a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  4065 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Reddit is for boys, Pinterest is for girls

    (Disclaimer: I'm a reddit 5-year user who's interacted with you through a different account)

How mysterious! ;-)

    From my own perspective, SRS became what it is for a reason.

Had you said "TwoX" I would have agreed with you. SRS, on the other hand, started out that way. It is not, never was, and never has been about women or feminism in any way - it's a bunch of (male) SomethingAwful goons off on a foreign adventure. They're following the Geno playbook to a T. Reddit is nothing more than this year's Second Life.

As a gentle reminder, TrollX, the feminism/feminisms bifurcation, askfeminists and the rest of the women's studies bifurcations are all post SRS, which pretty much makes my point - militarization led to radicalization, led to a total drop in discourse in favor of bomb-throwing. I say that as someone who almost brokered a tripartite non-aggression pact between TwoX, Seduction and Mensrights only to have it annihilated by the advent of SRS.

And yeah - there are people in SRS who have never been to SA. But 90/9/1: the direction, the culture, the behavior is pure false-flag SA tomfoolery. I've had that discussion in PMs with a couple of the Archangelles - maybe even you! ;-)





wiffleaxe  ·  4065 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I've had that discussion in PMs with a couple of the Archangelles - maybe even you! ;-)

Heh, I'm much more innocuous than that.

I agree with the origins of SRSPrime, and I'm familiar with the bifurcations. However, there are several reasons why I believe SRS isn't to blame for the anti-feminist backlash on reddit.

1. Although there is some overlap between /r/mensrights and /r/SRSsucks and /r/antiSRS, the two communities are very different and I perceive the issues that are brought up in MR to be gripes against real-life, specific events (or patterns) rather than against feminism as an idea or a strawman. Mind you, many comments in MR tend to assign blame for these injustices to feminism, but the main topics of conversation are about custody rights, false rape accusations, childhood education, or other real issues that affect men. I don't think - and this is just my idea - that most posters in MR are involved in the meta-reddit communities, nor do they necessarily think that feminism is reflected by SRS. This is in comparison to SRSsucks and AntiSRS, which are obviously created in opposition to SRS and SRS-style "feminism."

My point is that the people who comment in /r/feminism and /r/TwoX and derail discussions cross-post to MR (I check the posting history of folks who seem to be commenting in bad faith), not SRSsucks or AntiSRS. This makes me feel like it's anti-feminists, not "anti-feminist because I don't like SRS"ers that derail conversations. When I see derailing or opposing comments in those women-centric subs, they rarely say "feminism is dumb and you're all bitches," they say, most of the time, "but what about men who are also oppressed?" or questioning the veracity of viewpoints/statistics. If SRS never existed, they would still be going into women-centric subs and arguing for men's rights. MR is a big subreddit with a lot of clout. And their thought leaders - Paul Elam et al - don't give a shit about SRS. They focus on real-life issues, as do the majority of their supporters.

2. I know you insinuated a counterargument in your 90/9/1 comment, but there are 32k subscribers to SRS, not all of whom are goons, and the non-prime subs (SRSwomen, SRSmicroagressions, etc) are so innocuous that I don't think SRSers as a whole (as a userbase, not the mods) honestly believe half the shit they say. And truth be told, there's a reason people keep subscribing to SRS, and it's not because they're all from SomethingAwful.. it's because reddit has real race/gender/GSM/ableism/etc problems.

3. This is entirely anecdotal, but my partner (whom I met on reddit more than two years ago, we live together now) is vocally very anti-SRS, but he says he has never associated SRS with feminism. He's more likely to read MR than /r/feminism. And yet he sees SRS for what it is: an outlier community of angry people. Yes, it's one case, but there are people who are anti-feminists who can nonetheless distinguish the two.

4. I rarely saw SRS mentioned outside meta communities until about half a year ago. Most of reddit had no idea it existed. It's only recently (within the past 6-12 months) that people have begun referencing SRS in popular posts and comments - and even then, the vast majority of redditors have no idea that it exists or what it is.

The point of all this is that you said SRS and LGBT stole the spotlight. I think it's easy to think so when you're involved heavily in meta communities - SRD, SRDB, SRDD, SRS, SRSS, ASRS, SRDX3, SRSB, etcetc - but the ripple effect is negligible outside a core of meta-users, and the people who derail conversations in women-centric spaces would do so even if SRS had never existed, because most of them are not meta-reddit users, and their "leaders" exist in meatspace with real-life concerns.

Yes, I acknowledge that the way SRS is run now is ultimately harmful to the perception of feminism on reddit (although I understand why it is done that way). However, I think the effect it has on the other fem subs is very small, and the invasion of women's spaces would happen without it.

kleinbl00  ·  4064 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    My point is that the people who comment in /r/feminism and /r/TwoX and derail discussions cross-post to MR (I check the posting history of folks who seem to be commenting in bad faith), not SRSsucks or AntiSRS.

And my point is that they've militarized substantially since SRS came about. The isolated shaming that dominates SRS/SRD downvote squads is a new phenomenon; prior to SRS' insistence that the only appropriate way to deal with things you don't like is to mock them in a forum where nobody but you is allowed to talk, there was debate. It was rarely civil but it was, at least, a form of communication. SRS exists solely for derision.

    I don't think SRSers as a whole (as a userbase, not the mods) honestly believe half the shit they say.

Again, as I said - I don't believe they stand behind a single word they say. It's kabuki to them. Kabuki that has succeeded in substantially degrading the discourse of a website where they're ex-pats.

    I rarely saw SRS mentioned outside meta communities until about half a year ago. Most of reddit had no idea it existed.

That's because they focused their wrath on the mods and top commenters, driving many of them away and subduing the rest. You're not someone until you can google "site:somethingawful.com yourusername".

Really, our disagreement is whether Reddit sucks because SRS poisoned it or whether a poisoned Reddit led to SRS. To lay the decline of Reddit at SRS' feet is not my intention; I'm simply pointing out that they're accelerating its decline, and they're doing it by design.