I’ve been on Reddit since 2015 and I actually had a blast on it, about a year before the inevitable one of many Reddit Meltdowns happened the following year because of the general elections.

And I really loved the communities of Nostalgia, TrueUnpopularOpinions (before it got radicalized), UnpopularOpinions (before that got very samey), Games (before they got ban happy), Gamers (before they got even more ban-happy), AskReddit, YSK, TrueOffMyChest, Rant and a dozen others.

So I was a real talker in those sub-reddits. But I think one of my first of many bans happened was because, it was now 2016 and we started seeing a flourish of bad actors and trolls run around. And they were proficient in gaslighting people, so I became one of them, said a few things, mods got pissy and banned me yet not the person who did the gaslighting.

This would be a trend for the next 8 years. Where I would try to stop engaging trolls, shit would hit the fan, some oversensitive user got uppity on me, trolls came around again and so on. I estimate that I got banned probably about 30 some odd times by now in a near 10 year span.

I would go through so many e-mails and user names that it started to seem like a profile was being made on me because of how many times I tried coming back just to partake in the old communities I could. Reddit was getting worse and worse every attempt.

I think the last true time I was able to talk freely on Reddit was probably some year and a half ago. I tried the whole workaround where you make a new account, build some cheap karma on AskReddit and you’ll be good. But that wasn’t enough anymore.

Now anytime I would join, I get shadow-banned. I would appeal, but I know better because mods/admins don’t give a fuck about appeals. They’re righteous in their own way. So while I do have an account on there now that’s active, good luck saying anything with it because it’s shadow-banned.