- Source: /r/subredditdrama
- Posted: Nov 1 2012
- Author: zanotam
- Topic: [meta] A brief summary of Doxtober with links to more specific summaries and a recap of the final days
Well, to start with, I think you’ll find today’s SMBC comic relevant to the following discussion.
And, a warning, I am not the greatest at this summarizing thing and the drama has been so deep and pervasive that I’m really just taking the highlights of the highlights of the highlights, so if someone can provide more details and help me fill this out, it would be nice, but I didn’t see any doxtober meta summaries yet, so I thought I could at least try to get the ball rolling. But seriously, this is the largest batch of drama I’ve ever seen and my first recap so if you think I missed something important, please let me know and I’ll add it.
TL;DR VA [/u/violentacrez] got dox’d by Adrien Chen and prodigious amounts of popcorn are produced in the aftermath from people reactions, reactions to other reactions, and, well, you get the point.
Major events:
Start: VA gets dox’d by Adrien Chen of Gawker. The article contains enough identifying information that VA’s employer gets harassed and lets him go and Anderson Cooper invites VA on to his show for a short spot. Reddit overflows with name calling and flame wars which still come up in threads weeks after the first major shots were fired.
Recap II (Links to Reddit)
Middle:
Well, this drama episode has put a lot of pressure on the admins (and the fact that some of the new admins got off on a bad first foot with some of reddit didn't help!) and so a new rule about not posting certain admin talk is introduced in SRD and singlehandedly brings a bit of life back to /r/ThePopcornStand as it is the semi-official source for 'forbidden' drama now.
— MillenniumFalc0n [M]: Alright, so I guess some explanation is required. We have been removing links to the leaked #modtalk log. This isn’t because we’re ashamed of the content or anything, but because we believe its proliferation would be harmful to the greater reddit community. The admins have made it clear that if we can’ t prevent leaks, they can’t speak frankly with us. The mod team believes that keeping lines of communication open between the admins and the moderators in situations like this is important, and hence we have decided to not allow it to be spread in this subreddit. Leaks in general are not banned, just leaks involving the admins. Please comment with any questions or concerns. If you disagree, please let us know why.
In the aftermath of the initial doxing the SRS mods (who many blamed for firing the first few shots of Doxtober) hatred for reddit is looked upon even more poorly than usual and they are denied access to the /r/modtalk sub and, as explained in one of the summaries, they are generally under fire from a lot of power users because of the VA doxing.
VA still posts on reddit though and since he lost his job, he now goes looking to reddit to see if anyone wants to hire him, posting his resume to multiple subreddits.
Interestingly, the creator of /r/beatingwomen was also dox’d, supposedly in addition to other moderators of that subreddit.
AnElegantPenis: Why did he threaten you? Do you happen to have something to do with SRS releasing information of few redditors from creepsquad?
mcon87: Should that matter? I’m disgusted that SRS released that information; I think it was reprehensible. However, raping someone has no justification. Zero. None. Neither does stalking someone. I don’t care what she did.
END: There’s some minor drama about supposed doxing and shadowbanning in /r/internetama as the overall drama grows tepid
Finally, Lautrichienne, a member of the SRS Fempire (that’s what they call themselves now, right?) is dox’d. Drama, of course, ensues. All records of this are lost.
To cap everything off, the mods of SRD have to make an announcement to remind people that doxing is NOT a good thing.
RECAP 1
This story is not yet complete. I’ve done my best to organize this drama in chronological order, but if I’ve made a mistake, please let me know and I’ll try to fix it.
Brief Summary of Background Drama
For a few months now, /r/CreepShots, a subreddit dedicated to candid pictures of women in public, has been a source of great controversy on Reddit, and more recently in the mainstream media. A few weeks ago, a high school teacher who posted pictures of “hot” girls in his classes was caught by a user who recognized the posted girl. His subsequent arrest gave CreepShots/Reddit mass media publicity.
Here’s the SRS post that documents the teacher’s CreepShots post (/u/weagleweagleweagle) and in the comment section, /u/jackiepanda claims that she’s going to email the teacher’s creepshots to the schools and police departments, to which a now [deleted] account says that they’ve found information to narrow down who the teacher is.
After the teacher’s arrest, many blamed SRS’s anti-Reddit Project Panda campaign, several subs freaked about about r/CreepShots existence, and r/CreepShots submissions started getting inundated with downvotes and new members.
Cries for the sub to be shut down were met by the defense that the sub’s activities were perfectly legal, and such arguments were waged in comment sections across Reddit.
violentacrez’s account deletion and doxxing
Yesterday (10/10/2012), the infamous Reddit user /u/violentacrez deleted his account.
Since the link to his “goodbye” is a deletion wasteland, I went ahead and found this Google-cache of his post on coderedd.com. The formatting is in what I presume to be Python, but this Google cache has preserved the thread in all of its undeleted glory, including VA’s last post at 2:33 GMT:
For the curious: according to the CodeRedd code, the comments consisted mostly of users bidding VA goodbye with links to porn, wondering why he’d leave after posting an AMA, and whether all of the VA users (his account is allegedly shared) agreed on this deletion.
Here’s the SRD post about it and linking to the now deleted thread. It is here where /u/ThaddyG almost prophetically wonders whether something happened to VA, saying:
Just a few hours later, power-user /u/POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS writes this post in SRD, explaining that VA likely deleted his account because Adrian Chen, a Gawker writer infamous for being “anti-Reddit”, had doxxed VA after obtaining his personal information from an unknown source, though apparently even VA deleting his account wouldn’t prevent Gawker from running the story on him. PIMA posted pictures of conversations he’s had with VA in his post, including one of a conversation where Saydrah discusses Adrien Chen’s approaching her for a comment on a story about VA.
On a note that may or may not undermine to PIMA’s offered explanation, /u/smooshie and /u/Niqualz both point out that VA’s real name and identity were already known because he had attended/organized Reddit Dallas meetups.
PIMA Mourns VA in /r/NSFW
In a virtually identical post to the his SRD submission, POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS posts an explanation for VA’s deletion and cautions his subscribers to be wary of posting personal details, reposts a NSFW of a model, and acknowledging that r/CreepShots has been shut down along with a screenshot of a threatening PM that one of the r/CreepShots mods received (more on this later). He blames SRS for the blackmail, and muses that it’s “interesting the amount of stuff SRS is allowed to get away with on this site.” In the comment thread, users call for SRS to get banned, hope that VA sues Chen for blackmail, and call for bans on Gawker.
/u/I_hate_bigotry catches wind of PIMA’s post and makes this circlebroke post about it. In it, she tears apart PIMA for sympathizing with VA and posting so much about VA’s deletion.
SRS Celebrates VA’s Deletion
SRS Mod ArchangelleNoodelle makes a self-post bidding VA adieu, and SRSister /u/whynot_shesaid voices suspicion over VA’s deletion after Reddit apparently got new admins that he wasn’t “in good” with as he apparently was with the previous ones. /u/Grickit also notes that Reddit just hired a new programmer who claims to have been a long-time Redditor, but who made a new account anyways, but acknowledges that this is just unfounded speculation.
r/violentacrez Gets Modded by SRS
Mod of r/violentacrez and several large subreddits, /u/ytknows writes in an SRD post that he has added some SRS moderators to r/violentacrez for the inevitable “hilarious results” that would likely ensue, just as when he added them as mods to r/circlejerk.
The mods for r/violentacrez are now
ytknows
Castiella
RobotAnna
ArchangelleMichaelle
ArchangelleTenuelle
Lucifielle
Lautrichienne
RosieLalala
jackiepanda
A newly modded /u/Castiella made this post introducing the “change in direction” that she planned on taking the sub, namely that it would now serve as an antithesis to the pedophilia that violentacrez was known for. In the thread, /u/JamesBar asks
And gets promptly banned by /u/Castiella. Castiella also makes a Reddit request to unmod VA from r/violentacrez in case he un-deletes his account. Back in SRS, /u/ArchangelleStrudelle announces the Fempire’s newly acquired subreddit, and Castiella explains that
/u/Laurelai also posts about the SRS takeover in /r/MetaHub, and writes that VA deleted his account because