Greetings, friends!
If you’re new here, welcome!
If you’re a longtime subscriber to
/r/PICS, we’re glad to have you back!
If you’re a Reddit administrator,
please respond to our open letter.
We’re not sure if you’ve noticed, but we seem to have gotten ourselves stuck in a bad fantasy novel: A warlock and a cult-leader – T’Zuck and El-On of Musk, respectively – have declared war on each other, soul-destroying clocks are showing up in everyone’s houses (and ensnaring innocents with sounds of “Tik… tok…”), a magician called “The Alt Man” unleashed a mindless golem that won’t stop stealing stuff and telling lies, and someone found an elephant-like creature named “Lemmy” in their bin… or something.
That’s just the setting. The actual story has been even stupider:
Years ago, a wealthy baron called for settlers from far and wide to establish communities on his land. In return, he said, he would erect billboards in the music halls, theaters, museums, and schools that volunteers built and maintained… but when investors started asking questions about how much gold that arrangement was bringing in, the baron panicked, blamed his alleged destitution on The Alt Man’s golem, swore fealty to El-On of Musk, then ran around insulting people and breaking their tools. When some of those people – the guards, the farmers, the teachers, the inventors, and the entertainers, in particular – tried to protest this treatment, the baron threatened to evict them, started burning things down, and opened the gates to armies of bigoted trolls.
Meanwhile, the warlock T’Zuck released a new line of clothing… or something.
Anyway, that’s about where we are now: The baron keeps sending mercenaries to deliver contradictory mandates, landmark buildings have been left gutted and empty, and an increasingly bloodied band of defenders has been shouting “Will you
please just
respond to our open letter?!” from within a temple devoted to a sexy comedian. Metaphors aside, things really have gotten absurd: Native replacements for third-party tools and accessibility options have proved to be
worse than nothing, “exemptions” to the API changes have been moot (as Reddit’s
constant, public antagonizing has
driven many developers away), and volunteers can’t even
breathe without violating
some policy or proclamation. Quite frankly, we don’t know what do, and it’s starting to feel like we’re all background characters in a really dumb book… but maybe the time has arrived for the protagonist to show up.
On that note, here comes the stupidest part yet:
The moderators of /r/PICS hereby invite John Oliver (or his duly appointed representative) to join our team.
Yes, we’re serious. Yes, it’s a real invitation.
To be clear, moderation is a thankless, unpleasant endeavor, and we wouldn’t wish it on anyone: You’re a constant target for bad actors, you receive no end of ill-informed abuse, you’re frequently exposed to horrifying media, and you’re thanked by way of being called “a power-hungry basement-dweller” or “landed gentry.” It used to be that moderators could count on support from administrators, but said support has been dwindling for years (even as volunteering on Reddit has gotten more and more difficult). Still, since John Oliver has become the literal face of
/r/PICS, we figured that it was only fair to offer him a look behind the scenes!
Please feel free to say “Oh,
hell no!” to us, John… but if you’re interested, we’ll look forward to showing you around!
As for everyone else:
If this was your first visit to
/r/PICS, we hope you’ll stick around!
If you’re a longtime subscriber, we’ll see you again soon!
If you’re a Reddit administrator,
please – if you have ever felt even the slightest bit of appreciation for Reddit’s moderators, contributors, participants, or users – respond to our open letter.
Until next time – and as always – take care, folks!
TL;DR: John Oliver (or his duly appointed representative) is cordially invited to moderate /r/PICS.
