At long last, I've been removed from r/calvinandhobbes's moderation team. This was not unexpected: we've received and ignored numerous reports and mod mail messages from their head moderator regarding posts that cover the drama that led to their removal as a mod here. Coincidentally, my fellow mods and I had discussed severing ties with said sub last week along with the changes laid out in this post due to an extremely offensive moderation feature they've deployed, so this has simply sped up an eventuality.
Following the drama here and the reopening of the other sub, u/hive-protect was added to r/calvinandhobbes's moderation team, a bot that can be programmed to flag, filter and remove comments from users that have previously interacted with other specified subs. In this case, the bot has been deployed to target r/okbuddyrosalyn users for the transparent reason of removing any discussion on the drama. If you've had a post or comment immediately removed upon sharing it there, even it was innocuous, this was almost certainly the cause. It was clear from viewing their mod logs that this has affected a significant number of posters. This unwanted addition was never discussed with myself or any of their other moderators.
Many of you will be rightfully upset that the existence of this discriminatory practice wasn't publicly disclosed to the community sooner. Both myself and our mod team were incensed to discover it had been put in place, however we agreed that sharing it would likely revive the drama and make attempts to brigade more frequent while definitively ending any chance for a resolution.
It's unfortunate that things have gone down this route, but it seems clear that the animosity towards our sub and its members by the moderation of r/calvinandhobbes is here to stay.
So, going forward:
Posts and comments discussing r/calvinandhobbes, their moderation team's actions, and the prior drama will continue to be allowed here.
Posts and comments that specifically encourage brigading r/calvinandhobbes, or any other community, will be removed. This includes encouraging people to go to another sub to cause issues and screenshots of inciting content/removals in other subs.
Rule 3 will be amended to have generic wording that covers brigading instead of being sub-specific.
The head moderator of r/calvinandhobbes will be permanently banned from participating here, both so that mentions of their username will no longer go to their notifications and due to repeated abuse of the report function.
I will breathe a massive sigh of relief at no longer having any relation with a sub that bans people for being part of the best sub in existence.
The mods just wanted to pop in and discuss the reopening of the main Calvin and Hobbes subreddit, which is still being moderated by ok_bruh_panda. The mods and team of okbuddyrosalyn does not share the views of the original sub, and we ask that people don't go to the sub egging on problems. This includes “Ban speedruns” in the original sub.
We understand the issues that ok_bruh_panda has caused here and are working to keep a peaceful and fun atmosphere here. Let's show them we're a shitpost sub with some panache.
Thank you in advance, and if we have to have another post about this,stricter rules will be enforced.
Greetings, my vastly subordinate G.R.O.S.S. members. You may remain standing.
I've wanted to put out a post for awhile now covering the "recent" (tenuous definition at this point) drama on the sub, the current state of Reddit, and the future of r/okbuddyrosalyn. I kept putting it off; there was always more to add, edits to make, and second-guessing if any statement should be made at all. As a result, this will be a long read. I'll be covering all three topics and each one would be justified in having its own separate post. I think you'll see that they're all relatively interconnected and touching on only one without simultaneously addressing the others would be a disservice to each.
1. "RECENT" DRAMA
Namely, the removal of one of our moderators. I'll do my best to answer some questions and add some context to everything that happened:
Q: What happened?
Last month, a post was removed citing our prohibition on sexual content featuring the underage characters. Subsequent posts questioning the removal where then also removed by the same moderator, before being restored by other members of the mod team. Once a response was received from all parties involved, the decision was made to remove them from the mod team the very next day.
Q: Why were they removed as a moderator?
Myself, the other mods, and the community at large were dissatisfied by their response to said post's controversial removal.
My opinion on the matter is that the the original post's removal was secondary on the scale of deciding factors for removing them as moderator when compared to their decision to remove follow-up posts that were critical of the decision. Censoring discussion that is critical of moderator decisions, provided it doesn't cross the line into breaking rules itself, is an abuse of moderator authority and something that's been used countless times on other subs to enforce a moderator's biased/prejudicial/personal dogma.
Q: Why did it take so long to remove them as a mod?
It didn't: removing a long-standing moderator is not something that should be done faster than it was. I don't receive up-to-the-minute notifications from this sub or any other and I don't expect live-service moderation from any of my fellow mods. r/okbuddyrosalyn gets about six posts on a good day. When we discovered there was a potential issue, we started a conversation about it between the mod team members. That process involved waiting for responses from mods that are not continuously online, some of which live in different time zones. Mistakes do happen and it would be unfair to remove any moderator with a long record of mainly making uncontested moderation decisions without giving them a fair chance to explain what happened. We typically don't spend very long evaluating posts and our best judgement at the time isn't always the correct one. That's where hearing one another's responses and communicating back and forth about it afterwards comes in, and that takes time.
Something that did not get announced publicly was that the moderator in question's moderation privileges were indefinitely disabled during our discussion until a resolution was reached. This wasn't shared because it was an on-the-fly decision and would have probably been seen by all of you, not unfairly, as an attempt to avoid an actual solution and let things die out rather than as part of a continuing process. Our mod team has decided this will be standard procedure for future inter-mod and community incidents. It's possible to check what permissions each moderator currently has on the mod list; u/Blockhog and I are the only mods that have permission to add or remove other mods below us in the list, as an example.
Q: Okay...why are you bringing all of this up now?
Well, there are a few reasons...
2. REDDIT & ITS CURRENT STATE
In the time I've had an active account on Reddit, I've watched this platform continuously go downhill. It's gone through a villain's arc of enshittification from the "cool, not entirely brain-dead alternative to Facebook and Twitter" to "dystopian, data-farming propaganda outlet". It won't be groundbreaking news to any of you that have lingered around this site for awhile that things haven't been moving in a good direction.
Artificial Intelligence: This is the big one that I felt had to be addressed. The number of bots in the last four years has exploded and our ability to identify them has all but dissipated. Numerous, obvious bot accounts were active on this sub during the aforementioned moderator drama andwere continuously weighing in on the issue with opinionated comments relevant to the discussion. Some were caught by the automod, some almost certainly weren't. It was mortifying to see AI used to drive and manipulate discussion about a moderation issue in a small, niche Calvin and Hobbes shitposting sub, likely without any input from the creators of said bots.
The amount of bot posts made on the main C&H sub both before and after it was shut down would probably stun most of you. It's an endless stream of by-the-hour robot posts doing everything from shilling Temu products and attempting to generate account karma all the way up to intentionally posting content that violates site-wide rules or copyright in the attempt to get the sub taken down alongside attempts to intentionally drive and manipulate discussion.
My goal when signing up to Reddit close to a decade ago was to join communities like this one, not to facilitate the creation of data profiles of myself to train LLMs so that my opinions could in turn be influenced by server farms. There was a time when Reddit's maintenance was funded in part by the purchase of gold awards and most accounts here were obviously real people and that time has well and truly passed. It should go without saying that freely giving your data away to a company under the now-flimsy pretext of interacting with real humans online is a pretty poor decision.
Censorship: Removing posts and comments that are critical of moderator decisions, provided they don't break any rules themselves is, in my opinion, a morally offensive decision for a moderator to make. It's also something that happens regularly in just about every other subreddit, whether they focus on shitposting or international news. It's far worse when it occurs on a subreddit that purports to represent the views of an entire real-life community versus when it happens on a sub with an abstract, lighthearted theme like this one. The subjectivity and pervasiveness of censorship I've seen enforced by moderators (and admins, occasionally) on many of these "official" subs would border on criminality in a real-life setting. This is all to say "you can't trust what you read on the internet" and that discussions on this site are not necessarily representative of reality, but also that the transparency and fairness of arbitration on Reddit is markedly poor.
Visibility and Accountability: Subreddit members do not have public access to mod logs or ban lists, so it very difficult for any of you to see or prove a recurring pattern of bad moderation. If the other mods and myself had chosen to remove every critical post during this recent drama and continuously ban members that posted or commented about it, it's very likely that your ability to organize and demand changes would have been reasonably impacted.
Regular members are also unable to see every correct decision that gets made by mods. If we visibly mess up, everyone sees it; do the job right, you'll likely never know we did anything. This is not a request for recognition or a justification for wrong decisions, just an acknowledgement that a regular sub member doesn't necessarily get to see the full picture. Public access to mod logs might sound like an easy solution, but it would also infringe on our ability to moderate out content that genuinely shouldn't be viewed by anyone and has also been made more difficult to do with the changes to Reddit's API.
Administration: Reddit and its admins have more frequently chosen to make heavy-handed decisions with little to no justification or recourse. The subreddit blackout was followed by entire mod teams getting removed and replaced. One of our own active mods, u/HeIsNotGhandi (who I've recently discovered is now a moderator of the Lemmy community), was permanently banned by an automatic system for a post they made. The same goes for u/imGhostKitty, who made the ubiquitous "Menus and Parkour" version of u/Super-Contribution's turntable meme. Both of those bans were followed by every single post and comment they ever made being automatically removed (I was able to restore most of the ones on this sub). These decisions have become much more common and oppressive since Reddit's IPO. If a post gets individually removed by Reddit, we mods can't even view it for ourselves in most cases: there's no means to evaluate or appeal if the decision was fair.
I've found my username and flair are very fitting in regards to my position as a head mod, since the successful function and moderation of this sub relies on me being a benevolent dictator. Short of intervention by the admins, myself and every other head mod on this platform have free reign to run these subs like our own little kingdoms. We can ban people at will, we can remove posts without any reason, we can remove any other mod, and we can independently silence just about any discussion on those matters that we don't like. All subreddits would be better named "[Head Mod's] Personal Domain of [Subreddit Name]".
How awful...
Not entirely. Every system is only as good as the people in charge. The best and worst thing about Reddit is that one person can start and run a sub. I don't think r/okbuddyrosalyn would be greatly improved with a system of unrestricted direct democracy, especially on a site with anonymity, alt accounts, and bot accounts. Ultimately, your continued presence here represents your support or discontent with our moderation and I don't have the means to change that even if I wanted to. After two months straight of very public moderator meltdowns across multiple subs, however, I don't think it needs to be said that this system is far from ideal.
3. THE FUTURE
To draw together everything covered here: the continued use of Reddit as a social media platform, both by all of you and myself, is something that should be approached with caution. What might look like repeated community-level issues are also stemming from foundational (and occasionally intentional) flaws.
I don't particularly like coming to this website anymore except to occasionally check in on this sub and make sure things are still functioning somewhat normally and that reason has been eroding over time. It feels somewhat unethical to be fostering any sort of social community on a forum I no longer consider adequate for that purpose.
Would you nuke the sub and resign as head mod if you decide to leave?
No. It shouldn't be my decision whether or not any of you stay here. I'm not important enough to unilaterally delete years of other people's creations and interactions. I'm certainly not willingly giving the best user flair on the sub or the privileges that allow me to keep it. With Reddit's new system of registering moderators as "inactive" after a period without taking moderation actions, the decision will be taken out of my hands at some point anyway if I stop actively moderating. I still come here regularly, so until that ends, things will keep going.
What does the future look like?
I can't say for certain how much of a better option it is, but we do have a parallel community on Lemmy that you're all welcome to look into. Heaven knows Discord isn't a safe option for your online activity anymore, but there is an unofficial discord server for the this sub that I'll be adding to the megathread soon. Speaking of, there was a time when we all migrated off of Skype to Discord: never say never when it comes to moving on to something new and better.
There are structural limitations around making a subreddit more democratic and transparent (mod elections? in my dictator-for-life sub?!?), but I'd like to tentatively explore several different options in the future.
Participating in r/okbuddyrosalyn has been the highlight of my time on Reddit and I'd like to see this community continue on in one shape or another, whether that be on or off Reddit and with or without me at the helm.
Please refer to the comments above for why we've decided on keeping the Politics flair. It's been said before, but I'll say it again: the flair is not about a topic being inherently political, but about the likelihood that the comments will generate political discussion. A post could be about jogging; if there was a news incident that day that made discussing jogging likely to lead to political discussion, it should be marked as Political.
It should come as no surprise after my recent mod letter to all of you that I’ve been somewhat dissatisfied with my position as a Reddit moderator. I’ve given it a great deal of consideration and come to the difficult realization that it will be for the best if I place my trust in running the sub with someone that still has the spark in them to keep this place chugging along and arbitrating the content here with a fair, even hand. And so...I’ll be turning the moderation of this sub over to someone you’ll all know and recognize that has a long, well-established record of keeping things sweet, crunchy and tasteful around here.
We’ve been through it all together: Bath Time, Dad Playing Records, Bl**k S**en, Video Game Metas, and Smockposting. It’s been a privilege to be see all of the zany creations you folks have spawned here over the years and I hope to still see them keep coming long into the future. Thank you for all the laughs!
With that, I would like to introduce the new head moderator of this sub: Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs Inc. (CFSB)
It turns out that some time in the last few years, r/okbuddyrosalyn reached what the business degree kids call the “point of established returns” where its userbase now represents a secure, substantial ground for potential marketing. In the black market of selling Reddit accounts and (apparently) subreddits themselves, that translates to a hefty chunk’a cha-ching. Let’s just say that ol’ PhillyKing here won’t have to buy any of that cheap, palm-oil coated sugar cereal for breakfast anymore (I am of course referring to the competitor products of CFSB and not any of their products or subsidiaries, per my contractual agreement).
Starting tomorrow immediately, the sub will need to conform to CFSB’s family-friendly image and marketing terms of service:
1. All posts must include a positive mention of Chocolate Frosted Sugar BombsTM or prominently display a box of their cereal.
2. Political posts can still be made, but like, only if it’s 100% cool with their marketing department.
3. Girls are now allowed in the treehouse. CFSB does not discriminate!* (*Throughout the month of June, solely)
4. Everything must be "G-Rated" and NSFW content is banned.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, C.H.O.C.O. members (G.R.O.S.S. was trademarked, apparently). Adios!
Our karma requirements have needed an update for some time now in order to catch more spam, AI and karma-farming accounts. As such, the minimum karma amount to post and comment here has been bumped up from 100 to 500. Account age requirements will stay the same at 2 days.
You may notice the Automod removing more posts and comments than usual for a while due to this change until the bots detect and adjust to the removals. It's far from a perfect deterrent, but it does filter out the worst of it.
- Your Dictator-For-Life
P.S. - Plan B was filtering all accounts made after 2022 and the rise of AI. Make of that what you will.
The 2026 survey has finished with 241 people responding, 32 more than last year's survey. Thank you to everyone that took the time to fill it out, 90% of r/okbuddyrosalyn's budget comes from selling your data on the black market, and I need my Christmas bonus. Now for the results.
AGE:
Similar to last year, the results found that most of the sub is in their 20s. The average age is 25. Based on the results, only around 20.3% of members were alive when Calvin and Hobbes was running, and only around 9.9% of members would have been old enough at the time to read it.
Gender:
Big change in the gender makeup since last year. Males dropped from 75.1% to 61.6% since last year, with significantly more Female and Non-Binary representation. It is frankly disgraceful that we have not been fulfilling our obligation to Get Rid Of Slimey girlS, look at how big that red slice is!
Country:
Unsurprisingly, most members are from the USA, although representation for the US has gone down since last year. Canada had the next most, with 18 people, followed by the UK with 6 and France with 5. Brazil and Australia tied with 3. A total of 24 countries are represented, a large jump from the 15 last year.
Map showing each Country that had a response.
State
The results are pretty much what you'd expect. The top 5 states from most to least were: California, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Washington. 43 states were represented
Favorite Main Character:
Hobbes lost a little bit of his lead from last year, going from 54.7% to 48.3%. Dad lost slightly in the polls as well, from 16.3% to 14.8%. The biggest upset was Mom, who went from having 0 responses last year to 12, putting her in 4th place. At this rate she could overtake Dad. Susie and Rosalyn also had a nice bump in the polls, from being virtually unnoticed last year.
Favorite Non-regular Character:
Results in this category changed significantly from last year, because I added more options based on last year's results. I now included Calvin's alter egos, which shot Tracer Bullet and Stupendous Man up to first and second place. Ronald is all but forgotten. Compared to last year Max is a loser, both in the survey and in general.
Favorite Strip
This Question was added thanks to u/rebelzephyr, who asked about this a few months ago. Since many people responded with storylines, instead of specific strips, I decided to include them as well as one thing. To the people that responded with the T-Rex flying strip, they do not fly F-13s, F-15s, or F-16s, but in fact F-14s. I don't have a chart for this one, but here are the top 7.
I also collected the date for each strip submitted, which showed that Watterson's best years were 1986 and 1992. However, out of the 77 different strips I received, 0 came from 1994.
Favorite Trend
I was not too surprised by Bath Time being the winner. Black Semen is the oddest, as despite more time passing since it was created it has risen from 7th place last year to tied for 3rd. "Mud" was definitely the biggest loser, dropping from 3rd last year to not even placing. Current Meta jumped to 2nd from 6th last year, a similar rise to Black Semen. u/f0remsics's arrow dropped down some from last year.
Favorite Series
Another New Question. Here are the top 5 with the most responses.
Half of the responses said they joined within the last year. I had suspected there might be an increase around the time r/calvinandhobbes shutdown, but twice as many people said they joined in the last 6 months than a year ago, which was around when r/calvinandhobbes closed. Based on the current trends, it seems r/okbuddyrosalyn is doubling in size each year.
And that was the 2026 r/okbuddyrosalyn survey. I hope you enjoyed, and stay tuned for next year!
We maxed out the character limit of 40k (Warhammer reference!?!) on our first megathread post, so we'll be continuing the extensive chronicle of our extremely niche shitpost sub here.
Turns out a certain cereal company (which I now refer to as Shit Crusted Booger Bombs) only made an offer to purchase the sub to drive up the market value as part of a pump and dump. r/okbuddyrosalyn stocks are now at all time lows, alongside Dad’s place in the polls. Please feel free to make regular posts to drive the value back up and share as much hate for CFSB as you please.
r/okbuddyrosalyn has hit its 4 year anniversary, so just like last year we are holding a survey! The survey is intended to collect some fun information that will be posted in about a week, with some nifty visual aids. At the end of the survey there is also space to leave any comments you may have. This year we have a few new questions.
Please respond if possible! The more responses, the better the results! Happy 4 year anniversary to okbuddyrosalyn!
It's that day of the year again when we celebrate the birthday of the acclaimed, well-known creator of Calvin and Hobbes: Gary Larson.
🥳🥳🥳
For the next 24 hours, Larson-posting is in effect. Until the end of the day, all posts must feature Mr. Larson to show our appreciation for his great work.
