What RPG subreddit showed us

 Hi there. 

Still in Ukraine, still alive. 

An interesting story is going on in the subreddit dedicated to tabletop roleplaying games. The moderators' team decided to introduce a rule forbidding to talk about the content by Zak S. 

Zak is my favourite RPG author. 

Zak's blog is a source of cool facts about art, history, and fantasy, written in his unique style. 

Also, Zak is the victim of a harassment campaign - been one for over a decade. 

So when you speak about the victim of harassment, the harassers activate and come in to harass you, as well - because that's how they operate. 

Which is not pleasant for the moderators who have to deal with this shit. It's part of their job, but I get it - cutting up dead bodies used to be part of my job, and I didn't enjoy it. 

So they published this new rule. 

And the harassers came in to celebrate. 

Their comments included things like "finally you did something to deal with the fascistic users", "fuck the fucking supporters of the fucking rapist", and, directed personally at me, "you're victimizing yourself but you live in a country that is run by neonazi who organize pogroms against russophones and communists".Which is pretty much word by word quote from russian propaganda, and pretty much equals "hey guys, I support genocide!"

The comments about "you organize pogroms" got deleted by reddit moderators. The part about "fascistic users" stayed, and was massively upvoted. 

Comments like "Why do you ban the content and not the people who act badly?", "I think it's important to study the facts", and "Who is Zak S?" got downvoted just as massively. 

What does it mean? Let me mention one more thing - another massively upvoted comment was a repost of a Twitter story about "if you let some nazi guys in your bar, they bring their friends, and before you know it, it's a nazi bar". 

This is pretty much what happened. 

The harassers are the majority in the subreddit. 

The moderators still do their job, they support the rules and remove some offending comments, but effectively the harassers are running the subreddit. 

Moving against the harassers with something more than just removing the most offending stuff means moving against the majority of users. 

The moderators aren't going to do this. 

And if you're the bartender in a nazi bar, and every time a Jew (Zak is Jewish, by the way) comes into the bar, a fight happens, sooner or later you either close the bar, grab your biggest stick and chase the nazi out, or ask the Jew not to come anymore because he causes trouble. 

Got to hand it to the moderators - they took a long, long time before finally asking the Jew to stay away from the bar. 

And if someone thinks that the bar's problems end with the hanging of "No Jews Allowed" sign, I suggest them to read some history books. 

Spoiler: the problems are only just starting. 

EDIT:

I was too optimistic. The comment with russian genocide-justifying propaganda is still there. 

https://www.reddit.com/comments/vqn43u/_/ietvx1u/

UPDATE:

After I bluntly asked to explain why doesn't anyone do something about this, this comment was finally removed. So was my comment asking why don't people address it. 

ANOTHER UPDATE: this post had been reported to Blogger and suspended "because it breaks the rules on harassment". Upon review, the post had been reinstated without any changes. Because, how do I put it?.. - ah, yes - because it does not break any rules on harassment. 

But apparently the crowd in the bar doesn't like the comparison.