But really, why?

  • JoJo@beehaw.orgEnglish
    91·
    7 days ago
    1. There was an old subreddit called 195, apparently it was the street number of a home of a bunch of friends who all knew eachother and moderated/populated a subreddit together. This subreddit eventually ended after it grew a lot, had a bunch of good vibes, and was a good time.
    2. Someone made 196, the successor to 195, with mostly the same vibes, but was a subreddit in the meandering kind of way, as most subreddits are
    3. With the move off of reddit, people made 196 as a stand-in for “queer friendly good quality shitposting community”, and a few of them exists/existed, and this is one of them
    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      13·
      5 days ago
      1. It was a dorm room number. So whenever people would visit them in the dorm, they had to post something before they left. Then when they moved out of the dorms, the sub went unmoderated. Nazis quickly took over and ran off all of the other posters.
      2. 196 was the successor, made by the people who were tired of the blatant Nazi-posting. They moderated it heavily due to the Nazi bar problem, so it quickly became a haven for left-leaning people, and especially trans people.
      3. With the move off of Reddit, they chose blahaj largely because of the admins; Ada is controversial for being heavy-handed in their moderation, but it’s due to the same aforementioned Nazi bar problem. In a world that is increasingly hostile towards trans people, allowing even the slightest bit of leeway in moderation allows transphobes to take root. So the admin style meshed really well with the way Reddit’s 196 was already moderated.
      4. The moderators for 196@blahaj eventually took a “this sub belongs to us, not the users” stance, and tried to move to lemmy.world instead. Mods said it was to try and consolidate the user bases, but many users suspected it was a power move to give more mod power to .world’s moderators. This was deeply unpopular with a lot of the users, and ended with !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone being created in protest.
      • JoJo@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Thanks, I didn’t know the exact events between 1 and 2, and 3 and 4 is very interesting

      • JoJo@beehaw.orgEnglish
        14·
        6 days ago

        The original rule of the subreddit was that you don’t leave without posting a (random) image in your phone’s photo gallery

        Since you can’t really make a post with no title, the lazy-ish attitude made people just post the picture with just “rule” as the title, as if they’re saying “I’m posting this because of the (sub) rule”

        • JoJo@beehaw.orgEnglish
          5·
          6 days ago

          Imo this (the “post from your photo gallery” thing) created an unusually diverse atmosphere, where (more or less) everything went, and unexpected amounts of vibes were created

          Since most people looking at the sub would probably already be looking at other shitposting places (on or off reddit), and so they’d have the latest freshest memes in their collection, sometimes ones that wouldn’t ordinarily be posted on main meme subreddits

          Of course, after a while, people started converging their posts more and more, turning it into more of an actual themed subreddit, and they started diverging from saying just “rule”, to “XYZ rule”, or incorporating “rule” into a sentence they’d accompany the image with

          Also, a sorta pseudo-conversation, question, or announcement/soapbox atmosphere got created with some of the images, where someone would say or ask something with a meme that you could also ask in the more general minded subreddits (unpopularopinion or askreddit, for example), or just comment on the meta of the sub

        • ɯᴉuoʇuɐ@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          4·
          5 days ago

          posting a (random) image in your phone’s photo gallery

          I always pick my image deliberately, could I be banned for breaking this rule?

    • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      37·
      7 days ago

      and this is one of them

      This particular one exists after the mods of 196 caused drama by moving instances without discussing it with the community.