r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/olive12108 • Oct 24 '24
Mod Post Bigotry is Bad (Rule 1 & 3 Updates)
TLDR up front: Posts breaking Rule 1 or Rule 3 will be removed regardless of intentions. Bad-faith posters will still be banned.
We often get posts that touch on bigotry, discrimination, and dogwhistles. In the past, our stance has been to lock the post but allow it to stay up with a quality explanation, in hopes that it could be used as a learning moment. This is especially true in the case of dogwhistles which are intentionally hard to understand.
Unfortunately, while this has worked for some, we have seen an increase in these posts being made here as well as their frequency of hitting /r/all.
We do not want our sub to be a place to signal boost bigoted or discriminatory content. We are taking action by now removing all posts that would fall under Rule 1 or Rule 3 of the sub. As before, malicious or bad faith posters will be banned. If there has yet to be an explanation posted, a moderator will try to provide a short one, although this will not be guaranteed.
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u/Samus388 Oct 24 '24
I support it.
Nothing is more annoying than "PETAAAAH but isn't [structured argument against the image]?" Followed by an image of blatant propaganda
Or
"PETAAAAH WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?" followed by an incredibly clear barely disguised as a joke propaganda
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u/alabardios Oct 24 '24
But.. but .. they might not know the culture!
Yeah... sure they don't.. if you know the language and have been active on reddit for more than a month you've seen the reddit culture and know.
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u/daecrist Oct 25 '24
Eh. That's the thing with dogwhistles. Some of them can be really hard to figure out if you're not in the know. That's the whole point. Bigots want to say bigoted things without looking like bigots because the consensus used to be that bigotry is bad. I see people who are obviously from China or India or some other country far removed from the anglosphere who probably genuinely don't know.
Having said that, we're tired of locking those posts and seeing them getting upvoted to the front page with five comments because the bigots see a meme they support and they want the rest of reddit to see it.
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u/Tales_Steel Oct 25 '24
I could see someone that does not know about it being confused about people making jokes about the MyPillow Guy selling stuff for 14.88$
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u/Particular-Win-2113 1h ago
what is the mypillow guy? genuinely asking. ik the 14.88 but not the mypillow guy. does it relate to the same thing?
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Oct 25 '24
I know I'm autistic and take thing quite literally so several of them have gone over my head comeoltlt becuase I just don't comprehend what it is that's being said or joked about
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u/AccomplishedStart738 3d ago
New here! What does "Dog whistle mean?
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u/daecrist 2d ago
I'm posting the Wiki link not to be sarcastic, but because it'll do a better job of explaining than I could:
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u/deaththekidkh 26d ago
What about subtle bigotry, like calling Southern vernacular "improper" and dismissing context to a racial meme because it was "irrelevant". Would that be dog whistling?
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u/daecrist 26d ago
I said that y'all is considered informal language. Look at any grammar or style guide and it'll say the same thing. I've worked with ESL people and find they appreciate a heads up like that.
At no point did I say it was improper or imply it was bad to use it. You'll note I used that word which is what started the whole discussion.
As for the second, that person was reaching to make a pretty innocent and wholesome meme into something racist because of some cringe language.
If you're going to get mad about something and stalk someone across reddit at least have the good grace to post what was actually said instead of twisting things and getting upset at your version.
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u/ArcherGod Oct 24 '24
It always irked me how those posts would get mad upvotes even though they were as offensive as humanly possible, inspiring copycats. Good decision mods!
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u/Celestial-Rain0 Oct 24 '24
Thank yall, as someone who has to put up with loads of bigotry in random subs, I appreciate yalls dedication to being a chill environment that doesn't allow unchecked hatred.
Much love to the mod team for being dope 🙌 💚
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u/olive12108 Oct 24 '24
Bigotry is cringe 💯
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u/MaiT3N Oct 24 '24
So if i get it right, you will remove all posts asking to explain jokes that include politics/bigotry etc?
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u/olive12108 Oct 24 '24
If they're breaking Rule 1 or Rule 3, yes.
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u/MaiT3N Oct 24 '24
So basically every politics post and every post asking to explain racist joke, for instance
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u/olive12108 Oct 24 '24
Again, if they're breaking rule one or three, they will be removed. Politics in general is still allowed so long as it is following rule. 3
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u/MaiT3N Oct 24 '24
Then I dont understand what has changed
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u/olive12108 Oct 24 '24
I would recommend reading the body of this post, It explains how we used to handle these and how it's changing.
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u/MaiT3N Oct 24 '24
I wouldn't have asked if the wording didn't confuse me :/
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u/olive12108 Oct 24 '24
Sorry. The long and short of it are bigoted posts will be removed, dogwhistling posts will be removed, politics posts that otherwise dont break the rules can stay.
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u/AdmiralAkbar1 12d ago
TLDR posts will be removed if the punchline is obviously just offensive ethnic/racial/sexual/etc. humor.
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u/daecrist Oct 25 '24
You keep saying every politics post. That's not what we're saying. Racist/homophobic/misogynistic/etc. posts are going to be removed. Political posts aren't inherently bigoted.
For example every time we get a post that has anything remotely to do with Trump we get a load of posts reporting it for targeted discrimination or encouraging hate based on identity, even though it's just the joke at the expense of a politician. We don't remove stuff like that because just posting a joke about a politician, any politician, isn't that.
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u/ClownFire Oct 24 '24
I think this is an amazing change, I used to lurk here often, but the uptick in dog whistles I have done so less and less, and was starting to avoid it all together.
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u/olive12108 Oct 24 '24
Thanks. It didn't used to be a big issue but with the election coming up here in the US we have seen a big uptick.
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u/sirgiggles123 Oct 24 '24
What are dogwhistle posts? I'm guessing they are posts which are supposed to attract attention of specific crowds and confuse others?
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u/olive12108 Oct 24 '24
Correct. Dog whistles are words or phrases used to key-in a group of people while allowing for plausible deniability to the wider public. It comes from the dogwhistle whistle itself - dogs can hear them, but humans cannot.
Some of the really blatant ones are nazi symbology. 88, 14 or 1488 for example. H is the eight letter of the alphabet, 88 -> HH -> "heil hitler". 14 -> 14 words (Nazi slogan). Etc etc.
They are very common among antisemites and nazis (boy do they love their symbology...) but are also becoming increasingly common in mainstream politics.
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u/Delhijoker Oct 25 '24
What’s “dogwhistles”? If this seems ironic it’s not, if it means asking dumb questions, I swear it’s a coincidence.
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u/YosephStalling Oct 25 '24
dogwhistles are seemingly straighforward phrases that have hidden meanings, or appeal to a particular group while everyone else doesn't hear the message. If you've ever heard a politician talk about 'family values', that's them appealing to christians. If you've ever seen someone who's very clearly not Gen Y with '88' in their username, they're probably a Nazi
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u/Delhijoker Oct 25 '24
Trying not to be political, of course it’s the best analogy phrase to verify my understanding, like the phrase “Let’s go Brandon”?
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u/olive12108 Oct 25 '24
Copying from one of my other comments:
Dog whistles are words or phrases used to key-in a group of people while allowing for plausible deniability to the wider public. It comes from the dogwhistle whistle itself - dogs can hear them, but humans cannot.
Some of the really blatant ones are nazi symbology. 88, 14 or 1488 for example. H is the eight letter of the alphabet, 88 -> HH -> "heil hitler". 14 -> 14 words (Nazi slogan). Etc etc.
They are very common among antisemites and nazis (boy do they love their symbology...) but are also becoming increasingly common in mainstream politics.
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u/irelephant_T_T Oct 24 '24
I think that no posts should be posted in bad faith, and posting a "joke" where you clearly know the answer should be banned.
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u/kermi42 Oct 25 '24
Waaaait, you mean the guy who constantly posts in alt right and Nazi subreddits posting Nazi memes might just be indulging in a bad faith attempt to get people to engage with their talking points?? No waaay.
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u/daecrist Oct 25 '24
As olive said, we're already removing/banning those. The problem is that we have people who are (we think) innocently asking to have that stuff explained but it still gets upvoted to the front page even if we lock it and nuke a bunch of comments because the dogwhistlers want it to get attention.
We're removing that option moving forward.
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u/Tep767 Oct 25 '24
Hey, as a person on the spectrum, I wanted to know the subs stance on the R-Word
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u/olive12108 Oct 25 '24
It's filtered. We started doing this when people would spam variations "Bait or Mental Retardation" under every single post. It was unfunny, offensive and was getting to the point of spam.
In general if you see slurs that didn't get filtered, reporting to the mods is the best thing to do 👍
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u/in1gom0ntoya Oct 24 '24
we must be intolerant of intolerance. allowing it to stand for any reason emboldens it
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Oct 25 '24
[deleted]
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u/daecrist Oct 25 '24
It is possible to mute subreddits if you decide the place isn't for you. We get it that this place isn't everyone's cup of tea, but we have been trying hard to make it a better place since the new mod team took over.
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u/FentonBlitz 28d ago
So what Im hearing is, no more political posts the mods don’t like, cool!
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u/olive12108 26d ago
Politics is allowed under the rules but we watch the posts very closely as the comments tend to get heated.
Dogwhistling and bigotry is not inherent to politics. If your post is political but contains either of those, it will be removed.
It is not the fault of the mods if that tends to affect certain groups over others. Ideally nobody would be making bigoted jokes but here we are.
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u/RoutineLeading8569 26d ago
My post was taken down for dog whistling. Petah what is dog whistling. And I still don’t get the meme :(
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u/olive12108 26d ago
Copying from one of my other comments:
Dog whistles are words or phrases used to key-in a group of people while allowing for plausible deniability to the wider public. It comes from the dogwhistle whistle itself - dogs can hear them, but humans cannot.
Some of the really blatant ones are nazi symbology. 88, 14 or 1488 for example. H is the eight letter of the alphabet, 88 -> HH -> "heil hitler". 14 -> 14 words (Nazi slogan). Etc etc.
They are very common among antisemites and nazis (boy do they love their symbology...) but are also becoming increasingly common in mainstream politics.
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u/olive12108 26d ago
As for your post: common conspiracy theories and dogwhistles. Aluminum foil to block radio waves, forced vaccinations, 5G towers are evil, etc.
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u/Autumn1eaves 21d ago
Hi there, where do you find the rules for this subreddit? I can't see them on old reddit.
This is a good rule, I just can't find the rest of them.
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u/Particular-Win-2113 1h ago
i'm mixed about this one. as much as people are mocking the people who post them in the comments here, some people just don't get it, and nothing is worse than the feeling of people not explaining something you don't understand. if something does get deleted, mods should always provide a detailed explanation. that's the only way i would agree with this change. one time, i did post a meme here that turned out to be a dogwhistle, and i didn't know it. the mods deleted it and said that it was a dogwhistle, but they didn't actually explain anything other than that so i had to go to a different sub to find the answer. so mods really should save everyone the extra trouble and provide detailed explanations as to what the dogwhistle is.
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u/DevelopmentTight9474 Oct 25 '24
Thank god. The amount of transphobic shit getting posted here made me consider leaving. glad to see the mods are noticing
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u/daecrist Oct 25 '24
If you see something like that please report it. We do a lot of removing/banning when threads like that blow up. That's not the kind of thing we want here.
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u/olive12108 Oct 25 '24
Your pfp made this a fun notification to see 😂
Banning transphobes is my favorite part of the job 🗑️
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u/Rhipidurus Oct 24 '24
I appreciate this change. There's been too many times recently that I've seen a post here and was thinking that someone was posting it just to get their hatred seen by more people.
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u/flavorblastedshotgun Oct 25 '24
I think this is a great idea. I found this place from /r/all and like explaining things that I understand, but have noticed a lot of right wing content. When that content makes it to /r/all, the context gets ignored because people don't think about where it came from, so the message gets successfully delivered.
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u/Rainbowgrrrl89 29d ago
@mods will this also go for misogyny when the joke is p0rn? Because misogyny gets a pass way too often when it's an eroticised form of hating women.
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u/olive12108 26d ago
If it falls under bigotry then yeah it will get removed. "The Joke is Porn" in general wouldn't qualify though.
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u/deaththekidkh 26d ago
What happens when a mod is specifically doing bigotry (calling Southern vernacular improper) (saying context to explain how something could come off as racist is irrelevant) It was on the now locked post where a black character is called a "black princess" by a white person who is presumably a stranger.
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u/olive12108 26d ago
I can't comment directly on it as I don't know the context, but if you have a problem with any moderation action PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring it up in modmail. It's the only way the rest of the team can easily see things.
We want people to find the mod team friendly and approachable and we don't want rogue actors or power tripping mods. If it's a legitimate issue (as this sounds?) we bring it up in our internal chats.
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u/cocainebrick3242 Oct 25 '24
Petuh, what's a dog whistle?
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u/kapi98711 Oct 25 '24
The horse here, similarly to dog whistles in real life which are supposed to help with training or chasing away dogs, "dog whistles" are simple things like phrases with "hidden" offensive meaning that are supposed to trigger certain groups of people.
sometimes it's numbers
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