Welcome to my fifth annual Year in Review, in which I chronicle the previous in reddit, circlejerks, and circlebroke. And like the other years, this one was a doozy. So, without further ado, let me present to you...
2018 In Review: A Plateau of Shit
January
The #MeToo movement is still in full swing. The MO for 2018 remains the same, agreeing with anyone who speaks out against the movement and downplaying the actions of people they like.
A redditor takes m’lady out on a date, can’t let go of something minor, and ends up humiliating her in front of the staff. Mods decided that while something bad happened, he didn’t fuck up.
February
Remember Ugandan Knuckles? It was a flavor-of-the-week maymay that was pretty blatantly racist. Redditors decided to shit up /r/uganda, a place where people once had actual discussions about the country where they lived or visited, with their shitty memes.
Black Panther becomes the first major superhero movie with an all-black cast. Redditors open the racist floodgates, then proceed to get pissy about being accused of being racists.
Did you hear? Daddy Musk launched a car into space. This is such a big deal that reddit has to insult anyone critical of the occasion and also compare his struggle to bitcoin for some reason.
Another mass shooting, another song and dance about how of course guns aren’t the problem, idiot. Only this time, an extra helping of vitriol is directed at teenagers!
March
We did it circlebroke! Racist fake-news mill /r/uncensorcednews is permabanned!
Survivors of the Parkland shooting organized a nationwide anti-gun march which is like rage-filled catnip for anti-activist and pro-gun redditors.
April
Another Nazi getting punched in the face, another visit from the Volunteer Nazi Safety Brigade.
As a bonus, the events of previous months produced what it probably the cringiest writing prompt ever devised.
May
Rapper Childish Gambino made an music video for the song “This Is America.” It’s not subtle. White redditors dropped by to “well actually” about how it is a critique of black culture.
If only the powers that be listened to redditors, they could have prevented another school shooting, something that redditors know everything about.
In what is becoming a semi-annual occurrence, another swath of gamers pitched a shitfit about women and minorities appearing in their bideo bames. This time, gamers are so fed up after seeing a woman in the trailer for Battlefield V that they wish the Nazis had won WWII
June
CB mods declare Summerbroke. Is that even any different from regular CB?
Happy LGBTQ Pride Month! The World Health Organization removed being transgender as a mental illness. Reddit can’t be having any of that! (WHO also classified “gaming addiction” as a disorder, so there’s a bonus “gamers rise up” jerk in there too).
When virtually every nation on earth condemned the Trump administration’s policy of family separation, reddit chimed in with the usual cold-heartedness and whataboutism.
Some dipshit literally clamped his balls to a car battery and electrocuted himself in order to win a dumb online argument. Reddit has a new hero.
July
The EU was going to ban memes, or something. Reddit did nothing, and then patted themselves on the back once their may-mays were safe.
The founder of KiA scuttled the sub, disgusted at the cesspit of racism and sexism it had become. It took admins less than half an hour to get it up and running.
August
For much of 2017 and 2018, a certain portion of reddit became enamored with Jordan Peterson, a Canadian college professor who said stuff like “There are only two genders” and “All these pronouns aren’t necessary,” but with more words. Perhaps the biggest laff at the expense of Peterson fandom came from redditors who eat nothing but meat because of Peterson.
Certified conspiracy nut Alex Jones got his dangerously stupid and reactionary podcast pull from all the major carriers. Naturally, redditeurs got super mad about it.
The hacker behind 2014’s “The Fappening” scandal was sentenced to prison for his deeds. Queue up “Uptown Funk,” because for a moment it was 2014 again because redditors were back to victim blaming and downplaying the illegal actions.
Reddit’s favorite stand-up comedian, Louis C.K. performed his first stand-up since his #MeToo fall from grace. Time for some revisionist history!
Gamers are still worked up about Battlefield V. One of them calls the Nazis the quote-unquote “bad guys” of WWII
September
Reddit still hates Black Panther
The G in Gamer stands for genocide because a gaming conference held part of an event specifically for women and non-binary people.
More GamerGenocide: A white video game character might have dark skin in the coming TV adaptation. Literal racism.
More tech-bro drama: Linux developers revamp their Code of Conduct. The techbros of /r/linux can’t possibly be expected to be inclusive and not harass people!
We did it, reddit! An alt-right sub and a hate sub get banned. Later in the month, more shitty subs get quarantined. But what about SRS?
October
Americans of all backgrounds and politics had strong feelings about the Senate confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. On reddit, the feeling was one of a hard-won victory in the face the ever-present threat of false accusations.
A disciple of Daddy Peterson brought his girlfriend to one of the professor’s lectures and she dumped him. WARNING: Hilarious, but possibly fake.
Gamers are trash, more at 11: While the Trump Administration was busy finding new ways to strip trans* people of their civil rights, a game distribution platform used the resistance hashtag in a cruel, ironic way. Naturally, gamers showed more cruelty and cluelessness in response to the ensuing controversy.
November
Midterm elections happened! When a record number of black women are elected, redditors step in to tell you why that’s a bad thing
Gamers are trash, chapter VIII: Nothing much happened in November because everybody was busy playing Red Dead Redemption 2. When a gAmEr posted a video of him attacking a suffragette and feeding the body to hogs, he got banned from youtube. The RDR sub valiantly came to his defense.
Happy Thanksgiving! If you’re a vegan, you can expect redditors dropping into the vegan sub to lecture you about pushing your “nonsense” on “regular folks”...and then get gilded for it.
Freeze Peach in action: In a victory for edgelord Nazi kids everywhere, some edgelord Nazi kinds giving the Nazi salute in a group photo won’t face any repercussions. Reddit rejoices.
December
Reddit still hates Black Panther.
It’s a tale as old as time: Beloved youtuber-gamer descends into the alt-right rabbit hole, says inexcusable stuff on his podcast, disappears for ten months, makes a crappy video, is welcomed back by the youtuber-gamer-watcher community
Speaking of beloved youtube-gamers, PewDiePie and his fans continue to be garbage.
Analysis
I’ve got some bad news, and some good news.
The bad news: 2018 sucked. Being on reddit in 2018 sucked.
The good news: Being on reddit in 2018 sucked about as much as being on reddit in 2017 sucked.
Things didn’t get noticeably worse this year, plus there wasn’t any large scale drama like Ellen Pao stuff or FPH stuff back in 2015 (my, what a long time ago that was). In 2016 and 2017, reddit became a haven for the alt-right and a nerve center for targeted harassment campaigns. In 2018, more of the same shit was happening, but at more or less the same level we were accustomed to. The Nazis and trolls were still in every nook and cranny, but it seems like they ran out of gamers to indoctrinate or new nooks and crannies to invade. Plus, a few notable cesspools got banned or quarantined. The levels of shit just kinda plateaued. Presently, we stand on a giant plateau of shit. There's shit in every direction, as far as the eye can see. Things could have been better, of course. But things probably could have gone even worse. At least we aren't starting up a mountain of shit.
We survived it.
We got used to it.
You know, like a frog gets used to boiling water.
May we all have a safe, happy, healthy, and sane 2019.
Further Reading:
2017 in Review: Reddit’s Reckoning with the Alt-Right
Reddit In Review 2016: As Nasty As They Wanna Be
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