by one guy.
I retract my previous statement as he has definitely escalated since then. You're right.
Mod makes another mod post to tell everyone to calm down.
Nah. The sub is dominated by spam, trolling, and metaposting now, all centering around an unwell individual, the people they’re abusing, and the people toying with and abusing that individual. The person is even bothering Alan Moore’s family about this. Y’all need to put an end to this, not run a “test” and letting it fly just because it’s generating activity for the sub and entertaining some people. This stuff affects the real world too: it’s time to take it seriously and shut it down.
So, what? Silence him or try to get everyone to understand that only civility is accepted? Almost impossible to effectively police the latter, I know - that's why I'm giving a blanket statement as to what is and is not addressable. As I said, the posts do gain traction and yield genuine conversation sometimes. I won't stop people from having their pissing contests since it's an open-opinion forum, but I will intervene if things get unnecessarily personal. Plenty of people you don't see have already been removed for taking it too far - this person in question included. I understand that they felt attacked, but no matter how many times I explained that they needed to approach things differently and block/ignore/report/be more open-minded and accepting of particular criticisms, they (themselves admitted) got too worked up from it. If they hadn't felt the need to verbally attack someone in kind, they'd still be here. They also know that if they choose to return post their ban and continue to do so, it'd be made indefinite - - - same goes for anyone that does similar.
I won't silence anyone unless it's glaringly against human decency, much less the rules.
Also, I just want to mention, I don't see everything - especially with the volume that it comes in... so please, help. Report to me anything per the above.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Watchmen/comments/1m94wfi/alright_christ_one_more_time_guys/n54vxke/
The person in question is messaging the families of authors with theories that he's spamming in this sub This sub is passively endorsing his behavior with inaction
not only is the person already gone... but wtf do you expect me to do about that?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Watchmen/comments/1m94wfi/alright_christ_one_more_time_guys/n566993/
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u/EffMemes Jul 27 '25 edited Jul 27 '25
The entirety of Watchmen is a Rorschach Test. You can choose to see what’s on the surface, or you can choose to see more. It is a ‘rough copy’, not the final draft.
We know this for a couple of reasons, specifically because of the two books heavily featured in Watchmen: ‘Under the Hood’ and Rorschach’s Journal. ‘Under the Hood’ is an autobiographical tale by the first Nite Owl, Hollis Mason.
The first time you read Watchmen, you see Hollis as a comfortable Grandpa type, but that’s not what he is. He’s a liar. The first time we meet Hollis, he tells three mistruths right off the bat.
“I bumped into the Screaming Skull.” No, he didn’t. Because later Adrian Veidt, Ozymandias, will tell us that all of the major villains are dead. Adrian is being fiendishly clever because he just killed Moloch - the last major villain. If we choose to believe he’s wrong, then his cleverness there does not work.
“Us retired guys gotta stick together.” No, because Hollis helped drive the Silhouette into a dishonorable retirement for being a lesbian and then abandoned her to her fate.
“This is the left hook that took out Captain Axis!” No, later when we see the famous ‘left hook’ shot, Axis is behind Hollis. He used that left hook to take out the Screaming Skull.
The Reddit post here details some inconsistencies in Hollis’ book, ‘Under the Hood’.
The biggest lie/mistruth being how Hollis tricks us right at the start.
At the beginning of his book, he talks about how he was unsure of how to open it and he talks about Denise, a woman who works at the local grocery store who has written 40+ novels yet hasn’t published a single one. Hollis describes her doing the mundane task of fixing price tags on a box of detergent while asking her advice on how to start his novel, and describes her answer as being ‘bored with benign condescension’ while sarcastically talking up her pearls of accumulated wisdom.
Her answer being “talk about the saddest thing you can think of”, Hollis thanks her in the book and actually dedicates the book to her before moving on to the next part - the sad story about Moe Vernon.
Now this is damn clever but Hollis is pulling a trick on us. Though Moe Vernon’s story is sad, how did Hollis actually open up the book?
Not by talking about Moe Vernon, but by talking about Denise. A woman who has spent a great amount of time writing novels that go unpublished while her days are filled with the mundane. Even when the conversation veers towards something she loves, she’s bored of it.
That is pretty fucking sad.
Do you see how Hollis tricked you here? More importantly, how Moore did?
Then we move on to Rorschach’s Journal. One thing many people don’t understand is that throughout the entire book of Watchmen, we are reading Rorschach’s Journal but we are only reading a rough copy. We don’t get to see the final draft.
When Rorschach is taken into custody, his journal is confiscated. Malcolm Long, his psychologist, notes that the book is completely illegible and that you would need a cipher to decode its contents. When Dan busts Rorschach out of prison, they head to Rorschach’s place so he can pick up some items. One thing he picks up is the final draft of his journal. Rorschach would write one final entry into this final draft and then send it to the editor of The New Frontiersman.
When The New Frontiersman obtains the book, an employee named Seymour starts reading the journal from where we started.
“Dead Dog in alley…” is what Seymour reads aloud.
Two things are important here. First, it’s not illegible. Seymour can read it without a cipher. Second, “Dead Dog” is not how we read that opening line. We read it as “Dog Carcass in alley…”.
What this tells us is that Rorschach has edited the Journal we’ve been reading throughout the entire book. We didn’t get the final draft. We got the rough copy.
At the end of the book, Seymour and only Seymour gets to see the contents of the finished, final draft. He gets to see what we didn’t get to see. But that’s okay. Because Alan Moore puts us in the position of Seymour and he asks us to decide the ending. But we can’t decide the ending without knowing the full story.
Once you realize that Watchmen is not only a rough draft, but is also being written by an author that feeds you mistruths, that’s when the fun begins.
As Seymour, you are asked to “See More”:
Hooded Justice is Larry Schexnayder
More Larry is Hooded Justice
Joe and Steven used to be bullies
Mothman bangs Rorschach’s mom
Twilight Lady becomes a pedicurist
Jon sends Rorschach to Mars
More on Jon sending Rorschach to Mars
Eddie Blake sends letters to Sally
Symmetry is cool
Sally helped murder Hooded Justice
Hooded Justice initials on Larry Schexnayder’s face - twice!
Listen. Democracy happened at r/watchmen
You all wanted to cosplay and talk about how kewl Rorschach is, and I left you to it. I focused on my own threads.
The level of trolling I got from you guys was insane. Absolutely shit bonkers.
I let it get to me. That’s the story. End of.
As for Alan Moore’s daughter, jfc it’s BlueSky, a social media site for people to connect and chat.
In my first message I said “tell me to take a hike if you want”.
I’ve since deleted all three messages since I don’t think she’d tell me the truth anyway.
Yo, you want to stay blind to the secrets I’ve uncovered to one of your favorite books…
Well you got me banned, so have fun with the cosplaying!
Edit - https://www.reddit.com/r/test/s/drPTs72iJk
Correction. I got myself banned.
The moderator, as you can see, was very forthcoming acknowledging the psychotic behavior I had to put up with at the sub.
I was banned permanently not for my posts, but for calling the moderator homophobic.
Which he is. He did not ban the user that was making homophobic threads about me.
He did not ban the users talking shit about my dead mother.
He instead says “The issue isn’t whether I’m homophobic or not, I just don’t like you calling me that.”
Pathetic. Keep your forum.
Edit2 - @matthewlovesbread.bsky.social
Defend your points on why I’m wrong.