I read the rules of “r/AmericaBad” and made a post about human rights issues with cited sources after reading their rules:

And yet, this happened:

I clearly did not break any rules, yet it was removed in less than forty minutes. If it truly was unwise of me to post a serious topic, then why did they have Rule Number 1 at all? In fact, an actual “edgy meme” post which violates both Rules Number 1 and Number 2 is still on the subreddit. If you’re going to make rules on a subreddit, how does it make sense to have secret, socially acceptable in-group and unspoken rules that newcomers aren’t privy to, and when newcomers post a topic based on the rules that the Mods themselves state is acceptable, how then does it make sense to delete the topic despite no rule violation?

This keeps happening over and over on these subreddits that it’s become impossible for me to participate in anything outside the r/megaten subreddit. What is the point of trying to discuss anything, if on the “Twobestfriendsplay” subreddit, my posts clarifying or responding to someone else are automatically removed for no explicable reason; people can’t see my posts in lesser known subreddits like r/trueunpopularopinion; or mods automatically delete heavily downvoted posts in the r/theacolyte subreddit (which ironically, may have contributed to people losing interest and the Disney show becoming cancelled, since people on the fence of whether to spend time on the series or not were even less likely to hold their interest). In a very real way, this does impact interest. I still don’t want to pick-up The Witcher book series because every topic I made on the r/thewitcher subreddit, when I tried my best to follow their nonsensical rules, was removed because I had minor criticisms about the TV show on Netflix.

With Reddit apparently now more mainstream for US audiences, the question should be asked: to what extent are subreddit mods who delete any negativity from subreddits where people talk about various franchises, contributing to the downfall of those franchises? This is basically demanding a village-idiot mentality in virtually every subreddit just because mods, but not the general reddit users, feel uncomfortable or have a malicious intent, or perhaps feel some weird power-trip. It’s very much become no different than how horrible Gamefaqs was, and still is, once the mainstream took hold and influenced the website and communities. Even my successful topics that are well within guidelines like r/philosophy get automatically removed within a day and the only reason it held out for a day was because Reddit made a rule that reduced the ability of mods to remove things for a brief period of time. The very thing that is making reddit unbearable to use are its reddit mods, who seem to run a monopoly of five-hundred users holding disproportionate sway over swathes of major subreddits, but it’s also possible that the more people enter into topics as entertainment becomes more mainstream, the more ignorant views become the norm and the more mods cater to that ignorance or hold ignorant views themselves. Perhaps, it is just an inevitable folly of the human experience?