Reddit Thought Policing Again Anything That Is Left of Mao

It's non often that everyone on the web tin can agree that a customs or even a person is considerately evil. Whether the focus is prepare on a pol doing something controversial or an A-list histrion caught in a scandal, yous tin can ever find someone that'south ready, if non eager, to defend the effigy against the onslaught of mainstream and social media criticism they're receiving. One group that seemed to get nothing but universal criticism until recently is landlords — and who doesn't have a bad landlord story, right?

Online hatred for landlords stepped further into the limelight last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stories and posts began emerging of tenants beingness threatened with evictions for existence unable to pay their rent after existence laid off. Landlords weren't too happy about the situation either, as some states disallowed landlords from making evictions, but that didn't end all of them, leading to fifty-fifty more criticism.

This isn't where landlord criticism starts though. Landlord hatred was inherited by the spider web naturally after decades of hatred in real life. In 2018, Rhik Samadder published an article on The Guardian criticizing landlords as social parasites, writing well-nigh how giving a landlord a "all-time of" laurels in his field is similar "giving Stalin a humanitarian laurels." Back in 2010, a landlord company in Toronto was awarded a golden cockroach award by the community'south tenants association, inspiring applause from some tenants. Only the root of landlord criticism, at least when it comes to online discourse, goes back to 1948.

Historically, the largest "defection" against landlords was the Chinese Land Reform Movement, a campaign in which the communist party of Prc's leader at the time, Mao Zedong, allowed the killing of over 800,000 landlords based on their course status in lodge to give the land back to the people. This event, as inhumane as it is, has formed the basis for a lot of anti-landlord memes today. If there'south an argument about landlords going on somewhere on the spider web, its' not long before a leftist "Mao poster" enters the mix with a meme referencing the Chinese Land Reform Movement, often insinuating that it should happen over again to some degree.

Similar tactics are used past right-wing posters and trolls every day, using something extreme like a tragedy to provoke reactions from the other side. Discourse like this often drowns out whatsoever bodily attempts to brainwash either side on the pros and cons of land-lording. Instead, information technology melts everything down into a political flame war that branches out far beyond landlords vs. tenants to communism vs. capitalism. One of the best examples of this can be seen on Reddit.

On October 18th, 2019, /r/LandLordLove, named ironically, was launched specifically to criticize landlords. On a typical twenty-four hour period, the subreddit'due south frontpage offers a collection of anti-landlord memes, news stories highlighting bad landlords and stories of personal experiences with awful landlords. With over 37,000 members, the subreddit sees consistent interaction and posts. It'southward a tightly knit community, and like about spaces on Reddit, is a bit of an repeat bedchamber considering of information technology; a safe-space for landlord criticism. You're non going to find many debates on whether or not landlords really deserve this blanket-stated criticism they're awarded on the sub, and the posters seem content with it, able to focus all their energy on sharing anti-landlord efforts rather than engaging in flame wars as many of them do on other online spaces but for their outspoken left-fly opinions.

Too, many of the posts speak for themselves, offer quick glimpses into how landlords tin can abuse their power (admitting without looking at the landlord's side). The thought of a landlord, someone who literally "lords over your land," comes with an causeless ability imbalance that's easy to use to every landlord thanks to the lack of context needed to post on the web. In some cases, this power imbalance is definitely in that location, but research is required. Of course, if you're going to criticize something vehemently on the web without exploring all sides, you have to wait some opposition. That opposition came on May 3rd last twelvemonth in the form of /r/LoveForLandlords, a subreddit specifically made to combat /r/LandLordLove.

With over 34,000 members, /r/LoveForLandlords is merely behind in followers as opposed to /r/LandLordLove, offering a pretty off-white boxing. The landscape on /r/LoveForLandlords is a lot different than their enemy sub. /r/LoveForLandlords is a direct-up meme-fest, filled with mountains of ironic and post-ironic memes to the degree that it's impossible to tell what's serious and what's not. The about section of the sub claims that the board is meant for landlords to hash out their bug with tenants, but there's very little of that going on. Instead, the followers of the sub perform somewhat of a roleplay, where they post pretending to be exaggeratedly evil landlords who are fix to jump on any ways they can to evict their tenants.

Memes on the subreddit frequently feature posts bragging nigh all the money they're making from tenants, boasting about boot tenants out during bad times in their lives and asking elaborate questions in lodge to find out how they can finesse their tenants into homelessness. The subreddit even has its ain linguistic communication, including words like "rentoid" to describe tenants who pay but the landlord nonetheless wants to boot out for being annoying, and "Landchad" to describe landlords who stand up upwards for themselves and other landlords. It'due south almost immediately evident that the subreddit is created just to troll landlord haters online, specifically /r/LandLordLove, and they don't hibernate it. Posts are frequently made bashing the subreddit, merely as posts are oftentimes made bashing /r/LoveForLandlords on the other sub. Recently, the sub seems to be concentrating its efforts on surpassing /r/LandLordLove in members, and the divide is only getting closer.

Absolutely, /r/LoveForLandlords is a lot more fun to browse through from an outsider's perspective due to the unique memes. They may exist an even more than tight-knit community than their counterpart, admitting in memes rather than hatred. In dissimilarity, the sub has also devolved into nonsense. Across the heavy political undertones that alive beneath most every post, there's not much substance hither, with users making variations of the same joke over and over in their own contrary-yet-equal echo chamber. While /r/LandLordLove is a infinite where actual grievances about landlords get aired out, cypher of much substance is ever discussed on /r/LoveForLandlords. Their memes are stronger, simply their intentions are weaker and as without show. They could post positive landlord stories and assist the cause, just instead, they meme.

About people won't go out the subreddit with a 18-carat love of landlords, every bit there are no reasons given to love them. /r/LandlordLove users, on the other hand, mail more than only memes of varying degrees of irony to their page, offering actual evidence for their hatred. It'due south not as fun of a sub, sure, and it's not as active, only in that location's nothing fun about the fight confronting landlords to them.

This is why the users meet /r/LoveForLandlords as such a harmful subreddit. It delegitimizes their war confronting landlords without any necessary context thanks to the nearly equal follower numbers and the fact that more than right-leaning trolls, whether they like landlords or not, volition bound in the sub and start posting just as another excuse to troll leftists in a make-new way. It reduces the unabridged problem to the core politics that may or may not be at the center of the posts on /r/LandLordLove, when in fact, a lot of the users are posting virtually genuine legal problems they're having with landlords, muddling the betoken entirely. When your whole online community is defined past Mao-posting though, what do you look?

At the end of the mean solar day, it all comes back to the memes. Although Mao-posting isn't rampant on /r/LandLordLove, it is popular when information technology happens. Information technology'due south the most extreme posts that tend to become the nigh upvotes, and the aforementioned goes for /r/LoveForLandlords when they roleplay as evil landlords. /r/LoveForLandlords has gained a significant fanbase by reducing the critical landlord community's image on Reddit to that of a mean communist protestor and Mao-poster, reducing them to a combatable level and opening them up for retaliation from right-leaning trolls far and wide. In each instance, extremism is both communities' greatest weapon and weakness, and information technology's the reason neither matters in the yard scheme of things.

/r/Landlord was created in 2008. It boasts over 47,000 members and is a infinite for landlords and tenants to come up together and post about anything related to landlording. The moderators actively ban trolls and discourage nonsense later on being raided before, and offer a identify for landlords to talk both professionally and more casually.

Browsing through the posts lets you lot see a more human being side of the argument. One of the top posts on the site comes from a landlord suspending hire due to COVID-19, receiving praise in the comments for representing landlords positively. Like many things, the reality behind Reddit'southward landlord war is a lot more grey than what'southward represented. It'south more fun and tempting for a lot of people to accept a side and go farthermost, but it doesn't really help anyone's bespeak. In that location are absolutely problems with landlording, just they go a lot deeper than net trolls dwell.

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Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/meme-insider/mao-vs-landchads-deconstructing-reddits-war-on-landlords

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