[RECAP] Unibanned! A recap of the fallout of reddit's poster child being banned. (self.SubredditDrama)
SubredditDrama
1871 ups - 0 downs = 1871 votes
Unidan is one of reddit's most popular users, well known for his knowledge about animals and his sickeningly happy attitude. Before yesterday he was ranked at the second highest comment karma of all time as archived here.
On Wednesday, Unidan gets into a slapfight about animal terminology. The argument itself is pretty inane, but revolvs around referring to jackdaws as crows. Unidan is a biologist who specifically researches crows, so this apparently stikes a nerve. This is posted to /r/subredditdrama and he shows up himself in the thread, and everything seems to be all in good fun.
A couple of hours later, Unidan is shadowbanned. Nobody knows why, including himself. He sends this message to fellow moderator /u/preggit:
>Apparently you have been shadowbanned. :( I really hope it was a mistake. Do you have any idea what's going on?
>from Unidan[M] via /r/babyelephantgifs/ sent 6 minutes ago Haha, truly no idea, I sent a message to the admins as I'm a bit confused.
Speculations abound, with news of the ban even making its way to /r/conspiracy. There is zero speculation about anything other than "unidan was a dick" at this point so it's more of a preemptive "this will probably turn out to be jews". Can't hurt to be prepared!
There are two prevailing theories about his banning.
SRD thinks that because he was participating in both the crow thread and the SRD thread he was caught by a bot that thought he was brigading.
>Unidan was posting in both the original crows vs. jackdaws thread and the SRD thread that was started about it. He probably clicked the np link back to the original thread from the SRD thread, switched over to normal participation reddit to say something in the original thread and got in trouble by a bot for it or something. They'll probably reverse the ban when they realize he was already part of the original thread.
>Yeah, there was a ton of pissing all over that thread. A lot of people probably got justifiably banned and unidan got caught in the dragnet.
>I feel like there's gotta be a ban-bot. So many users get Bob'd then re-instated after ~24hrs. Likely he just tripped that and he'll be back in a couple of days.
/r/adviceanimals thinks that he was banned for, uh, getting too angry and thinks it's somehow the fault of the teenage girl he was arguing with. So they immediately deploy le reddit armey on her. All of her posts are downvoted below -100 points. A choice quote:
>She's just a teenage girl.
> >Imagine that you are a bull-headed ignorant teenage girl. If nobody is able to teach you how to reason, won't you just become a bull-headed ignorant woman?
That's right folks, the reddit army is here to fight for reason!
[SRD discussion] (http://np.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/2c6ixt/uecka6sentirecommenthistorybrigaded_after/)
For anyone concerned about the brigadee's account being ruined, cupcake is on the case to deal with and presumably ban some expert memers. Extra comment chain where she says that while the karma cannot be reset, she'll look into removing the limits on /u/Ecka6's accounts.
Cupcake eventually clocks in and brings an explanation with her. Unidan was Unibanned for blatant, consistent vote manipulation. SRD discussion
>He was caught using a number of alternate accounts to downvote people he was arguing with, upvote his own submissions and comments, and downvote submissions made around the same time he posted his own so that he got even more of an artificial popularity boost. It was some pretty blatant vote manipulation, which is against our site rules.
Unidan finally shows up under a new account to explain himself and admits his wrongdoing:
>Unidan here! Completely true, mainly used to give my submissions a small boost (I had five "vote alts") when things were in the new list, or to vote on stuff when I guess I got too hot-headed. It was a really stupid move on my part, and I feel pretty bad about it, especially because it's entirely unnecessary. Completely understandable catch on the side of the admins, so good work for them! I've already deleted the accounts and I won't be doing that again, obviously. I always knew I'd go down in a hail of crows, but who knew it'd be on the internet?
This comment is linked to, as totes reveals, by worstof and bestof. The bestof discussion is the interesting one, as UnidanX, reddit's darling boy turned pariah, shows up to defend himself.
>The alts were made well over a year ago, and the only times I'd really use them were to get submissions out of the 'new' queue and to hide comments that were essentially misinformation.
His bullshit is called pretty quickly with an admin quote:
>He was caught using a number of alternate accounts to downvote people he was arguing with, upvote his own submissions and comments, and downvote submissions made around the same time he posted his own so that he got even more of an artificial popularity boost.
Interestingly, before the bestof debacle his posts were upvoted. This comment pretty accurately summarizes reddit's sudden reversal in opinion:
>There's a real lofty feel to his confession: "...to hide comments that were essentially misinformation." Can you smell the 'I did it all for education!'? Reddit celebrity went to his head. It wasn't "pretty dumb," Unidan... it was more like fucking embarrassing, a grown man pulling this shit.
Unidan gives up the ghost:
>I completely agree with what the admin wrote, in the reply I say that's completely true! It was a shitty thing to do, completely.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, /r/adviceanimals is now simultaneously brigading Unidan's new account and the lady from the original crow post. SRD discussion
Unidan ventures into /r/TIFU to either apologize or continue to whore for attention, depending on if you're Unidan or anyone else. /r/TUFU isn't having it at all, and delivers an amazing smackdown.
Please tell me if there is anything I missed! There's lots of spin-off drama from /r/adviceanimals that I have a feeling will develop into its own dramawave.
Added after the fact:
/r/conspiracy mention, cupcake's comments about /u/Ecka6
1352 comments submitted at 18:50:39 on Jul 31, 2014 by tha_real_stabulous
Nowhere in the mess that /u/unidanx is posting do I feel any guilt/remorse/humility. He is not apologizing, he doesn't feel bad for tricking a system in order to be internet-famous. He feels bad he got caught. Thats all.
>Unidan here! Completely true, mainly used to give my submissions a small boost (I had five "vote alts") when things were in the new list, or to vote on stuff when I guess I got too hot-headed. It was a really stupid move on my part, and I feel pretty bad about it, especially because it's entirely unnecessary. Completely understandable catch on the side of the admins, so good work for them! I've already deleted the accounts and I won't be doing that again, obviously. I always knew I'd go down in a hail of crows, but who knew it'd be on the internet?
He keeps repeating this, emphasizing that it was harmless, a couple up votes to help his submissions get out of the new list (which is still fucking gaming the system). But when he gets called out that he was also actively trying to censor opinions against him and cut down competitions of his submissions, he just casually says "Oh yeah I did that too! Unidan Here! Oops!" He only apologize for the shits people are calling him out for. And even afterwards in the other subreddits where people are not aware of all that meta-drama, he reverts back to the "It was only a couple upvotes!".
For someone who made fun of all the attention he got and participating in the /r/circlejerk jokes, he's the one that is the most fixated about his "fame". He could've just let the dust settle down, start again on another account and get away from the fame, it was the perfect opportunity. But no, he only cares about dat karma and is posting nonstop with his new account.
The guy has no ethics, shows no remorse in gaming the system to have his opinion appear more popular and was deliberately trying to silence diverging opinions because they were "wrong", or similar posts at the same time. This guy is a scientist? It really shows poorly on his work ethics, ~~and I hope it affects him in real life~~ (Harsh comment that was spur of the moment, I don't really want a guy to lose his job or get his life fucked over that). He showed that he is not above gaming the system to show is opinion is right, shows that he is biased in his opinion (downvote people he was arguing with). Tell me a guy like that can be trusted not to cheat on his research result to get the data to lean in his favour, and be able to have a genuine scientific debate, because hey, if he deems you are wrong, he'll try to silence you! Not saying that he is or implying that he is, only that this incident is casting a big shadow on the value of his word and his ethic.
And before you say "It was only 5 upvotes, no big deal", he acknowledged that he knew it had weight. And if I recall correctly, quckmeme got banned site wide for vote manipulation and they weren't using a lot more alts.
Edit: Formatting and clarifications, Sorry for the poor english. Also, after seeing what my post looks like, holy shit I am taking this too seriously, but I believe with reasons since it not only affects reddit but also the scientific community.
Edit 2:
>Tell me a guy like that can be trusted not to cheat on his research result to get the data to lean in his favour, and be able to have a genuine scientific debate, because hey, if he deems you are wrong, he'll try to silence you! Not saying that he is or implying that he is, only that this incident is casting a big shadow on the value of his word and his ethic.
Sorry, I meant that what he did proved he is not above those tactics and that it casts a doubt over his work ethics. I meant to do a parallel of what he did here and what those actions could be in the research field. I didn't want to imply that he IS doing those things
> This guy is a scientist?
Not really. Unidan is probably what would normally be called a doctoral student. Technically he a doctoral candidate, which is basically the same thing. Lets examine the notable evidence of /u/unidan:
Four of these six points have come as a direct result of his status as /u/unidan on Reddit. The guy played reddit really really hard. Now Reddit looks stupid because it's go to guy was actually a man child and everyone feels dumb.
Doctoral students in the sciences are scientists. Infact, they do the vast majority of the total science done. Any other claim is bullshit. I agree with your man child comment though.
> Doctoral students in the sciences are scientists. Infact, they do the vast majority of the total science done. Any other claim is bullshit.
A huge number of doctoral students in the sciences only work to the instruction of their supervisor. This is why external examination is required after submission of the dissertation. /u/unidan acted like he was Carl Sagan. The guy was a PhD candidate, in academic terms this is pretty close to the bottom of the ladder.
I'm a phd candidate. Masters students, undergrads in REUs? Yes, they work under the instruction of a supervisor completly. PhD students, in order to graduate, are expected to demonstrate that they are capable of working independently. Not all of them do, but in my experience most of them do. In any event, that doesn't make them not scientists by any definition. Tell me, is your experience in academia different? How many students have you graduated to know different? What privileged position do you hold that makes you feel like you can put the vast majority of the people working in science in the position of 'non-scientist'?
> PhD students, in order to graduate, are expected to demonstrate that they are capable of working independently. Not all of them do, but in my experience most of them do.
The fact that in your experience most people are capable of demonstrating the core abiility required to obtain a PhD doesn't worry you at all?
> Tell me, is your experience in academia different?
Yes, my experience is that some countries allow PhD students to fail, others not so much. As you say the majority pass.
> What privileged position do you hold that makes you feel like you can put the vast majority of the people working in science in the position of 'non-scientist'?
Where I live a qualification called the habilitation is generally required to talk down to other people working in academia (I don't have one at the moment).
Not the guy you're responding to but the program I'm about to start at accepted 8 candidates. They interviewed about 30 and rejected many many more without an interview based on credentials alone. If you get to the point where you're actually in the lab then there's a good chance you're going to go the distance because you've already shown that you're the type that can handle the rigors of academic research. Even so, the rate of candidates "mastering out" is approximately 25%.
So what qualification DO you have?
Fooookin more than you have m8. You know how you can tell? Because I'm not impressed by your PhD candidacy. At all. Look how you started that comment back there:
> I'm a phd candidate.
Like you expected people to be impressed by your big brain. When you qualify are you going to have your title changed on everything to Dr? Remember how you thought a degree was impressive, then you got one. Then you found out you weren't so clever after all. The same thing continues all the way up, and it's rife with dickheads like you.
I don't want you to be impressed with my degree, I wanted you to know I was pissed off that you're saying I'm not a scientist. It's necessary for context of the discussion. I have my own life experiences to validate my self confidence - the internet isn't the place to find that kind of thing.
In any event, you seem to have your own issues here, so I will just say that a scientist is someone who seeks truth from empirical data, and does so at a level that can contribute to understanding at a level that is useful to others. That's it. You don't need a degree to be one, it's a philosophy. Plenty of people have it before they finish undergrad, and some people don't have it when they finish their PhD, as you say.
/r/SubredditDramaDrama
But to be honest I know plenty of PhD candidates who might not be considered scientists. Some who might. You, personally, really need to put less weight on labels. I know that can be hard when you've spent so long trying to achieve something that leave many disillusioned and sad with their choice. But come on dude, stop acting like a 5 year old.
> Fooookin more than you have m8.
Sure...lol
/u/moosetoberfest said he's a PhD candidate. You realise that means that if I have a PhD I am more qualified than him? So since to you /u/pyrecarp and /u/moosetoberfest are both random reddit users why on earth would you think I am less qualified than him?
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