You're right. It didn't even have time to find its way into the archive. What a determined lowlife that mod is! Or maybe a bot did it. Oh, well.

I said something about that. [http://archive.is/https://www.reddit.com/r/pettyrevenge/comments/pbepf6/we\_call\_upon\_reddit\_to\_take\_action\_against\_the/hagzp5x/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](http://archive.is/https://www.reddit.com/r/pettyrevenge/comments/pbepf6/we_call_upon_reddit_to_take_action_against_the/hagzp5x/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) We'll see how long my comment stays up, but at least for now, the mods are getting maybe a little more transparency than they wanted.

Nice try. I've seen single posts that got 30 k upvotes, and single accounts with karmas in the hundreds of thousands or higher.

>Somehow I doubt that your very rational reasonings on Christianity’s nutty catch-22 with ETs are going to get a fair shot here. ​ I guess that you're right. I've seen people get slurred in here and been the only person who objected. On a previous occasion, I actually got to watch somebody's report of censorship in a supposedly scientific subreddit get responded to with what was supposed to be a damaging revelation about the OP in that thread: the mere fact of his Jewishness was supposed to discredit him, when he reported an abuse of a moderator's authority in support of a pseudo-scientific theory pushed in one of the subs about the planet Mars. Now, we can see people using downvoting as a tool of censorship on Baxxb, simply because he has said something about the casual use of the ban hammer as a tool of censorship in Walkaway. Not that I know one way or another if that happened, there, but aren't people supposed to be free to talk about such things here? I guess the takeaway from these incidents is that the members of this community are completely hypocritical. They like censorship just fine, as long as it is censorship that favors their own, generally racist ideology. That being the case, I guess I might as well just unsubscribe and give up on these people, and quickly. I think I'll be doing that with Reddit in general, fairly shortly. When the alleged anti-censorship subs keep turning out to really be pro-censorship, that's not a good sign. It's time to get out of here.

Except, of course, I'm not even slightly edgy, nor is anything I posted here. You know what was extremely edgy, though? The blatant racial abuse I saw directed toward a Jewish user, the last time I saw somebody with a binary string as an ID posting in here. Obvious alt is obvious.

>"everyone I dont like is a nazi" ​ That's not even close to what I said, and you know it. ​ >you realize using that word alone, discredits everything you said. ​ I find the fact that you'd go into hysterics over the recognition of how similar an ideology is to Fascism rather telling, and the fact that you'd lie about what I wrote even more so. The word "Nazi" appears not even once in my post. That's an embellishment, by you. But let's say I had used it, and take a look at how your "argument" would fare under examination. Quite obviously, yes, there is such a thing as neo-Naziism and there are going to be ideologies that come close to it. When somebody like you tries to order to not notice that fact, logically there can only one explanation: you don't want me or others to look, because what we would see would prove damaging to those you would support. Neo-Nazis would certainly benefit from not being called out on what they are, at this time, and so would neo-Naziism; an evil that will not be recognized is one that will not be resisted. Your leap to hysteria over the very idea that something could be seen as something akin to neo-Naziism, therefore, is evidence that you, yourself, are a neo-Nazi or something not too far from one. One who, rather amusingly, is resorting to tactics not so far removed from those of his supposed Far Left opposition. That kind of bullying has never worked on me when it has come from the likes of Antifa. It's not going to work coming from you or your friends on the Far Right, either.

I can't believe I put an apostrophe in its. Wishing I could fix that. **Good news:** One of the mods undid the deletion. That was a first. I've never seen that happen on Reddit, before.

Note to anybody late to this thread: r / OmicronCeti posted a personal attack against the OP a few days ago. It stayed up for a few days. Some of us gave him the reply he deserved. I think that the mods for this sub deleted his comments today, because when I go to my profile, I see "comment deleted by moderators" messages where his comments used to be. Or maybe that's just something that gets inserted when a user deletes his own account, as r / O. C. did today? I don't know. Anyhow, just wanted to be clear that I didn't start posting a multi-part monologue for no reason. I was responding to somebody.

**Recent developments:** &#x200B; &#x200B; Going to the former location of his profile, I see that r / OmiconCeti is no longer on Reddit, &#x200B; >[https://archive.is/ezB3G](https://archive.is/ezB3G) <- (archived copy of the "page not found" message at that location) &#x200B; and his posts in the thread written about are no longer visible. One can, however, still find them in context in this archived copy of the whole discussion. [https://archive.is/j9439](https://archive.is/j9439) which is an archived copy of [https://www.reddit.com/r/Areology/comments/l4qi2m/gu66llies\_and\_icerich\_material/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Areology/comments/l4qi2m/gu66llies_and_icerich_material/) &#x200B; The remaining mods on r / Areology have set the mod list to private, for whatever reason, but as one can see by looking at this archived copy of the front page for the sub, r / OmicronCeti was still on the list of moderators as recently as a few hours ago. [https://archive.is/984M2](https://archive.is/984M2) The list of moderators for the sub is in Archive Today, as well [http://archive.is/DlA6s](http://archive.is/DlA6s) where it will stay. There will be no rewriting of history. He was one of the mods on that subreddit, and he did say the things attributed to him. After coming into this discussion in order to threaten to stalk the OP, he deleted his account and ran away. Not a surprise. Bullies tend to be cowards. As do trolls. &#x200B; &#x200B; I can't help but notice while the critical replies to what our runaway mod abuser wrote were blocked quickly, leaving them visible only to me and to the mods on r / Areology, they've continued to be downvoted. This, by itself, would be enough to answer what might be the next question: since the abusive mod has left Reddit in disgrace, am I going to appeal my banning? The answer is "no." The very fact that they'd take the time to downvote a comment that had already removed is a clear sign of malice. I would not get a fair hearing out of them, and for all I know, r / OmicronCeti could have been one of their sock puppets, somebody one of them created so that he could act poorly and not take be blamed for his own actions. The very fact that they tried to give themselves (or himself) plausible deniability by hiding the mod list from view suggests that at least one of the remaining mods would be the kind of person to do a thing like that. No, I think that going back to where drama like this happened is a bad idea, in general. It's not going to be the start of anything good. At best, if one gets back into a place one has been thrown out of, the people running the place are going to be looking for excuses to throw one out again, so they can regain the face they lost. One does well to find joy in the fact of one's exile and move on to better places.

Having deleted my comments, r / O. C. then banned me from his subreddit. He dropped the ban hammer in order to protect his own fraudulent claim of expertise. Indeed, not only do we know that he is not a third year PhD student in Planetology, but from his bullet point rant above, one can tell that he has never been to graduate school in any subject, at all. No graduate student could have ever written this. &#x200B; >B Math grad student (but no publications...) &#x200B; He'd know better. Even the professors, who already have PhDs after they submit articles for publication, will wait and wait to see them get published. That thesis one writes at the end of one's program will be the very first piece of research that a new PhD will have ever had published, and at that, one with a sadly limited circulation: one copy, sitting forlornly in the graduate student lounge, another sitting on the PhD's bookshelf and maybe a few in other locations. Maybe he'll go on to break the work up into pieces that aren't 900 pages long and try to get those pieces into journals so somebody will do something with his work other than balance an iced latte on its cover. What he is almost certainly not going to do, outside of anywhere other than an undergraduate student's fantasy world, is show up in the literature, himself, before he graduates, because no committee would look at his work. There are too many articles from people with already granted degrees waiting to be looked at for a work by a graduate student to even be considered, unless he has somebody really powerful pushing for him. We've all written term papers like anybody else, of course, but who would publish one of those? My papers sit where any graduate student's papers would sit, and where I assume u / the\_very\_least keeps his: in a locked filing cabinet, waiting for the day after my thesis defense. Where else would they be, other than in a desk drawer? &#x200B; &#x200B; While r / O. C.'s use of the ban hammer was certainly unethical, given that he was using it to protect the illusion that he carried credentials that he demonstrably did not, I gave it no more thought until a few days ago. While it was wrong, that kind of wrong has become commonplace. Fake scientists on the Internet seem to be about as common as fake CIA agents are in some bars. If I were to chase them all down and expose each one, I'd have no time to do anything else. While I'm certainly annoyed by the impostors, as I should be, I do the only thing one really should do in most cases. I block them and forget about them, embracing the inevitability of the chaff driving out the wheat on social media. I deal with the idiots by refusing to grant them the battleground they desire. I leave them talking to themselves. My thought is that the more people who do that, the more blatantly stupid a lot of these fora will become, so blatantly so that eventually almost everybody will pick up on this and the cranks won't be able to fool anybody, any more. I think it's a good approach, one that certainly does a lot to keep my blood pressure and stress levels down, and reduces the amount of time I have wasted by drama. It's one that I pursued with some seeming success in O.C.'s case that until very recently, I had forgotten who he was. But then u / the\_very\_least sent me a PM a few days ago, asking me to get involved. I said no. He then told me that r / O. C. was trying to get us both "thrown off of Reddit on a trumped up charge" and had tried to get u / the\_very\_least swatted, if I understood correctly. That got my interest. I was about to leave Reddit, anyway, and probably will fairly soon (after I get around to giving away one of my subreddits and do a few final chores). But I can't laugh off a swatting. That would be psychotic, even as a response to a real provocation, and nothing either of us did would qualify as such in the eyes of any but the most disturbed individual. Going to u / the\_very\_least's 15 day old profile, I was able to find his one and only contribution to r / O. C.'s group, which I just archived. &#x200B; [https://www.reddit.com/r/Areology/comments/l4qi2m/gullies\_and\_icerich\_material/gpchg8j/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Areology/comments/l4qi2m/gullies_and_icerich_material/gpchg8j/) &#x200B; In response to O.C.'s claim that only organisms with bones in them can leave fossils behind, he points out that insects, jellyfish and plants, none of which have bones, can all be found in the fossil record, and provides links supporting this claim. O.C.'s response to this, unless I've greatly misunderstood, was to try to get TVL's head blown off of his shoulders. Am I next? Probably not, because I've never used my real name online or said much about my background. Still, the thought that somebody would want to do a thing like that is sobering. Somehow, I get the feeling that we're drifting off into Elliot Rodger territory on this one. Instead of having this violent reaction to an unmet sense of sexual entitlement, a la Elliott, O.C. would seem to be having one to an unmet sense of entitlement to prestige. In its own way, it's just as creepy. I think that any reasonable person can see why I'm bringing my involvement with the Internet to any end. Who needs this? &#x200B; **Added Note:** For obvious reasons, I'm about to block the mod in question. The obvious reason being "oh, holy fu ..."

(continuing from above) &#x200B; He replied with some more copypasta &#x200B; >Ad hominem aside, let me lay this out more clearly for you: > >First, the surface of Mars has not changed radically over the last few billion years. The Amazonian had some glacial/periglacial activity along the dichotomy most notably, some very limited fluvial activity, and lava. That covers the last 3 billion years. The 'wet Mars' period covers the \~700 million years before that. The surface of Mars has been well-preserved since then: we can still see the effects of the flooding during this Hesperian period. > >You will not find bone on Mars. Without bone, you do not get mineral replacement which is what you're talking about re: fossils being rock. > >If we do any preserved biosignature, it will be be trace or microbial, and any microbes you could feasibly dig to will need to be near the surface. Solar and cosmogenic radiation destroy organic molecules after prolonged exposure at the Martian surface, so fresh outcrops (<100ma) are the best place to look. This is why Jezero crater was selected for the 2020 rover. > >See these papers for more details: > >Nicolas Mangold, Gilles Dromart, Veronique Ansan, Francesco Salese, Maarten G. Kleinhans, Marion Massé, Cathy Quantin-Nataf, and Kathryn M. Stack. *Astrobiology*. Aug 020.994-1013. [http://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2019.2132](http://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2019.2132) > >Roger E. Summons, Jan P. Amend, David Bish, Roger Buick, George D. Cody, David J. Des Marais, Gilles Dromart, Jennifer L. Eigenbrode, Andrew H. Knoll, and Dawn Y. Sumner. *Astrobiology*. Mar 2011.157-181. [http://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2010.0506](http://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2010.0506) &#x200B; and then deleted my reply. While I am, of course, not a planetologist, one doesn't have to be in a field to spot a phony. This &#x200B; >First, the surface of Mars has not changed radically over the last few billion years. &#x200B; was a controversial statement. Is it the controversial statement on this topic that is best supported by the currently available evidence? I wouldn't pretend to know, but I could see for myself that some people with some very solid credentials disagreed with what O.C. had to say. Also, that O.C. thought that fossils were organisms living inside of solid rock. In fact, not only did he not back off from that ridiculous assertion, he doubled down on it in this passage from the last long quote above. &#x200B; >Solar and cosmogenic radiation destroy organic molecules after prolonged exposure at the Martian surface &#x200B; It was almost too much for me to take. I gave him the reply he deserved. &#x200B; >To say that somebody is being impossibly thick when he is being impossibly thick is not an "ad hominem," it's just the unflattering truth. The fact that you would misuse such a basic term would suggest that you have, in fact, never been to graduate school. > >I never claimed that living organisms of any sort were going to be found on the surface of Mars. Somebody asked about *fossils*, you simpleton. Do you know what a fossil is? > > > > > > > >By the way, I really am what I claim to be, and having written more than a few bibliographies along the way, I find the fact that you cite all of your sources from the same journal to be rather revealing. That's the sort of "scholarship" one expects to see somebody pick up over on a site like Wikipedia. Actual academics, before the Covid madness struck, tended to go into these places called "departmental libraries," where there would be a number of publications for them to look at and follow. > >Publications they'd remember, even after the libraries were closed down. > >They'd also know better than to think of a journal cite as a club to beat somebody over the head with. That might impress the rubes, but published papers have drawn conclusions that have gone on to be rejected by their research communities, more than infrequently. No PhD student would ever treat an article in one of them as holy scripture. He'd know better. &#x200B; If anything, I was being too gentle with r / OmicronCeti. Even in high school, no teacher would have let me get away with the act of submitting a paper in which the bibliography consisted of cites from just one source. The absolute minimum for our little baby high school projects was five, and in a real research paper, the list will be far longer. This is not because the researcher is showing off, this is because the researcher knows that individual sources can be bad ones, and because even in peer reviewed publishing, referees carry biases and make mistakes. A conscientious researcher will do a survey of the literature, not take the first source he finds on faith, treating it as if it were holy scripture. Yet, this is precisely what one can watch r / OmicronCeti doing. See for yourself - he keeps quoting Astrobiology, as if no other journal existed. This isn't scientists as scientists do it. This is science as the readers of science fiction imagine scientists do it. It's the sort of "science" one would see out of somebody who wanted the prestige of being a PhD without having to do the work to get one, which is to say the kind of "scientist" one finds on Reddit and social media far too often.

If anybody was wondering what triggered r / OmicronCeti, it was a pair of comments I posted to his group, which O.C. then deleted. Short form: He didn't know what a fossil was, looked foolish and got massively butthurt. In “[Gullies and Ice-Rich Material](https://www.reddit.com/r/Areology/comments/l4qi2m/gullies_and_icerich_material/)”, u / By-Tor\_ asked &#x200B; > Is it possible we can find fossils on Mars or is that completely ruled out? &#x200B; A real scientist would be reluctant to completely rule something out. Reluctance does not mean flat refusal. Just this morning, I completely ruled out the validity of somebody's bizarre claim that wind power would be a good source of energy on Mars, but in that case, I stood on solid theoretical ground. E= (1/2) m v \^ 2 (the formula for kinetic energy at sub-relativistic speeds) (\*) has stood up to centuries worth of experimental testing, and the thinness of the Martian atmosphere has been well established and quantified, as has the frequency with which various windspeeds are seen. In this case, as I explained, the ground was not so solid and really, no competent, honest scientist could have quarreled with this. &#x200B; > [https://www.reddit.com/r/Areology/comments/l4qi2m/gullies\_and\_icerich\_material/gktsckp/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Areology/comments/l4qi2m/gullies_and_icerich_material/gktsckp/) > > > >"Is it possible we can find fossils on Mars or is that completely ruled out?" > >Can't imagine why it would be. I hear there is evidence for flowing water on Mars as recently as a billion years ago > >[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaav7710](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaav7710) > >which would have given life a long time to evolve. None of the probes have had the ability to dig very deeply into Mars, and fossils are usually found underground. Also, rovers move slowly, and only a small portion of the surface has been covered, so even if small fossils were present on the surface, would we have been likely to find them, by now? > >Really, until a thorough exploration of the surface is done, I don't think the possibility of fossils being found can be ruled out. &#x200B; Simple enough? Until we look, we don't know and nobody has really looked, yet, because the tools for looking don't exist, yet. There are no people on-site doing field work and there never have been, so any firm statements about what did or did not evolve on Mars before it died would be highly premature, the kind of statement that anybody who has been in a real graduate program knows not to make. So, of course, r / OmicronCeti went there, writing &#x200B; >It all depends on what you mean by fossil (see my response above). > >Further, the radiation on Mars will essentially sanitize the top few meters of Martian soil so finding microbes preserved in rock near the surface is nigh impossible. &#x200B; God help us all, this person who claimed to be a PhD student in Planetology (off-world Geology) thought that's what a fossil was - a living organism that somehow survived while embedded in solid rock. In short order, I could see what I was dealing with - a poster of copypasta. I replied, writing the first of the comments which O.C. has since deleted. It wasn't diplomatic, but then, it shouldn't have been. O.C. was engaging in academic fraud, passing himself off as something he was not. This is what I wrote: &#x200B; >You claim to be a third year PhD student, yet you make this remarkable comment that suggests that you don't even know what a fossil is. Were you under the impression that the natural history museums had found actual, living non-therapod dinosaurs, and put them on display? If so, sorry to disappoint, but fossils are made out of lifeless rock. Ask a paleontologist to explain that to you or maybe my six year old cousin, if he isn't too busy. He has a collection. Radiation isn't going to do much to kill that which wasn't alive, to begin with. > >The environment of Mars has changed radically over the last few billion years. If you're going to try to argue that we can be sure that multicellular life never evolved on Mars based on present day conditions, that's not really a rational argument. &#x200B; (continues) &#x200B; (\*) Technically, that's really (1/2) m v ·v, where · is the "dot" or scalar product, because v is a vector, but close enough.

As for the first link in this &#x200B; > F [Cries like a baby on /r/RedditCensors](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensors/comments/kpd1hf/the_forbidden_prompt_wp_turns_out_that_there_was/), and [elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/banned/comments/krbdce/banned_from_ranimalsonreddit_for_engaging_in/) &#x200B; is there really a need to cut and paste a discussion in this subreddit into another discussion in this same subreddit? &#x200B; **Title** (yes, this is really the title): *"The Forbidden Prompt : \[WP\] Turns out that there was never really a plague spreading across the Earth. You just thought there was, because you died at the start of the year, and have been in Hell ever since. Hell, as it turns out, greatly resembles your homeland. In most ways. At least at first."* &#x200B; **Text:** *"When I would post this, elsewhere, I would add* &#x200B; &#x200B; >*The idea of the prompt is that at first, the protagonist didn't know he was dead, because his afterlife looked so much like his old life, complete with convincing imitations of some of the people he knew. But, bit by bit, he finds that something is not quite right.* &#x200B; *It's a writer's prompt, something that a writer in a subreddit is invited to use as the premise for a short story. One might imagine one wouldn't see a lot of censorship in a fiction subreddit, because why would there be? None of what is happening in any of these stories is supposed to be real. Yet, so far, this prompt has been removed from r / fantasywriters and r / WritingPrompts. Two subreddits in a row proved willing to censor this prompt.* *I've been on a number of sites, some of which were infamous for their censorious mods, but censoring fiction? I've never seen that happen, before, and on Reddit, it is happening repeatedly."* &#x200B; &#x200B; If anybody wants to see the rest of that discussion, he can find it at [https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensors/comments/kpd1hf/the\_forbidden\_prompt\_wp\_turns\_out\_that\_there\_was/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensors/comments/kpd1hf/the_forbidden_prompt_wp_turns_out_that_there_was/) but there's a good chance that somebody in this group has already seen it. About the only new material in it is this answer I gave nine days ago [https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensors/comments/kpd1hf/the\_forbidden\_prompt\_wp\_turns\_out\_that\_there\_was/gq0dmpt/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensors/comments/kpd1hf/the_forbidden_prompt_wp_turns_out_that_there_was/gq0dmpt/) to a question that u / KanataWaltz had asked four days earlier. While the tone of that earlier discussion wasn't as light as the one over on r/banned, to refer to sober criticism as "crying" is a bit much. I don't think there's going to be any serious disagreement about that. &#x200B; > Another alt. Happens to be the twitter [/u/the\_very\_least](https://www.reddit.com/u/the_very_least/) linked to... (AKA u/_waterscapes_ and u/writing_fiction as well!) &#x200B; u/the_very_least links to [twitter.com/minimal\_arts](https://twitter.com/minimal_arts), not to [twitter.com/\_waterscapes\_](https://twitter.com/_waterscapes_). Unless you meant to say that he was u / \_waterscapes\_ on Reddit, in which case you run into a problem: Reddit has never had any such user. Going to this page in Archive Today [https://archive.is/OC2Bb](https://archive.is/OC2Bb) one finds a "page not found" error message, not a notice that the account was deleted. As for [https://twitter.com/writing\_fiction](https://twitter.com/writing_fiction), it belongs to one "Vincent Anderson (and has ever since November of 2011). That's not my name, and it's the name on u/the_very_least's blog. &#x200B; You never get tired of lying, do you Omicron?

As anybody can see by following that link, the bot said this: >Sorry, but your comment has been removed because it contains a username mention and those are considered harassment by reddit. We know how stupid it sounds. The admins create the feature for everyone to use and then make us censor people who use it. But that's how it works around here now. > >*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please* [*contact the moderators of this subreddit*](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/banned) *if you have any questions or concerns.* &#x200B; making this &#x200B; >H Refuses to use /r/ or /u/ correctly in writing &#x200B; not just douche-y, but super-douche-y. Or would that be uber-douche-y? Sorry, just not completely sure what kind of feminine hygiene product u/OmicronCeti is. Reddit has set a policy, and it's a goofy policy, but it's their site so the policy gets enforced and some of us are in the habit of following it. As for this >[Cries like a baby on /r/RedditCensors](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensors/comments/kpd1hf/the_forbidden_prompt_wp_turns_out_that_there_was/), and [elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/banned/comments/krbdce/banned_from_ranimalsonreddit_for_engaging_in/) &#x200B; let's be serious. You've all see the comment I just cut and pasted from r/banned, the one that u/OmicronCeti linked to. Am I crying or am I LMAO?

**Title:** "Banned from r/AnimalsOnReddit for engaging in verbal violence against chickens!" **Url:** [https://www.reddit.com/r/banned/comments/krbdce/banned\_from\_ranimalsonreddit\_for\_engaging\_in/](https://www.reddit.com/r/banned/comments/krbdce/banned_from_ranimalsonreddit_for_engaging_in/) **Date and Time:** Like I'd know that. &#x200B; **The Post:** I went into [this stream](https://np.reddit.com/rpan/r/AnimalsOnReddit/kr4qxd) on r / AnimalsOnReddit, toward the end, about five hours ago. Somebody had his pet chickens out, and a few of us joked about what we were going to have for dinner, and shared [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL4b0Pc1xIs). The stream quickly ended, because of technical problems we thought. But apparently, we were wrong, and we were on report. Two hours ago, I was sent a message by the anonymous mods of that subreddit. &#x200B; &#x200B; >You have been permanently banned from participating in r / AnimalsOnReddit. You can still view and subscribe to r / AnimalsOnReddit, but you won't be able to post or comment. > >Note from the moderators: > >[This comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/AnimalsOnReddit/comments/kr4qxd/watching_chickies_day_202/gi7l725/?context=9) may have fully or partially contributed to your ban: > >.. > >.. > >***frogisthebest:*** *oh cute* > >***bear-in-exile:*** *They're going to get slaughtered at the end of the stream.* > >.. > >.. > >If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team for r / AnimalsOnReddit by replying to this message. > >Reminder from the Reddit staff: If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole. &#x200B; It's like improv. You just had to be there at the time. After I got done catching up on some missing sleep, I woke up, saw the message, and had no trouble crafting a to-the-point response. &#x200B; >Got it. You have no sense of humor. You can't understand the difference between a joke and a serious statement. > >Thank you for banning me so quickly, then. Your group was going to be a joyless experience, if that's how it's run. &#x200B; Less than a minute later, the anonymous mod tried to put me in my place, by telling me that he wouldn't let me back into a group that, at that point, I had no desire to be in. After I told him that much. &#x200B; >To quote Rule #2 of our subreddit: > >*No animal cruelty* > >*No violence against animals (physical or verbal). This includes (but is not limited to)comments and jokes about harming or eating the animal.* > >*All instances of animal cruelty will result in a permanent ban.* > >This rule is posted via automod on every stream for viewers to see. It is incredibly rude to make jokes like that to streamers, your ban will remain. &#x200B; I could have left it alone, but this was lolcow gold. 54 minutes ago, I wrote back. &#x200B; >Which part of "I'm more than happy to leave your sorry excuse for a subreddit" are you having trouble understanding? > >I didn't notice that rule coming in, but if I had, I would have left the group instantly, because that rule is insane, and only lunatics establish insane rules. Even if the chickens could somehow see the stream, how would they be harmed by the sight? Are you under the impression that chickens can read, and be traumatized by what they're seeing? > >For verbal violence to be violence, it has to have an impact on the victim. They're chickens. They're not literate. Really. > >I swear to you that I'm not making this up. &#x200B; Maybe I shouldn't tell him what I'm having for dinner, tonight? A little red wine, some tomatoes and mushrooms - Clucky will not have died for naught. So, sort of suspecting what had happened, I went back to the livestream, went to the profile of the person who posted it, and what do you know, interesting coincidence, he was a mod for that subreddit. One who was so traumatized by the fact that I posted the word "burp!" after somebody asked where the chickens had gone that he shut down the stream, immediately. If I sound like I'm asking this group for help, believe me, I'm not, because I don't think I'm the one who needs it. I'm LMAO. I was going to link to a video of Dana Carvey doing the least convincing Chinese accent in history, as he sang &#x200B; >"Somewhere, there's a place for us, peck my cheek and I'm halfway there ..." &#x200B; but, of course, that video has recently been taken down for being "offensive." Said video having offended people on the same sites where one can find people celebrating the Holocaust (this is not a joke) and saying that if one doesn't enjoy watching old people get sick and die, that one hates America, with almost nobody objecting to either. But asking whether a chicken is a braiser or a roaster, or linking to a video in which an actor played a non-Anglo-Saxon character is a step too far? Really? Ever get the feeling that the inmates have taken over the asylum? &#x200B; &#x200B; &#x200B; &#x200B; It was absurd, but was it fair? I'm going to firmly say "no." Let's take at the rule quoted &#x200B; >**2. No animal cruelty** > >No violence against animals (physical or verbal). This includes (but is not limited to) comments and jokes about harming or eating the animal. > >All instances of animal cruelty will result in a permanent ban. &#x200B; and remember that until the specific rule is clicked on, all that is seen is the top line. Let us use our common sense (and yes, there is such a thing). Jokes about having chicken for dinner are not a form of animal cruelty for reasons given above, and because that term has a meaning established my common usage. For the mod to post a misleading summary of a rule in clear view and then take action against users who violate it is for the mod to turn his sub into a minefield. The bot notice the mod alludes to showed up in the stream *after* we had been posting our jokes. Obviously, mods should not be hiding things in the fine print, just so they can play cat and mouse games with their members. The reason I'm putting this out for your amusement, rather than asking you for your help, is that while this was unfair, I'm feeling pretty zen about it. His loss. 🤷 If you feel harmed by the wrong done to you, I'm not dismissing your concern, but I think that it's healthy for us to remind ourselves that the mods need us a lot more than we need them. If that realization leaves you feeling more relaxed, nothing wrong with that, right? &#x200B; (end of post) &#x200B; A few comments followed, including these: &#x200B; **u / TheWalkingBag ;** *"Oh god, the animals are becoming self aware"* **Me:** *"They're coming for you. I just saw a capon walking down the street with a scalpel, saying "I wonder how plump and succulent The Walking Bag will get after this."* *You might want to bolt your door.* *By the way, I think Automoderator is in on it. He keeps taking down my warnings."* &#x200B; as, in fact, it had, but for reasons that were more annoying than sinister. [https://www.reddit.com/r/banned/comments/krbdce/banned\_from\_ranimalsonreddit\_for\_engaging\_in/gi98cvt/](https://www.reddit.com/r/banned/comments/krbdce/banned_from_ranimalsonreddit_for_engaging_in/gi98cvt/) &#x200B; \[continued\]

I think we can compress this. Basically, what you're saying is this: "Ya know, u / the\_very\_least is a Jew and a mathematician, and u / bear-in-exile is a mathematician who doesn't like Nazis and they both live in Chicago, so there ya go, they're the same person." Sounds really stupid when I put it that way, doesn't it? You spread that minimal excuse for an argument out into a series of bullet points, but that's really about all that you said, u / OmicronCeti. &#x200B; >[Cries like a baby on /r/RedditCensors](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditCensors/comments/kpd1hf/the_forbidden_prompt_wp_turns_out_that_there_was/), and [elsewhere](https://www.reddit.com/r/banned/comments/krbdce/banned_from_ranimalsonreddit_for_engaging_in/) &#x200B; Let's squash this. My apologies to the people following me and to the membership of this subreddit, but I'm going to cut and paste that post from "elsewhere."

>I don't mean to bother you, &#x200B; Not a bother, at all. &#x200B; > but I have some questions about your fiction, like what if the character doesn't believe they died? &#x200B; That's part of the idea of the prompt - at first, the character thinks he's still alive. He thinks he has survived the incident that killed him, because his surroundings down in the underworld have been molded to exactly resemble the place he was in when he died. His transition between life and death was unpleasant, but seamless. Thus the horror he experiences in the illusion of his continuing life as he watches a plague sweep over what he thinks is the world. If he knew he was dead, how much could he fear his death, or the deaths of those he cared about? His friends and loved ones either aren't there at all, or, if they are there, are as dead as he is, and so not really at risk. I pictured his tormenters torturing him psychologically, at least at first, instead of throwing him into a flaming pit and prodding him with pitchforks, because they could get him to experience more misery that way. A real living man in a real flaming pit could not truly rise above the pain, because the pain would represent something real: the destruction of flesh that he could not replace. But a disembodied soul can experience nothing but sensations, sensations that are nothing more than illusions, because it has no body to be touched by the environment it senses. It can aspire to a truly stoic detachment from suffering, because there is nothing really at stake for it, any more. Illusions can be ignored. The spirits troubling him know this, and worry about it, because if in spirit he detaches from their torments, they will lose their power over him. &#x200B; > another question, if they lived their life trying to improve the world, if they still found them self in said world, would they not continue such? &#x200B; I suppose he (or she) would. A seamless transition to a new life would have no reason to be a transformative one. Or would it? As far as the character is concerned, relatively little has happened. He thinks (at first) that he has escaped a narrow brush with death. This is cause for relief, maybe for rethinking some of one's bad choices in life, But unless the brush with death was one that hinted at betrayal, why would it inspire cruelty in a kind man? Unless he wasn't really kind, at all. The question is, why is he in Hell? Perhaps at his core he is a dreadful person who deserves no better than what he is now experiencing, somebody who merely pretended to more decent than he really was in order to win the approval and support of others, one who was emboldened by his imagined good fortune and came to feel invincible. Or perhaps he is a genuinely good man who has the bad fortune to live in an unjust universe under the rule of a cruel god? I have to leave at least a little vagueness, if not more, because a writer's prompt isn't a story, it's an invitation to write a story. I have to leave some things up to the person responding, give them some choices to make. &#x200B; > I have heard of many beliefs relating the world as an illusion or merely a "test" and I believe it is worthwhile to always test ones reality, &#x200B; Maya, in Hinduism? If I remember that word correctly? I suppose that one could assume that the world the protagonist left behind worked that way. Another of the unsettled questions left by the prompt is whether or not there is hope to be found in Hell. Can one escape it through spiritual growth, or is it a very Western, punitive sort of Hell that exists only for the sake of retribution, not for the sake of any sort of reform or rehabilitation of the soul? If our protagonist sees through the illusion of his pain, should he find himself in that hypothetical flaming pit, will he gain any sort of real freedom, or will his memories be wiped away, leaving him to be freshly tortured anew? &#x200B; > slipping in and out of different phases interests me. &#x200B; You could certainly write a story about that.

The name does sound familiar, but I can't place him. Maybe that's for the best.

Who am I? Who the fuck are you, other than some loudmouthed half-wit whose pride and joy is a karma score he was able to run that high, because he has no life outside of the Internet? I argue so "intently" over this because I'm watching you act like a bigoted asshole, treating somebody else like dirt, and I have the decency to object.

Whether you care to admit it or not, the accusation has been more than substantiated. &#x200B; >At no point has the OP reached out to the rest of the moderation team via modmail or through the pinned thread for feedback. > >I don't think their point needs to be addressed at all. &#x200B; \^ But good job with that non sequitur. You really have nothing happening mentally at all, do you?

I just saw your edit. Yes, riffic, I am calling you an anti-Semite. I'll stand by that, and wonder out loud if you really think that you're fooling anybody when you pretend that you're not. I also notice that you shut down the discussion in r/Twitter in order to give yourself [the last word](https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitter/comments/lmzfja/one_of_the_latest_scary_scary_accounts_to_get/gnyk9qf/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), so I'll post my reply to you, here. &#x200B; >I'm a system administrator. Heuristics while it may be a fancy word to you, is just [another day to day word to those writing spam filters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem). > >get a fucking grip. &#x200B; &#x200B; LOL. That's your bragging point? You design spam filters? Those things that are famous for not working? You might as well have bragged about your mastery of the art of snake oil distillation. Great job failing to address [the OP's point](https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitter/comments/lmzfja/one_of_the_latest_scary_scary_accounts_to_get/gnyjsp1/), by the way.

This absolutely is censorship, with a side order of strawmanning. Whether talking about the bigotry of Twitter's staff will get them to back off from their bigotry is irrelevant. The subject merits comment and has merited it, for some time. How interesting that you want to resort to procedural gameplaying in order to shut down that discussion before it ever has a chance to start.

>Obviously it's because this invites a story arc to some of those in hell who died in November 2016. &#x200B; Really, it doesn't. Again, a plague doesn't have to be Covid-19. If it did, Medieval history would look a lot different, and Native Americans would be a lot less scarce. Sigh.

In the case of r / fantasywriters, no reason was given. I'd send in a request for clarification, but on Reddit I've found that no matter how politely I phrase such a request, the mods of a subreddit will reply to it in the same way, in almost all cases: with an instant, permanent banning. Those seem to be in fashion on this site. In the case of r / WritingPrompts, I was told "No prompts referencing real world drama (including politics, recent tragedies)." so I guess the Black Death must have been recent. Who knew? 🙄

>'Except that I really shouldn't have to do any such thing. First of all, because I didn't mention Covid in the prompt. This is not open to debate. It's simply an objective fact." > >Dude, are you serious? &#x200B; Yes. The question I put to u/girlwithswords could be asked here, as well: "Back in the Middle Ages, when people died from the plague, how many of them died from Covid-19?" The answer to that question, of course, is "none." Despite your willful ignorance to the contrary, there most certainly were (and still are) plagues that are not Covid-19. &#x200B; >It doesn't take a PHD student to read into your prompt to figure out it is about covid. &#x200B; In other words, you're supporting censorship based on what you believe to be your ability to read minds, and psychically know that I dissented from the official party line on Covid? There are so many different layers of wrongness in that, but I've already addressed those subjects. &#x200B; >You are fooling yourself. &#x200B; I don't know the meaning of my own words, so you're going to explain them to me? Fascinating. Nothing totalitarian about that, at all. 🙄 &#x200B; >Out of all circumstances to choose when to act like a victim and you choose this one? &#x200B; Yes, this one. Censorship matters. If we're at the point at which one literally isn't free to write a piece of fiction if it is perceived as hinting at something that goes against the party line, then how much freedom is really left? If I'm not going to push back, now, when would I push back? What tiny scrap of freedom am I allowed to stand up and fight for? &#x200B; >Writing paragraphs on paragraphs &#x200B; I was wondering how long the whining about tl;dr would take to make an appearance. Your limited attention span is your problem to deal with. &#x200B; >about censorship in the Soviet bloc just because of a mediocre story prompt that was deleted? &#x200B; So "mediocre" that you were left feeling personally threatened by it? There was nothing subtle about the hysteria in your comments. &#x200B; >Get over yourself. &#x200B; You say, as you put your sense of entitlement on display. &#x200B; >You are more so a victim of your own bad taste than censorship. &#x200B; "Bad taste"? Is that what political incorrectness is being called these days? How very entitled of you. This is where I block you, because you're acting like an abusive lunatic. Not that this is unusual on Reddit, but it adds nothing to my day. No, you are not being censored by this, to respond to your next pre-scripted point. You're free to go on ranting and raving like a maniac, because you just know (damn it, know!) that I posted that story prompt as an expression of dissent with something you believed, and others will be free to listen to your nonsense, if they wish. I just won't be one of them. See the difference between what I'm doing and what those mods did? No? Well, that's your problem.

>You could reword it so that it doesn't sound, at first glance, as if you might be claiming covid isn't real. &#x200B; Except that I really shouldn't have to do any such thing. First of all, because I didn't mention Covid in the prompt. This is not open to debate. It's simply an objective fact. Secondly, because the standard of literary propriety that you propose is one that would have been considered extreme and insane even by the standards of the old Eastern bloc. Even during the worst days of communist rule, Ijon Tichy could go wherever he wanted in the Universe, even if, as one read between the lines, one might have suspected that Stanisław Lem was not entirely pro-Soviet or pro-Warsaw Pact. When the mods are literally being more censorious than Stalin or any of his puppets, they're going too far. No, I should not have to reword my writer's prompt to avoid the danger of somebody believing that I had engaged in wrongthink on the subject of Covid. That's ridiculous. Aside from the objective fact that you're reading things into the prompt that aren't there, one has the whole horrible idea of an attempt to enforce a politically motivated orthodoxy on a scientific question. Again, while some would compare this idea to something Soviet, I would have to push back against that, at least a little. Post-Stalin, Lysenko got abandoned, so in fact, your position would have been considered too totalitarian for the Soviet Union, from the time of Khrushchev onwards. In this case, what the Russians would have rejected, even before freedom found its way into Russia, wouldn't have even been the idea of reacting severely to the perception of a literary allusion to dissent in scientific matters, but that of doing so in response to direct, openly expressed dissent, done in no uncertain terms. When you're literally going too far for a hard liner like Andropov, and still claim to be anti-censorship, I have to wonder who you think you're fooling. As the saying goes, freedom isn't free. If we're not willing to risk bruising a few feelings to keep it alive, do we really deserve it? &#x200B; The good news is that unlike some, I live in a country where people like the ones running those subreddits usually don't have much power. I intend to do my own small part to help preserve that desirable state of affairs, by refusing to cooperate with those who, given the chance, would nudge America in the direction of becoming something worse than anything ever seen in Eastern Europe. If people were able to dodge machine gun fire to get to freedom, I think I can manage to post my prompts and stories in a place that isn't trying to help take freedom down with a death of a thousand cuts. If I couldn't bring myself to do at least that, how would I ever dare to face some of my neighbors and family elders?

>Some of the art sub reddits gave a no covid policy period &#x200B; Back in the Middle Ages, when people died from the plague, how many of them died from Covid-19? Nowhere in that prompt did I say anything about Covid. If the moderation was based on their decision to read their own meanings into my words, then that was mod abuse. I'm not going to try to work my way around that. I'm just going to wash my hands of those subreddits. Thank you for trying to help, but this is a good, hard no. If I have to express myself in some other way in order to not be censored, going so far as to essentially erase my own voice and replace it with yours, then I'm still being censored. One other thing ... &#x200B; > just because they are trying to get away from the topic as it is depressing. &#x200B; As an excuse for silencing people, "it's depressing" (if anything) manages to be even worse than "it's offensive" in any setting. In a literary one, it becomes absurd. What have people been growing up reading, when they don't realize that real literature does frequently have to include "depressing topics"? That otherwise, it loses the feel of reality, and that's the end of the reader's suspension of disbelief? As a policy, this would amount to a statement that one had better not submit any literature to that literary group. If that is given, then what is left for the group to do? In a non-literary setting, such a standard goes from being absurd to being positively depraved. To quote one of the characters from "A Wrinkle in Time" &#x200B; >“There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do something about the unpleasant ones.” &#x200B; I haven't read that book for a while, so I can't remember which character said that, but it's a valid point, regardless. The genuinely frightening thing is that in conversations with full grown adults, I find myself given ample cause to cite valid points from children's books. This is not indicative of an ability on the part of said alleged adults to function as adults. If we can not talk about unpleasant things, then we can not deal with unpleasant things, and society ends up disintegrating. But really, it stays depraved, even in a literary setting. Literature holds a mirror up to life, or at least, it's supposed to. It forces the reader to see things that he's overlooked, because those things would take him outside of his comfort one. A story that can not upset anybody is a story that has nothing to say, and is not worth reading. Could I fit in better with a group of overgrown children by writing such stories? Perhaps so, but if I certainly wouldn't be growing as an author by doing so, and I would have to be at least a little worried about my own frame of mind, at that point. Not that I don't love children, but by the time I get toward the end of grad school, I think the time has come for me to stop being one of them, myself. As it has for the people setting policies like that one.