By David Futrelle
So I’ve been taking a brief “I can’t stand to look at this shit every single day” hiatus, but the thing about the manosphere is that the news never stops breaking. And the latest no-longer-quite-breaking news is that the Reddit admins have, at long last, banned the Braincels subreddit for violating the site’s newly strengthened rules against harassment and bullying.
The subreddit went down on Monday, along with several dozen other subreddits that also should have been banned a long time ago. According to the folks in the SubredditDrama subreddit, here are a few of the other subreddits that are no longer subredditing as of two days ago. I’ve had to lightly censor some of the names for obvious reasons. See if you can detect any themes here!
Several days before the crackdown, the Reddit admins shut down more than a dozen other racist subreddits with names like
Tellingly, the We_Hate_N*ggers subreddit was banned, not for hate, but because it was abandoned by its mods. “This subreddit was banned due to being unmoderated,” the Reddit admins note in their ban annoucement. “If you’d like to take it over please make a post in /r/redditrequest.”
I should note that the mods took down several subreddits making fun of white people as well, but the worst anti-white slur in any of their titles was “mayo,” which I didn’t even realize was a slur and not just something that goes great on sandwiches.
You may find yourself wondering why Reddit wasn’t already instabanning all subreddits WITH THE N-WORD IN THEIR GODDAMNED TITLES. You may find yourself wondering what sort of “content policy” Reddit was operating under that made all of these subreddits just peachy as of a few days ago.
Needless to say, numerous hateful subreddits remain standing — from r/MGTOW to r/TheRedPill to The_Donald, Reddit’s main hangout for MAGAheads.
The inhabitants of these subreddits, worried that they’ll be next, are making plans to regroup on other sites. And bravely announcing their plans to never shut their pie-holes ever.
“I’m not going anywhere,” declared someone called MaestroLogical in the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit.
They don’t dare unleash us on the masses.
They remove the sanctuary and we’ll simply start espousing our ideals in every thread, in every sub.
Er, how is that any different than what Reddit misogynists do already?
While banning all these subreddits won’t shut up all of the dedicated haters who used to populate them, it will make it harder for them to find one another online — and harder for them to recruit. Reddit’s latest ban extravaganza is a step in the right direction from a site that’s generally marching the wrong way.
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Good riddance. I’m hoping they take the ban hammer to r/The_Donald, r/GenderCritical, and r/TheRedPill next. Those subreddits are pretty awful as well.
One does question why subreddits with racial slurs in the titles got to stick around so long.
When Reddit starts to realize that slurs are hate speech and not free speech, you know the dam is breaking.
Did you catch that they were going to ban TRP and then at the last minute, gave them a reprieve?
Of course, the red pill jackasses are acting like it’s because they’re special snowflakes the admins can’t touch, and not at all because they’re running the risk of getting removed at any time.
I wouldn’t get your hopes up, honestly. I’ve been expecting the Braincels ban for a while now, but I think there’s a line – albeit not always a clear one – between Braincels (and the other banned subreddits) and stuff like r/GenderCritical, r/MGTOW, and r/TheRedPill.
I don’t know: I’m admittedly struggling to articulate the difference myself. I think a lot of it might have to do with how those subreddits tend to express their beliefs as much as the beliefs themselves.
Well that’s a relief. A few less bigoted hangouts is a plus.
I recently googled a plumbing problem. My toilet’s flush button stopped, well, flushing. I was super keen to try to fix it myself. (Cos plumbing is not magic, like electrical issues, and will rarely kill you if you get it wrong.) And I got a result in a subreddit that seemed to be about home repairs. Normally I don’t look at Reddits ever but I thought it was harmless. And I was astonished how quickly the discussion turned RACIST (someone had a rental with people in it of a different race, and was blaming the same plumbing issue on how their tenants, and by extension every other person of that race, lives). So I guess some of these subredditors are already carrying our their dastardly plan to be racist and misogynist in every thread, in every sub? Everywhere.
I knew “mayo” was a slur because I follow the wonderfully entertaining @freeyourmindkid. I mean, I just laugh about it, because I know that the behavior that gets him to call you mayo will never be typed out by my own fingers.
The only redditt I follow is for the Fate RPG. It’s been a hate free reddit as far as I’ve seen but I think that might be due to the publisher of the game being pretty progressive.
You read my mind!
Racist comments pop up on Youtube a lot too. The latest one I remember seeing was sort of funny in its sheer ignorance…
Video: mentions WW2
Commenter: Hey, isn’t it suspicious that the Holocaust is the one thing that isn’t studied or questioned?
…Hasn’t been studied??? Of all things. Go to a fucking library. (And that comment got 4 likes; I weep for humanity.)
Actually I did start crying last month, after I came back from working on a PowerPoint project with my grade 12 tutoring student. She’s doing world history – not my field of study, so I have to look stuff up and take longer than usual – and there were 4 projects in a row on WW2. Which happened years ago, and isn’t directly related to me, and I start crying over a picture I saw.
That’s kind of irrelevant, but I guess my point is that I understand
and it’s not a problem.
It will be interesting to watch how they do without their echo chamber/safe spaces to boost them and confirm all their worst ideas as the troof. I find that most people like this spout off a lot less if there’s a chance it might come back to them later.
@Aaron
I know what you mean. Those subreddits generally aren’t quite as quick to advocate hate crimes and shootings (though that’s not to say they don’t do it), which is part of why Braincels was banned, so I doubt they will be banned soon. I can dream, but I know it’s unlikely.
I don’t understand Reddit’s hatred of intellectuals. Jealousy?
FlyByKiwi: Electricity may have more dramatic failure modes but plumbing has this obnoxious tendency to leak somewhere without you noticing, for years… which can slowly kill you (or cause major property damage).
But yeah, forums everywhere sometimes and totally randomly descend into intense racism.
Iowa-based convenience store chain Casey’s General Store has expanded into my area of Ohio, with 3 stores opening in towns near me in the last 2 years. I love their made-to-order subs, and especially the mayonnaise they use on said subs-it’s sweeter than any other mayo (the condiment) brand I’ve used. Whoever decided to call white people “mayo” as a racial slur has most likely never tasted that Casey’s mayo.
In France and my experience, mayonnaise is supposed to be a solid yellow, like a LEGO character. the whitish one indicate is bad quality industrial one. I guess traditional mayonnaise is a ploy to make caucasian think they are asiatic …
(even if yellow also describe european pretty well actually. I alway have found asiatic to more be tanned than yellow)
@epitome of incomprehensibility:
Saying that the holocaust hasn’t been studied is like saying that vaccines haven’t been studied (which is something I’ve actually seen antivaxxers say). In both cases, it’s because the person saying it can’t find studies saying what they want them to say, and instead of realising that this consensus exists for a good reason, they choose to see it as proof of some big conspiracy.
By the way, does anyone know what those “Jewish power” subs were about? I have a guess (both because of the analogy with “white power” and because it is sort of a rough translation of Otzma Yehudit, the name of the bigot party that thankfully has once again failed to get enough votes to get into the Knesset) but kind of afraid to check if I’m right.
Re: Holocaust research
This is the judgment in the Irving v Lipstat case. It has the distinction of being the only court judgement ever published as a book. It goes into great detail though about the history of holocaust research.
Interestingly, Irving accepted the holocaust was real. His defence was that he’d never claimed otherwise. The judge didn’t believe him; what with all the evidence of him denying the holocaust.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2000/115.html
Irving v. Penguin Books Limited, Deborah E. Lipstat [2000] EWHC QB 115 (11th April, 2000)
We should take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Don’t know if this is on topic or not, but it’s an interesting illustration of one of those ‘hard cases’, where rights conflict.
Judgement today in a case.
36 year old man with autism. Has no understanding of consent. Restrictions imposed prohibiting real word and internet contact with women; except under very limited and supervised circumstances.
First instance case has ruled that’s not permissible. Now off to appeal.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2019/39.html
I’d be interested in any thoughts people have. It’s sort of relevant to something I’m working on.
@Alan Robertshaw
David Irving is just awful. He destroyed pretty much any and all credibility he had as a historian and now goes around preaching about Hitler and attacking Auschwitz survivors. He appears to think that the Holocaust happened, but refuses to acknowledge that Hitler did it deliberately or that the death toll was about 6 million Jews (and millions from other groups as well, including Romani, LGBTQIPAN+ people, disabled people, and political opponents).
Re: the man with autism
I read the beginning of the report and I’m not quite understanding his sanctions. Did he commit a crime and this is punishment? Or is it preemptive?
If it is preemptive and he has not committed any offenses, maybe there is a way to teach him about consent and relationships. I see it as being potentially rather harmful to him to isolate him, and much better for him and the surrounding world if he can learn to safely interact with women. If he is incapable of learning, it may be justifiable to impose restrictions, but first attempts should be made to teach.
@ naglfar
He’s subject to the Mental Capacity Act. So there’s a care package in place to ensure his welfare.
But as the court pointed out; the purpose of the Act is to ensure his welfare; not anyone else’s. And it’s a very light touch regime anyway:
If a person’s mental state means they present a danger to other people then there is a mechanism for restraining their liberty. They are “sectioned” under the Mental Health Act (which is a different act).
However you can only be sectioned if your condition is treatable; and the purpose of the section is to treat, not for public protection per se.
If a person can’t be treated they can’t be detained.
That does mean that there’s nothing that can be done pre-emptively to prevent offending, and that was mentioned in the case. But it’s just one of those areas where there’s an irreconcilable conflict of rights.
They don’t lock people up just because they present a risk; and that was the rationale for the decision here.
We’ve seen Reddit ban a handful of particularly toxic subs before. They’ll be back under a different name and it will be another three or four years before they can those. This is just something Reddit does once in awhile for good PR.
@Penny Psmith
I avoid reddit like the plague, but I would guess that the “Jewish power” subreddits were based around discussing how Jewish folks secretly control everything and how that problem needed to be ‘solved’.
@Catalpa
That’s what I figured as well. It just seemed more likely that it would be yet another antisemitic conspiracy subreddit than a subreddit devoted to an Israeli far right party.
*sigh* Times like this I think back to the halcyon days of youth, where the internet was new and exciting and I think “God, we were all so naive to think there would be grown-ups running the show.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWy1YGNlNEU
Apparently so was Peter Mansbridge.
I mean, I get that the internet was always about “pushing the envelope” of respectability. I used to read Maddox and SomethingAwful and play Newgrounds games with the pollyannish notion that people didn’t actually believe that stuff and it was either satirizing the reactionary mindset or was at worst just some harmless goofs at the expense of bigger people (celebrities, obnoxious advertisements, etc).
It really wasn’t until YouTube that the masks began to slip and content became so prevalent that people began to become more comfortable revealing what they really believe about things. Then monetization came along to just send everything into overdrive.
It’s like all the dumb thinkpieces that came out about the Joker movie. While I have doubt it earned its acclaim, a whole bunch of tut-tutting columnists jockeying for attention went to the “it’s too dangerous to be seen” extreme, effectively making it more difficult to objectively analyze it. Brad Jones the Cinema Snob just released a video sarcastically mocking the idea that the film could influence incels (and even if it does, it’s not the movie’s fault), and I posted a comment saying “I get what you’re saying, but it’s a little harder to be glib about this stuff when one of these very-online misogynists drove over a couple dozen of my fellow Torontonians.”
Of course Todd Phillips came clean and was like “Yeah, I wanted to piss off the SJWs cuz they ruin comedy.” M’kay. Mission accomplished. We now have a movie from a nihilistic misogynist’s point of view. Sadly Anna Marie D’Amico isn’t around to enjoy it, on account of being buried in Prospect Cemetery, to name just one of the fatalities.
*sigh* At least there’s one less place these proverbial clowns can congregate.