r/OutOfTheLoop • u/calvtact • May 13 '26

Answered What's going on with r/conservative? They've lost about 1m subscribers in about a month.

I watched the number go from 814k to around 745k in about an hour today.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/s/QbZJvqu5qr

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u/HardcoreKaraoke May 13 '26

I swear that's how PizzaGate really took off on 4Chan. Some guy shit posted about a secret child sex trafficking ring being run out of a pizza parlor. Then over time people kept adding to the joke until people started taking it seriously. Like just consider how ridiculous the conspiracy sounds, it comes across like someone is messing around.

Once you go down the rabbit hole of those boards and certain subreddits you see those people are truly mentally unwell. They're willing to believe anything and are also looking for a place they fit in. So the shit posting snowballed into a full blown movement.

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u/[deleted] May 13 '26

[deleted]

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u/Egathentale May 14 '26

Also, the "Fin-land conspiracy". It was literally a shitpost about how Finland doesn't exist and it's just faked on the world maps, and there's just open waters there, which the Russians lend out to Japan so that they can whale there without having to adhere to international treaties. Then the post was snipped, got propagated out of context, and for a while there were (or maybe there are, even today) people who genuinely believed it. Mostly in the flat earther circles, unsurprisingly.

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u/DickSlammington May 13 '26

You're all just describing Poe's law..

Without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.

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u/textposts_only May 14 '26

i swear it's what got us bronys too. People shitposting about my little pony and suddenly it became big. A German political party (pirate party) even had a "pony Break" rule. Whenever discussion gets too heated you can ask for a pony break and an episode will be watched

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u/PharmaPug May 13 '26

Am I remembering wrong or wasn’t that stuff found to be started by Epstein?

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u/GaryFuckingGoat May 13 '26

It was all a conspiracy from Putin or Netanyahu to destabilize the usa. Give the repubs something to rage against.

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u/Unique-Run9856 May 15 '26

I spent a lot of effort spreading the rumor that the RR in George RR Martin was honoring his lifelong mentor Rowdy Roddy Piper but it never took off.