Lets go to work I think its time for some raysist poitry an shit Roses are red, violets are blue How come all black girls smell like poo? I dont really this to be this crude their pussies smell like dead seafood The hair on their head belongs on their snatch The drapes and the curtains do more then match They are the very same fucking thing Nasty pube headed afrikin queenĪfter his comments offended his target audience, he gleefully added, "they didnt seem to care very much for my comments. This particular dark corner of the web was never merely content to stay in its corner its members ventured out.Įarlier this year, r/blackgirls, a Reddit community "that caters to the interests/support of all the black girls who are also Redditors," got a first-hand look at what r/niggers is capable of.Īfter a user at r/niggers noticed that the r/blackgirls moderator was inactive, and thus not actively monitoring posts to ban rule-breaking users, another suggested flooding the subreddit with racist comments and content, commonly known as "brigading." He commented: This particular dark corner of the web was never merely content to stay in its corner its members ventured out. It became a launching pad for excursions into the rest of Reddit. While the subreddit's postings were unquestionably racist and offensive, what was really disturbing about r/niggers was the way the group's commentary and subscribers seeped into the broader Reddit community at large. Most of the community's content was about what you'd expect: news stories about crimes committed by blacks, pseudoscience about black inferiority, and personal anecdotes about troublesome interactions with black people.
Emblazoned with icons like watermelons and fried chicken legs, the site maintained a rotating roster of photographs of whites who have presumably been the victims of violence by blacks, as if no white person has ever committed a violent crime. On the other hand, on a percentage basis, it was one of Reddit's fastest growing online communities this year. While Reddit itself boasts 69.9 million monthly users, r/niggers had only 6,000 members. In a phone interview, Martin told me, "There isn't any community that would like being judged by the worst 0.0001 percent of its users." By banning r/niggers, Reddit's leaders have continued to establish reasonable benchmarks for what the site will and will not tolerate, a measure that will allow it to continue to amass mainstream credibility.Īs the offensive name implies, r/niggers was a place for users to bond over their disdain for black people. Reddit higher-ups have made it clear that they are unwilling to allow the website's more unsavory communities to tarnish its reputation as a whole. That attitude may have worked well back when the site was still finding its footing, but as it's skyrocketed in both popularity and legitimacy, it no longer seems sensible to cling to an "anything goes" policy. Reddit's About section proclaims the site a "free speech place." In the past, General Manager Erik Martin has said that he sees Reddit as a place where anything goes, so long as that anything doesn't break the law.
Through the recent banning of r/niggers, one of Reddit's most offensive communities, it seems that the site's leaders are making a conscious choice to keep Reddit a place where the insightful wins out over the hateful. With its democratic voting system controlling the prominence of content, Reddit has long been seen as a place that values the insightful.īut among the good content also lurked a darker corner trying to inch its way into the broader Reddit community: r/niggers. The online community driven by user-submitted content made headlines after hosting "Ask Me Anything" Q&A forums with folks as powerful and established as NPR's Ira Glass, Cory Booker and yes, even President Obama. If you're the type of person who reads blogs on the Internet, you're probably already familiar with Reddit.