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Review of Mod Conspiracy Week – the space between Serial 10 and 11

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Review of Mod Conspiracy Week – the space between Serial 10 and 11

In hindsight, the title of last week’s episode, The Best Defence is a Good Defence was oddly prescient of the mood of the subreddit over the following days, especially if you were a moderator. That Sarah Koenig…

Episode 10 in Review

The episode itself proved that it’s not safe to pick a villain in this tale. No sooner had we latched onto Adnan’s attorney Christina Guiterrez as the main culprit, for her assumed incompetence, Sarah Koenig snatched away our feeling of smug self-satisfaction by giving us a more balanced account of the legal proceedings. The result: you probably would have preferred CG to represent you before 1998, but her conduct probably wasn’t enough to make an argument for ineffective representation. More users appeared reconciled to the inevitability, though perhaps not the correctness, of Adnan’s conviction.

Unsurprisingly for a bunch of audiophiles, who after 10 weeks have learned nothing about relevant vs irrelevant considerations in the law, the strongest criticism of CG was reserved for her voice.

This, finally, was also the episode in which the racial aspects of the case were raised, leading to many interesting, and sometimes only partially informed discussions, about whether a jury would be better able to cast aside deeply ingrained historically-based racism or their easily-provoked suspicions based on cultural stereotypes? Finally u/OneloveAk47 presented a Korean perspective in this lyrical and beautiful contemplation on dreams, the Ariran Pass (아리랑 고개), and the concept of Han. Followed by the excellently named u/JohnnyCakeBeGood who gave a much more nuanced picture of the Johnnycake Muslim community in 1999, which somehow seemed to win the approval of both sides of the pro/anti-Adnan camps.

This was also the episode which delivered the least amount of new material to obsess over, which perhaps caused the following week to play out as it did.

After Episode 10 – Conspiracies on the Sub

This week was a week of conspiracies – conspiracies by the moderators against the sub. It was an appropriate week in which to take the psychopath test. Let me outline the crimes:

The No Fun Party

Because moderating gets boring if all you get to see are the worst jokes in the report queue, we debated whether to ban all memes. While some of us (me) are up for constant unannounced mayhem, others (/u/jakeprops and everyone else) prefer to abide by the rules of natural justice.

My (not so brilliant) solution: create a poll whose outcome was not at all unexpected. That is, two smaller groups diametrically opposed and a larger group in the middle who could mostly take it or leave it (sound familiar?).

The main practical result: moderators accused of bringing in the Third Reich and a vengeful meme lover who has taken reporting every single link so it clogs up the mod queue (in the tradition of this sub, that last part is pure unfounded speculation). Needless to say, we no longer care about the memes and I couldn’t even tell you what the numbers were.

The Great Guardian Mess

A throwaway comment by Adnan’s brother in the excellent Guardian piece on the effects of the case on the Syed family appeared to whip a number of you into a speculative frenzy mostly about Rabia’s assumed clandestine links with the moderators. [Fun fact: Rabia does not appear nor is mentioned in the interview].

After finally catching up to the drama, we (the moderators) watched in part bemused and in part alarmed before deciding, in a chain letter way, it was probably best to work out who said what, to whom and when and perhaps let someone know something.

At great cost to our personal lives and across half a planet and many time zones, we finally managed to cobble something sufficient bland together that would, like every media statement, say as little as possible in the most boring way possible (my speciality). Quite expectedly, the result was an even bigger feeding frenzy of recriminations and suspicions. My personal view about the drama is buried deep in the thread (and not reflective of the views of my fellow moderators). It has become my favourite meta thread and may remain so.

The Cluttered Design Conspiracy

Though I don’t like to name names, the third conspiracy by the mods is solely the result of u/WTFsherlock’s obsession with the precious meme flair. Tinkering ceaselessly with categories and colour schemes wasn’t enough. It was decided that all submissions MUST be flaired. I shouldn’t overstate wtfsherlock’s responsibility – I think we all heartily agree, as it’s now even easier to ignore memes. Frankly, we didn’t like to see u/WTFsherlock waste precious time on flairing things, so we were more than happy. Plus, during the Christmas season, the colours seem very festive.

However, it is clear that we do not care about the mobile users or the post-hipster community who have re-embraced minimalism and hate the clutter. Sorry, but the FlairBot is here to stay!

The Greatest Conspiracy of Them All

The most egregious example of a covert operation was in fact my fellow moderators’ conspiracy against me! Only in hindsight and while writing this did it become clear, all of the shenanigans above were no more than a clever plot to ruin the sample size of my weekly poll! The various ‘urgent’ stickys have dislodged the episode discussion and hidden the poll link in plain sight. I feel like I’m in the last scene of the Usual Suspects! Damn you Kayzer Sosze (aka u/JakeProps). (No, I didn't get an unusually high result on the psychopath test, really).

All I can say, unless it is already Thursday, 6 AM in Baltimore, it’s not too late to VOTE HERE

Nominees for Subredditors of Conspiracy Week

Heroes of the Week: We finally discovered that our sub does have its own complement of the traditional owners of reddit, the maths and science nerds. Where, you ask? Here: Schroedinger's Jay and here 127 Dons. A warning to crime obsessives: you won’t understand the comments. Don’t even try.

Less than 12 hours to go! Happy 11th of December!

Posted Dec 10, 2014, 10:09 PM UTC · edited

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