I don’t know about you, but I just love a good nerd fight. Sometimes just sitting at my computer I’ll imagine certain people on the internet getting into real, physical squabbles and I’ll just start cracking the hell up. How could I not?
So needless to say I laughed heartily to myself reading this Daily Dot piece about the “gangs” of Reddit — ideological squads of redditors that exist to suppress news and information that runs contrary to their belief system.
Often referred to as downvote squads, these groups of users usually build up around shared ideologies. They launch attacks from their home subreddits—the topically themed sections of the social news site where they meet likeminded types and organize. Then they jump around the site and downvote en masse posts or comments with which they disagree.
While the downvote issue has been recognized as a problem for a while, it bubbled to the surface again Monday. According to Donna_Juanita, users of the r/mensrights subreddit have been launching vote sqauds against the r/feminisms subreddit, a forum she moderates.
What goons! The Dot goes on to note that moderators aren’t quite sure what to do. Some have suggested that “ideologically opposed subreddits make a pact to never launch vote squads,” but HAHAHA that will never work. Not in this retarded political climate where anyone who doesn’t think exactly like you do is your mortal enemy. The same sort of thing went on at Digg and it was virtually impossible to stop.
Now, on a totally unrelated note, you should watch this video of a Fox News person in San Diego bite it trying to operate a jetpack, because it is spectacular.
(Pic via)
