r/SubredditDrama • u/nochancesman • 9d ago
r/litrpg experiences whiplash as Subreddit founder is removed from mod team
BACKGROUND
LitRPG is a relatively new fiction genre wherein game elements – RPG – are present in the story – lit – itself. As you may well guess, the genre tends to attract certain nerdy groups for a variety of reasons, whether it be the D&D-esque fans there to see stats personified in what they read, or the self-insert power fantasy enjoyers who long for gameified escapism. Though the exact beginning of the genre is hard to pinpoint, from what I have gathered it was predated by light novels & web novels over on NovelUpdates and cultivation novels more present in the Eastern sphere.
/litrpg is a subreddit revolving around the LitRPG genre; there is also its companion, /progressionfantasy, though the latter doesn't necessarily include the stat game windows that LitRPG is known for. The space(s) leans politically progressive in recent times.
THE DRAMA
/litrpg's Discord server was run by the Subreddit mods and a few selected Discord only mods. I won't go in detail describing the mod team, but our two main suspects here are user wistel (nicknamed Wisintel) and user SnowGN (nicknamed Snow and Coldbringer). Wisintel was the sub's founder, but took more of a laidback role over the years while staying top mod... that is, until today.
Wisintel's post starts with him languishing over the sub's past and his role as a founder. It follows with the unexpected announcement that the mod team had collectively removed him as top mod without notice – keep in mind that you cannot remove a subreddit mod without them having been inactive for at least 3 months. Wisintel goes on to write that this was done because:
> [...] a couple of our new mods, people who have only been members of the sub reddit for a couple years at most, disagreed with the political views of one of the mods who has been here since the beginning.
This mod is Snow. Snow is a close friend of Wisintel's. Wisintel finishes the post by writing that he felt heartbroken from the action and was honoured to have founded the community.
The post has garnered around a thousand and a half upvotes at the time of writing and almost the exact same amount of comments, which isn't weird for a post like this, is it? I mean, a sub mod who has been there since the founding – 12 years ago, by Wisintel's claim – being ousted by some uppity newcomers is bound to cause a stir, right?
One of the mods involved in the ousting replies with a pinned comment shedding light on the situation.
> [...] Snow (the Discord server owner) has been making over-the-line comments in a hidden Discord thread. We felt this wasn't okay, and we went out of our way to make a new Discord rather than attempting to get him to step away from the current one. [...]
As it turns out, Snow wanted to pass the server to Wisintel. Wisintel was not informed of the new server and the mods had lowered his status as a Subreddit mod. Once it was made clear they would not pass the server, Wisintel wrote the post above.
The mod shares that the team had not intended to intervene with Wisintel's post, but wanted to clarify that this was not a united power grab from their end.
SNOW'S COMMENTS
So, what did Snow say, anyway?
As it turns out, a lot.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZYQLHf-Ao-G7MQwbf0E1NEd9mACuTv8YetSK5m6UzFw/edit?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ACKt-zc2NBL51NUVASklxLFayntK7aCpsvpoyxWP5O8/edit?usp=sharing
The server had a sort of private channel where members would discuss politics for fun. In these channels, Snow shared some.. interesting views, to put it mildly.
> Also, Epstein wasn't trafficking in actual kids, but teenagers who were willingly recruited and paid for their time. This matters. Why you guys are treating this as literal babyfucking is absurd.
> Furthermore, even if Trump is on the list, I wouldn't care. Better a pedo than a communist.
> Today, we've got roughly 1000 issues more important to America moving forwards than whether or not Bill Gates and Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew were diddling kids. These guys are mostly all retired now and sunsetting hard. Epstein wouldn't be the first American high level insider crime to be covered up. Not the most important by far, either. Like I said: get over it already. Focus on the things that matter today.
Other than these comments, Snow had some rather controversial talks about Hitler, Renee Good, The Great Replacement Theory, and of course – we can't go without the classic – trans people. Feel free to read them on your own.
THE REACTIONS: MOD TEAM, SNOW AND WISINTEL
One of the discord mods, Claire, had posted an explanation before the current pinned comment which I will link here.
Claire explains that Snow had driven the Discord server towards being a so-called "ghost town".
She and Snow have a somewhat personal interaction when he responds to her below, which I will also link, as this post has gotten too long.
Wisintel responds to Claire's comment. Curiously, he never writes that he condemns Snow's beliefs, only that he doesn't condone them.
He has also commented on a right-wing conspiracy post in the past, as another commenter points out.
The mod team uploads a post advertising the sub's new Discord server, and somewhere in the comments Wisintel copy pastes his own goodbye post. You'll have to scroll a bit to see it.
THE REACTIONS: R/LITRPG USERS
Some users are predictably poking fun at the situation.
Reddit mods never beating the allegations.
Ah yes. LitRPG my favorite political subreddit and discord server. This makes sense.
This litrpg has twists and turns that are very shocking
Others have some words to say to Wisintel, whether indifference or jabs at his character.
A mod weighs in and explains that, yes, Wisintel was an absentee founder, contrary to his claims that he was active, writing that Wisintel has not taken any moderator action in about a year. Elsewhere in the thread, there are others saying that he has been inactive for 5 years or so, but I'm unable to find those right now.
Someone writes that this was still a power grab by the new mods, and that things were running "fine" before this happened. This starts its own thread of drama.
Another user is apparently of the same mind.
"Something else that matters to who you are as a person is the way that you do things. The underhanded coup tactics being used here make me pretty leery of the new "leadership" and does plenty to destroy community trust. "Oh, he might have disagreed with what we were doing, so we sabotaged him pre-emptively just in case" is not terribly compelling to those of us who fear book-burnings in a book genre subreddit. Given this sub's rules and enforcement around avoiding AI witch hunts, it's troubling seeing a different kind of witch hunt full of collateral damage embraced so enthusiastically."
User demoran, to absolutely no one's surprise, writes that Snow's takes were reasonable, and there's many among his number.
"Gotta say, coldbringer seems to take some reasonable positions on the issues he was talking about. Maybe you just didn't like that he was talking about them at all without either condemning Hitler and Nazis unconditionally, or supporting trans unequivocally.
That also appears to be discord talk, not stuff here.
Seems to me like you went on a power trip and stole this sub. Are you going to ban me because I'm not "on your side" as well?"
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Those messages aren't evil. What is wrong with you that you can't handle disagreement?
That is just sad, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
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You guys would have been concentration camp guards if you were born 100 years ago
Most of his supporters are under Claire's previously pinned comment, down voted to hell – for once, rightfully so – and free to peruse.
CONCLUSION
The /litrpg community is still relatively niche, but hopefully without some few bad apples as of now.. regardless of how many were exposed today. The new Discord server seems to be doing well, and the subreddit is otherwise calm. I hope the drama was to your liking (since this is also my first write-up.)