ALL of this was clearly shortsighted and a mistake. All behind the scenes communications (between mods, admins, and with other instances), trying to implement changes without the community even being aware (let alone being behind them), and finally mods and admins stepping down. I mean seriously, take a step back and tell me this doesn’t absolutely reek of wrecker shit.

Do we seriously think that the squeaky wheel for moving the site further from “white cishet male vibes” would be adding a barrier to posting unless you engage in debatebro dialectics? I mean that’s comically white cishet male vibes.

Let’s be so real right now. Undo everything. Start over. That includes admins unilaterally unadminning. Theyve done their self crit and it seemed as genuine as it could be, now they should ask the community for forgiveness and I’m almost certain theyll get it. If they don’t, then that’s that and they bow out gracefully, but at this point (unless they resigned for mental health issues) I feel as though they owe it to the community to have a say. The community deserves this whole situation to be approached from the very beginning. This includes deciding whether a debate even needs to be held regarding the old or new comms. No poweruser bullshit about trying to change site culture or making it more serious without community input.

I am a mod on /agitprop. If people like the idea, I’m more than happy to have a weekly Megathread running parallel to the standing news Megathread that is limited strictly to serious discussion, close readings, and actual counter propaganda about current events and other cultural zeitgeist issues. We have plenty of great users ready to put great effort into their posts if they’ll get noticed. If you need any evidence, look at the current pinned thread on /agitprop which has had (knock on wood) NO modding to it thus far and been completely on topic and FILLED with high effort posting. Stopping people from being unserious and having fun will not make them be serious, it will just end their engagement. Plenty of people come here to do both things, myself included. If you like your shitposting, you can keep it.

Have faith that the community is good as if you are a part of it, and I promise you’ll have a much more fruitful experience than trying to change it from the top down.