The tone shift, mainly. I mean, I knew it was going downhill, but I didn’t realize it’d happen so quickly until the huge shift in tone after the protests. Then it kinda clicked that “whoa this place is turning into a shithole fast”.

It’s good old cancer. The influx people don’t really know how to use the community, they don’t “get it”, and now there are enough of them to resist being driven away. It’s unstoppable now. Every sub slowly turns into a shitpost sub, bit by bit, as the negatively creeps in subtly.

A single mod team can’t hold it back, trolls are too smart for that, and trolling mods is too fun. It takes a larger community culture to keep them at bay. Lose that … and watch for yourself. Should take a year or two, off the top of my head. Not even r/humansbeingbros with a mod army could withstand the coming times of darkness and despair. It would merely be the Rivendell among Sauron’s endless hordes. lol

I gotta admit, I thought reddit was immune. The karma system. But a critical mass of users is capable of undermining and subverting it, and then spez came. While he could backtrack and possibly cure the cancer by inspiring some decency again, I don’t think that’s very likely. No profit in that.