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Tech Monday, February 11th 2013 at 12:40 pm

Upvote: William Shatner Calls Reddit on Racist/Sexist Posts, Does So on Reddit

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We love Reddit here at Geekosystem, but sometimes the deep, dark recesses of the site can get a little frightening due to racist, sexist, or otherwise abusive posts and the championing thereof. One man has chosen to boldly go where many have gone before and complained about the site’s offensive content, but when that man is William Shatner, people listen.

The comments came on Reddit’s /r/ideasfortheadmins section where Shatner wrote:

The unsavory aspects still exist – I am apalled[sic. Everybody makes mistakes. Even Shatner] by some of the immature, horrifically racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnic… etc.. posts that are just ignored here. Why are these accounts still active? While Reddit has done well in getting interest from the mainstream I just wonder if by allowing these children to run rampant and post whatever they feel will cause the most collateral damage if Reddit is biting off it’s own nose in taking that step to become a mainstream community.

That being said, I’m still new here. That’s been my observation in my short time here and I could be wrong. MBB

There’s no question that the darker parts of Reddit are a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but short of a serious implementation of strict usage policies, I don’t think there’s anything to be done. If you give racist people a public forum, they’re going to use it say racist things. If you delete their accounts to your free website, they will make a new account. I’m simply saying that racism, uh, finds a way.

Personally, I’d rather just navigate around the filth than see Reddit try to crack down on what people use the site for. As for Shatner, it looks like his stance is clear. When the accumulated filth of all of Reddit’s sexist and racist posts foams up about its waist, all the trolls and spammers will look up and shout, “Save us!”…

…and Shatner will look down and whisper, “No.”

(Reddit via Business Insider, image via Gage Skidmore)

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  • http://www.facebook.com/briancmckinley Brian C McKinley

    I don’t think Shatner understands the culture. It’s like going to a Star Trek convention dresses like Luke skywaler. I’m not a reddit fan at all, but I understand they do their thing and many of the taboos of the real world are alive and well there. Shatner should play a MMOG and navigate the smut and racism there. It’s a cultural thing. He needs to adapt, not the other way around.

  • Gord

    Fuck Shatner. I was once at a comic convention in Calgary, where he was the star of the show. We were right beside the zone area reserved for him, because the convention had set up a costume contest there. Shatner complained about the contest being on that side of him. He wanted it moved to the opposite side. The kicker was that it was in the main hallway of the arena, and to move to the other side, he wanted us to walk all the way around the entire arena to get to that other side, rather than just letting us walk 100 meters through his “personal bubble”. The second kicker was that after we moved, we immediately went on stage through the place his section connected to, so over 100 people walking around the arena was now pointless.

  • Jack Bond

    Hah. He should see 4chan. He might just hate Anonymous as much as I do.

  • Enthusiast

    +1 on the Rorschach reference.

  • Sargon

    I think reddit is an open forum to express what ever you want. Good and bad. It is the ultimate expression of freedom of speech on the internet. If you don’t like parts of it, you don’t have to see it. If you don’t like any of it – no one forces you to go there.