Can Reddit handle the truth?

So the other day I got an interesting comment from a new fan. And by “fan,” I mean someone who hates my guts. “Casper” makes what he evidently thinks is a devastating indictment of my main modus operandi – that is, quoting misogynist dunderheads, and mocking them.

Clever. You encourage hatred towards men while using their own language to shame them. …

You’re just a hate-mongerer albeit an intelligent and creative one. Hitler would have just loved you

That’s right. I “encourage hatred towards men” by reporting what some dudes actually post on the internet, usually under a fake name that can’t be traced back to them. Pointing out when someone says something shitty evidently makes me as bad as Hitler.  (I should note that I mock specific men, not men in general, and that I also mock specific women with similar opinions.)

Casper also complains that “[e]ven the name of your site is an effort to shame men.” Again, I should point out that the dumb punny title of this blog isn’t directed at all men, merely those who act like misogynist boobs (or, if you prefer, boobz). “Boob” is pretty much the mildest insult I can think of, not to mention one that is a bit archaic; it’s a bit like calling someone a ruffian or a jackanape. Frankly, it’s far too nice a name for many of the people I write about here.

Of course, Casper isn’t the only one who feels that pointing out the offensive crap that people say is somehow equivalent of starting a death camp in your backyard. Take the many critics of ShitRedditSays.

For those who aren’t familiar with the ways of Reddit, ShitRedditSays (or SRS) is a user-created forum (subreddit) on Reddit devoted to pointing out some of the worst, most bigoted and awful crap posted on Reddit that nonetheless gets upvotes and acclaim from Reddit regulars.

The SRS modus operandi may seem a bit familiar to anyone who reads Man Boobz: SRSers find highly upvoted crap on Reddit and post it to their subreddit, where others react with horror and/or laugh about how hilariously awful it is. They don’t send out “downvote brigades” to downvote the crap they link to; they don’t try to track the bigots down in the real world and harass them. No, SRSers post what they find, and they mock.

On a couple of occasions, they’ve gone further. When they discovered that actual child porn was being circulated in Reddit’s “Jailbait” subreddit, a hangout for ephebophile creepers to creep on pictures of underage girls, SRSers spread the word beyond Reddit, and the resulting media attention led to Reddit finally deleting that subreddit.

Problem solved? Not exactly; the creepers merely moved on to any number of other subreddits devoted to the sexualization of underage girls. And so SRS struck again, alerting the media to the fact that Reddit still hosted a forum even creepier than r/jailbait – that is, r/preteen_girls, devoted to sexualized pictures of girls under the age of 13. This time, the Reddit admins moved more quickly, and banned all the subreddits that, in their words, “focus on sexualization of children.”

And apparently the Reddit admins are still pissed off about it. Recently, someone on Reddit leaked the log of a private chat between a Reddit moderator and one of the site’s administrators (that is, someone who actually works at Reddit). (See here and here for more details.)

The admin, known as hueypriest, described SRS’s attempts to get child porn and other material sexualizing children off of Reddit as “kind of like a forrest [sic]  fire,” and grumbled about SRSers and other opponents of child porn sending “frivolous tips” to the FBI:

the fbi is not interested in following up leads of 17 year olds who’s boyfriends post shit on the internet

And evidently neither was Reddit, until SRSers and others revealed what was going on in its sleaziest subreddits to the world.

Again, all SRS did was to point out what was there.

Ever since Reddit’s belated shutdown of what hueypriest euphemistically described as the “questionable” subreddits, there’s a lot of talk on Reddit about how SRS needs to be shut down.

A couple of comments in the SubredditDrama subreddit pretty much sum up the frustrations a lot of us feel towards Reddit’s admins and many of the site’s users. 1338h4x writes:

Subreddits sexualizing kids? Let that slide for 5 years until the public pressure and bad PR is finally too much. Subreddit calling out sexism, bigotry, etc? SHUT IT DOWN RIGHT NOW!

This would just be the ultimate validation of SRS’s message. I dare them to do it.

Matriarchy adds:

Making reddit look bad = the worst thing. Perhaps they should stay on the ball and actually get rid off the terrible shit in advance … you know, that way they don’t look bad by having a policy that tacitly allows child pornography to remain on the website for extended periods of time.

You would think this is a no-brainer. Apparently this is not the case~

Apparently.