A subreddit for makeup aficionados has been embroiled in a cataclysmic drama Insider reports, sparked by a user named Katy, made worse by moderators who tripped on their own supply and shut down the entire thing. This is a story about fake selfies, made-up rules, deception, abuse of power, and deeply niche memes. Let’s dive in.
The beef: primarily between Katy, a user who at one point probably enjoyed perusing the subreddit r/MakeupAddiction, and the subreddit’s eight moderators, who banned Katy for two weeks over something completely asinine, and then turned around banned themselves, potentially forever. Now, no one can comment or post, because no one is around to moderate.
It all started when Katy pointed out that another user—who posts under the name anne-of-avonlea—broke the rules by posting someone else’s selfie as her own. (She deleted it, but there are receipts.)
The moderators banned Katy, but she insisted that she meant no harm. Kicked out of the garden of Eden, Katy went over r/muacirclejerk, a parody of r/MakeupAddiction, to tell her side of the story:
I’m sure most of y’all missed the late night drama, but last night someone posted a fresh-faced look, and it was at over 500 upvotes when I saw it. Some frozen sauce, since she deleted it. I legitimately thought that the look was cute, so I went to her post history to see if she had any other makeup looks I could admire, and instead found very recent posts and comments with pictures of “her” that did not look anything like the picture she had posted in r/MakeupAddiction. So, of course, I posted the contradicting evidence in the comments (the top comment in the frozen sauce, also copied and pasted it here, since my edits were not frozen), and she deleted the post almost immediately.
The r/MakeupAddiction moderators’ reasons for banning Katy kept changing growing more and more nonsensical: first, they said that “digging through a user’s post history” was against Reddit’s terms of service, and later they accused her using “impersonat[ing] moderators” and “using antisocial language.” Meanwhile, plenty of users sided with Katy and eventually, maybe out of embarrassment, the moderators all stepped down. The memes were swift:
Instead, they decided that no one else should have access to this community they built if they could not use their privileges. Why not install some new moderators? Why not just apologize and shut up? Instead, Katy pointed out to Insider, a new subreddit has popped up, out of r/MakeupAddiction’s ashes, like a shiny, feathery phoenix: r/MakeupLounge. Sounds chill. If the old moderators get a grip, maybe they should join.