Not April Fools
April 1, 2019 2:50 PM   Subscribe

 
I'd assumed this closure was itself an April Fool's "joke" meant to sardonically mock social justice warriors. Maybe I'm wrong, though, since I assume everything on Reddit is from the worst possible timeline.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:01 PM on April 1, 2019 [7 favorites]


Holy hell I hope not. That would be some next-level meta evil.
posted by allkindsoftime at 3:05 PM on April 1, 2019


Yeah, this was actually a real thing. It’s even labeled clearly that it isn’t a joke.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:05 PM on April 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


I'd assumed this closure was itself an April Fool's "joke" meant to sardonically mock social justice warriors

I was also curious about this, given the timing, so then I clicked literally either of the two links in the post before I made a comment.
posted by chappell, ambrose at 3:16 PM on April 1, 2019 [71 favorites]


Well its a start. I'll be interest to see how this conversation progresses both here on MF and on Reddit.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 3:16 PM on April 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


The post doesn't go into this, but April Fools' Day was probably chosen as a high-traffic day for the subreddit, as without the closure users would be visiting to post and discuss the dozens of jokes from game companies.
posted by skymt at 3:23 PM on April 1, 2019 [16 favorites]


I'd assumed this closure was itself an April Fool's "joke" meant to sardonically mock social justice warriors. Maybe I'm wrong, though, since I assume everything on Reddit is from the worst possible timeline.

I mean, their post where they actually explain themselves is really hard to interpret in this way...
posted by advil at 3:25 PM on April 1, 2019 [18 favorites]


Good, let them close it also for the remaining 364 days.
posted by Pendragon at 3:25 PM on April 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


I mean, their post where they actually explain themselves is really hard to interpret in this way...

And yet, I did read their post, and I can still interpret it that way. Am I sure? No. But what I can't figure out is this: Why April Fool's Day?! If it's in earnest, then literally any other day would have been better, if only to avoid this kind of doubt.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:46 PM on April 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


Games isn't great, but it's also not the worst, by far, of the gaming subreddits. Here's hoping that they just ban everyone who is toxic in the discussion post tomorrow.
posted by No One Ever Does at 3:53 PM on April 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


From their statement:
"Unfortunately, this inflammatory content is not an infrequent occurrence. The condescending, dismissive, vindictive and pessimistic attitudes we see in our day to day activity is troubling, especially when those interactions involve harassing or outright targeting regularly discriminated communities. It’s not uncommon for us to see the real issues surrounding these communities be trivialized, derided out of ignorance, or worse, for the sake of entertainment.

To that end, we want to show you, the community, what we mean by “what we see”. These are some of the more awful comments we see regarding transphobia, homophobia, islamophobia, racism, misogyny, pro-pedophilia/pro-rape, and vitriolic personal attacks against other users. These kinds of comments occur on a daily basis. We’ve compiled an entire album of examples of the horrible things people say on this subreddit. From bigotry to vitriol, this album merely scratches the surface of the magnitude of the problem."
They're not kidding, the stuff in that album is vile. Bless the r/Games moderators for deleting that stuff and banning the posters; I'm sorry that their work is so necessary.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 3:59 PM on April 1, 2019 [29 favorites]


Why April Fool's Day?!

Because, as mentioned, it's a high-traffic day, with the bonus that the traffic isn't directly relevant to the community - they're not failing to host the early discussions about the newest XBox game, or the closure of an entire branch of Nintendo, or anything like that.

It also works very nicely as an announcement to haters and bigots: things are likely to change, a lot, so here's a 24-hour cooldown where you can decide you hate this place and figure out where else you're going to hang out. It's an easy way to avoid "why are you banning me for saying this? Other people have said this and it's always been okay." It allows the mods to say, "from this day forward, that kind of behavior isn't allowed."

It's possible that this was the nearest "holiday" event to when they made the decision, "we need to clamp down on all of this, much harder than we've been doing." That they had to decide: Do we just announce the policy has changed? Do we go back and delete the existing offensive comments and threads? How do we make this announcement so that everyone who reads here sometimes, sees it?
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:24 PM on April 1, 2019 [22 favorites]


It's been interesting watching the rest of Reddit and the gaming community react to this. No one's denying that the awful shit called out by the /r/games mods happen and is awful. Various forms of "oh yeah well people are mean to me online too" or "it's just words, you shouldn't be so sensitive" or "those comments get downvoted so don't mater". But at least no outright denial of the harassment.

The reaction I hate most is "that's just how the Internet is". It's not how the Internet has to be. Gaming communities too. Overwatch and League of Legends both have notoriously toxic player communities because the game publishers and players tolerate it. It's possible to do better.
posted by Nelson at 4:31 PM on April 1, 2019 [31 favorites]


Note that /r/games is different than /r/gaming, which with 21.5 million subscribers is about 12x bigger, and has not done anything along these lines. I don’t want to trivialize this move on /r/games’ part—kudos to them—but I also wouldn’t minimize the uphill battle it would be to even begin detoxifying the larger parts of reddit
posted by churl at 4:54 PM on April 1, 2019 [11 favorites]


But at least no outright denial of the harassment.

I think a lot of the time when people deny that bullying is happening what they're really, implicitly saying is "Nobody will believe you. The people who matter, the people with authority, won't take your side. You and I both know it's happening, but because I matter more than you, I can lie and claim otherwise in public and nobody will stop me."

That stops working when it's people with authority who are calling the bullying out.
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:55 PM on April 1, 2019 [19 favorites]


It's not an April Fool's joke and it is nice to see. I mean, I don't think it will actually make a long term difference but at this point, the mods of a relatively high-profile (within the Reddit ecosystem) sub taking a righteous stance on this kind of toxicity is a refreshing experience.

For the popcorn poppers among us, the drama is nicely catalogued by this post.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:11 PM on April 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


They could start calling April 1st the “I Pity the Fools Day”.
posted by darkstar at 5:14 PM on April 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


I'm an older guy, I've got (what I think is) a pretty decent tolerance for phobic and hateful speech. I clicked on the link listing examples that the r/games moderators provided.

Holy fuck balls, that is some awful shit. I don't think I made it more than 20 posts before I have to stop.
posted by oddman at 5:17 PM on April 1, 2019


How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Good for them. I hope they’re able to raise awareness, even a little bit, across reddit.
posted by disclaimer at 6:03 PM on April 1, 2019 [10 favorites]


I mean, I don't think it will actually make a long term difference but at this point, the mods of a relatively high-profile (within the Reddit ecosystem) sub taking a righteous stance on this kind of toxicity is a refreshing experience.

The toxic dudes on Reddit, as elsewhere in society, tend to quickly drive out anyone who isn't them with their obnoxious and hateful bullshit, then look around the room and declare themselves the majority. Most folks casually checking out some post about Anthem or Overwatch at work don't have the time or inclination to get involved with these sorts of comments, so the bigots' numbers seem larger and voices seem more prominent as a result.

Having the mods give this kind of public pushback is I think exactly what is needed.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:27 PM on April 1, 2019 [24 favorites]


FWIW I was on "civfanatics" the other day (Civ fans seem to usually be a lot chiller of a "community," I think in part because the series attracts those interested in world history) and someone threw something snide about "the social justice warriors" into a thread which, of course, had nothing to do with that at all, and the mods immediately came in with a polite version of "take that shit elsewhere as it's sure as hell not welcome here," which was nice to see. I'm not on r/civ as much but from what I've seen it's definitely a world away from r/games or r/gaming, it seems.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:32 PM on April 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


"those comments get downvoted so don't mater"

That seems to be the consensus on the (just opened) discussion thread.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 9:20 PM on April 1, 2019


oddman: I'm an older guy, I've got (what I think is) a pretty decent tolerance for phobic and hateful speech. I clicked on the link listing examples that the r/games moderators provided.

Since we talked about Joe Rogan the other week I've been thinking about how some people get fixated on a narrow slice of normal gender socialization and take it to the extreme. In this case, you start with the relative desensitization that's expected of men and - I'm guessing? - you decide that you need to train yourself to not react with horror or disgust to anything, no matter how horrific or disgusting it is, and the way to do that is to wallow deeper and deeper in awful shit.

Is this a thing? Is this some kind of mental distortion, like an anorexic looking at their body in the mirror and always seeing someone who's too fat no matter how skinny they are? No matter how desensitized you are can you find something on the Internet which gives you an involuntary disgust reflex, so you look at yourself and see someone who's not desensitized enough, not "manly" enough on that weirdly specific measure you've fixated on?
posted by clawsoon at 4:03 AM on April 2, 2019 [6 favorites]


Discussion thread fairly predictably started with a few people asking why they shut it down, because the mods are good and that keeps the bad comments out of the subreddit.

Except... the mods still see that shit. They are the ones cleaning up the mess. This is their way of making sure everyone else knows the mess exists.

I can’t imagine how much fun it is to have to read that vile crap to see if it needs to be killed, and am eternally thankful that I joined Metafilter instead of Reddit.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:12 AM on April 2, 2019 [4 favorites]


Is this a thing? Is this some kind of mental distortion, like an anorexic looking at their body in the mirror and always seeing someone who's too fat no matter how skinny they are? No matter how desensitized you are can you find something on the Internet which gives you an involuntary disgust reflex, so you look at yourself and see someone who's not desensitized enough, not "manly" enough on that weirdly specific measure you've fixated on?

Mostly I think this is right on — but I think it's not a mental or perceptual distortion, it's accurate perception combined with an especially nasty set of cultural values.

These guys are probably right about how disgusted or bothered they are by things. But they're living in a world where being disgusted or bothered (by anything, ever) means You Lose.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:17 AM on April 2, 2019 [3 favorites]


Except... the mods still see that shit.

Not only the mods. When you create a post, you get ALL the top-level comments in your inbox unless you turn that feature off. When you make a comment, you get ALL the replies to that comment in your inbox unless you turn that feature off.

It's exactly the same as Twitter's harassment problem. If you only remove stuff reactively, the damage is done by the time action is taken.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:32 AM on April 2, 2019 [4 favorites]


I'm a little disappointed that they blacked out the usernames in all those screenshots. Call people out on their bullshit. Publicly.
posted by xedrik at 7:09 AM on April 2, 2019 [2 favorites]


If there ever was a "don't read the comments" moment, this is it. Unless you want to ruin your day, just assume they're horrible and go look at pictures of puppies.
posted by tommasz at 7:26 AM on April 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


"those comments get downvoted so don't mater"

That seems to be the consensus on the (just opened) discussion thread.


This is a super common view on reddit, and I find it really frustrating and depressing. I don't think relying on community downvotes solves the basic problems, and as a reddit mod (for a small gaming-related sub), I've had to interact with the sort of people who do routinely get downvoted, and I'm convinced it really doesn't actually discourage them whatsoever from trolling, harassing people, etc. Basically, in my experience "rely on votes" ends up in effect meaning, "let people say whatever things they want and have that be part of the background noise of the sub", basically serving as an anchor on the window for what counts as a reasonable contribution to the community. Many such people get a kick out of their posts being marked as controversial, feeling as if they are an "oppressed" minority, etc., and in one extreme case I've seen end up coming up with conspiracy theories about how their "enemies" are downvoting them with bots, etc.

Unfortunately I'm not the only (nor longest-standing) mod for this sub and this viewpoint is common among reddit mods as well. (I've been on the verge of quitting being a mod for this sub for months, actually, because I don't think it is possible to effect positive change under this view.)
posted by advil at 7:52 AM on April 2, 2019 [7 favorites]


Yeah, the comment thread now that the shutdown is over is ... basically what I would expect. Which is to say: not encouraging that this will lead anywhere good. Big shock, its a bunch of people complaining and saying there isn't really a problem, as if "sure there's frequently hate speech here but it usually gets removed pretty quickly after it is seen by a half a million people or so, and it's no big deal that the moderators have to wallow in this filth day in and day out" is totally fine and normal.
posted by tocts at 10:58 AM on April 2, 2019 [4 favorites]


"those comments get downvoted so don't mater"
That seems to be the consensus on the (just opened) discussion thread.


It's an interesting variation on "that's not actually abuse/harassment."

Because "comments get downvoted" mean that people coming into the conversation later don't see them; they don't affect the person replied to. It's saying, "it doesn't matter if someone has this in their inbox; the important thing is, someone who looks over this forum, this thread, later, won't be bombarded with this filth. We need to look good for [straight cis white guys] people who visit us later; we don't care if our community attacks the people who are already here."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:10 AM on April 4, 2019 [4 favorites]


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