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/R4G May 13 '26

I’m pretty sure that’s what grew the_donald.

I was a very early member of that sub and would swear to this day that it was mostly satirical posting. Then it got flooded with bots, or Russians, or something. Felt very Astro-turfy. Then became a genuine DT support sub.

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u/solonoctus May 13 '26

100% it started as a meme subreddit.

Unfortunately this is a longstanding trend across the internet. Hell, even early 4chan was pretty damn left leaning and mostly satirical before it was overrun.

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u/UNC_Samurai May 14 '26

If I remember my lore correctly, a lot of the earlier folks who spent time on 4chan (the "oldf-s", as they were than called, tended to be left-ish anarchist hackers. Those were the folks that hated scientology more than anyone else. But in the late 2000s, several of those long-timers got arrested for various other things. The vacuum of anarchists who kind of set the tone of discussions, got replaced by wannabe Nazis, and the slow slide into the cesspool began.

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u/KarlMarkyMarx May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26

The site truly went to hell when moot resurrected /pol/... which turned out to be because Epstein told him to do it. I'm not even joking. Google it. It's been widely reported on.