this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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Memes

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I don't know what everyone means when they use 'rule' in the title and at this point I'm too afraid to ask. Please enlighten me.

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[–] [email protected] 151 points 9 months ago (4 children)

For the curious, the original was actually /r/195 on Reddit. It started as a joke between some college roommates, in dorm room number 195. Then it eventually got popular as a sort of shitposting community. But the original 195 was basically unmoderated (because it was just a couple of dudes in college who started it for shiggles,) and was eventually brigaded and taken over by alt-right neonazis. The memes quickly devolved into straight up Nazi propaganda.

So 196 was created as a sort of “new” 195, and that original brigade and subsequent takeover is why a lot of the 196 memes tend to lean hard left. The 196 sub was sort of a rebellion against the 195 takeover, which means that conservative stuff quickly got shut down. It eventually became a sort of safe space for transgender memes as a result. From there it became a sort of self-sustaining reaction where trans people saw it as safe so more trans people gravitated towards it.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago

Thank you for the detailed explanation! I remember seeing it on reddit, but never knew why.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago

It's always seemed so wholesome to me how the trans folks are such a huge part of what makes that sub awesome but also it's not a "trans sub", so you get all these people there for the memes also experiencing fully normalized transness

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure neo-Nazis weren't the reason r/195 shut down. It was just that after 420 weeks the owners decided to end "the experiment".

I wasn't on Reddit then though, so I wouldn't know.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Curious where you got your take if you weren't even on reddit? I never heard any of this before, was it, like, in the news or something?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I was on r/196, and that's what the people from r/195 were saying

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The respective person wasn't on reddit then, likely was after, just in time to read the archives.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Hey there you could've taken two seconds to read my profile and seen I have my pronouns listed there instead of just misgendering me

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No, I really couldn't have. My attention span is too short. I apologize, if it makes you feel better. However, I can make no promises on any future mislabelings, to you, anyone or anything else. My attention span is too short for that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Fun fact, very few people indeed will respond negatively to "they" as a default pronoun for when one is uncertain.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

to have a dorm room 195 seems implausible. it implies at least 95 rooms on one floor

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Or building 1, section/floor 9, room 5. I’m in an apartment that has four digits, but that doesn’t mean there are over 1000 apartments in the complex. It simply means they follow a standard numbering scheme to make finding the specific apartments easier.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Interesting. Number schema come in many colors. I use 20240315 format to prefix dated files

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

In the Netherlands I saw some building were, instead of having a street number-flat number, the building had all the numbers listed on them. So, if the building had 100 houses, the street number for the building would be 150-249, and the next street number would be 250.

It's possible they had a similar system.