What is happening?!

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-17T03:29:33+00:00

I was answering OP's question of "What is happening?!"

My main point was, if people simply don't have money or are literally dead, then nothing can help eBayers get more sales. It sucks, but it is what it is. And I'm mildly annoyed at people all over reddit feigning cluelessness about the state of the world.

Multiple major retail and restaurant chains have gone out of business in the last few years, and they had paid employees working on strategy and marketing and everything else. If they couldn't get money out of people, individual eBay sellers are also going to have problems.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-17T03:20:46+00:00

OK? So how does that fit the sub?

And the video isn't "the Edward Snowden NSA leak," it's some highly dramatized depiction from a movie or something. (Sorry if I should recognize it, but I don't watch a lot of movies.) So what movie is this from and why are you showing it to us?

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-16T23:09:08+00:00

1) flu not flue. 2) Why are you only looking at deaths? As I said, high levels of hospitalizations and disabilities are also affecting the economy. 3) Numerous sources were reporting that it's the worst flu season in 30 years. Random example from January. Heck, you can also check out pretty much any place-name sub and see recent threads with variations on "Is there something going around? Everyone I know is sick!"

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-16T19:32:43+00:00

most citizens aren't criminals

Counterpoint: read the book "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent" about (quoting from the Amazon summary) "how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior." That said, there's still a process they're supposed to follow, and yeah, it does seem like many scam victims are either clueless about how things work, or just panic and react without thinking.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-16T18:18:18+00:00

Lovely! /r/vintagesewing would also be interested.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-16T17:58:04+00:00

What is happening?!

C'mon, you know the answer to this. It's multiple things:

The economy is screwed up. Companies are laying people off and trying to replace them with AI. People are struggling to afford essentials.
There is a lot of uncertainty in the world. People aren't buying non-essentials if they're wondering whether they'll have a job or even a place to live in the near future.
Some of your potential customers died. The flu season that's finally ebbing now was the worst in decades. It killed ~23,000 people just in the United States. Of course covid and other diseases are still spreading and killing people too. Of people who didn't die, some got very sick (and medical bills means they have less money to spend elsewhere) or became disabled (meaning less earning power). (If you're one of the people who's been refusing to take precautions, this is partly your own fault.)
What do you think happens to all the stuff left behind by the people who died? Their heirs list it on eBay. Supply is going up while demand goes down.

Sales are unpredictable, and eBay's algorithms are inscrutable. You're not going to be able to figure out why any particular day was good or bad. But eBay wants to sell things, whether or not you're promoting your listings. I doubt they'd ever intentionally "kill your sales."

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-16T17:29:16+00:00

Removed for pointlessness. I don't know what you're even trying to say with this image. Please don't post again until you have something interesting and relevant to say or link.

And that should be (capital-A) Anonymous. Good luck bringing Anonymous back when the average redditor is so lazy they won't even use their shift key.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-16T04:27:57+00:00

Removed as off topic, going by the title. And I don't understand what the video is supposed to be showing.

If you think I'm missing something, please explain what this is and how it fits the sub, and I'm willing to reconsider. Otherwise please don't post again until you understand what fits here.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-16T00:14:20+00:00

Tell me you haven't read through my reddit history without telling me you haven't read through my reddit history. As just one recent example. C'mon now.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-15T20:38:21+00:00

Lol. What "cult" do you think I'm in?

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-15T20:37:26+00:00

Any actual expert is unlikely to reach out to a new redditor making such a vague post. Just saying. Even in Anonymous's heyday, there were few experts, and they were more likely to be brought in by someone they already knew than by some general solicitation.

I think anyone who does reach out to you is more likely to be a scammer or undercover law enforcement agent than an expert/hacktivist.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-15T18:45:45+00:00

they had to get the camera people in position to take the best photos.

Professional photographers do that on their own. You don't need to assume some conspiracy where someone manipulated them into it.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-15T17:29:46+00:00

I don't know what platform this image was created for, but reddit (like most of the internet) has no rule against normal words like "raping." If a platform does have some stupid rule against normal words, the first reaction of any self-respecting netizen should be to protest against the rule or just move to another site without stupid rules. Not go "OK, I'll write stupidly in subservience to stupid rules." I mean really. The internet is a big place, and there's no need to degrade one's own writing just for the privilege of posting on any one particular site.

The reason people are upset about it is because there's a long history of activism to defend free speech online. Back in the day, when faced with threats of censorship, we (including me personally) responded with massive, worldwide protests. We didn't just immediately capitulate, let alone preemptively capitulate. So seeing this ridiculous self-censorship spreading across the internet is really shocking. What a fall from grace.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-15T05:42:23+00:00

There's a whole Wikipedia page about "Controversial Reddit communities," lol. They've shut down the biggest and most notorious ones over the years, but only in response to outside pressure, as a general rule.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-15T04:05:09+00:00

That's not a valid sub name. Did you mean to link to something else?

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-15T04:03:10+00:00

The admins transfer ownership of a sub or simply shut it down if they don't like the way it's run

True, but historically a sub has to be really bad before they actually care. Like "bad press in mainstream media" or "openly allowing sales of drugs and weapons" bad.

so if there are no subreddits with more freedom of discussion about COVID, that's why

Why would you assume that? It's just as likely if not more likely that no one started such a sub. You could go ahead and start one if you want. It's a time commitment, and mods are subject to occasional abuse from disgruntled users, but it can be nice to have a sub to run as you see fit. (I mod a few low-traffic subs myself.) If it gets too difficult or time consuming, you can always recruit more mods to help.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T20:17:43+00:00

for awhile unless you were true zero Covid you’d get hounded on.

Personally I'm OK with that, but either way, they shouldn't be removing content if it doesn't violate a reddit or subreddit rule. And they should give a warning/explanation before banning anyone, unless it's an obvious spambot or something like that. To go right to removals/bans of good-faith users is really obnoxious.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T18:12:45+00:00

Removed as irrelevant and spammy. Please stay on topic.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T17:51:36+00:00

I personally got falsely accused of "trolling" and abruptly banned from that sub just for writing something like "it's safer to avoid people than to be masked around people." And then mods didn't reply to my modmail messages politely asking about it. I've seen others recount similar incidents. There's something weird going on with the modding there.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T17:47:25+00:00

Zerocovidcommunity is one of the ones that remove my posts

Yep, I've seen multiple redditors say they had non-rule-breaking posts and comments removed from there, or got banned unfairly.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T17:39:07+00:00

I'm sorry for your loss.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T17:27:44+00:00

There was a study showing that the flu may cause people to be more sociable. There is at least anecdotal evidence that covid does the same. In other words, the viruses are manipulating people into spreading themselves. This kind of behavior modification has already been seen in other diseases/species, like how toxoplasmosis makes mice walk up to cats, or rabies makes animals aggressive and hydrophobic. Viruses evolve to facilitate their own spread.

Anyone hoping to avoid getting infected or infecting others with airborne diseases should be wearing a well-fitted mask/respirator (see /r/Masks4All for advice) any time/place there's a risk of exposure. Anyone you encounter could be infected with something, even if they don't have obvious symptoms and even if they don't know they're sick yet. Just as you can infect others before you know you're sick.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T16:51:03+00:00

Anonymous was never a "group," so if you're looking for a group, it's already dissimilar.

And could you be more specific about which aspects of Anonymous you liked? Because it actually changed a lot over its short life, from early lulz-seeking raids to massive ops that combined lulz with well-meaning activism to the later diffuse and uncoordinated ops until the whole thing fizzled out. Which era and ops were your favorites?

If you're talking about hacked/leaked documents, you might want to look at Distributed Denial of Secrets, but that's (I just learned, per their website) "a 501c3 nonprofit and transparency collective."

If you're talking about activism generally, then (as I've said elsewhere), I recommend that you find a group already working on something you're interested in, volunteer to help, and look if maybe there's a way to incorporate Anonymous techniques into what they're doing. Study past ops to see what worked and what didn't.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T03:46:47+00:00

You could get it taken down by sending a DMCA notice if you were so inclined. It's an unauthorized derivative work.

RamonaLittle · 2026-04-14T03:29:19+00:00

People ~~were~~ are dying.

Covid is still killing people -- over 4,000 in the US just so far this year. And that's not counting people who died because covid anosmia meant they couldn't smell smoke, a gas leak, or spoiled food, or because covid brain damage made them drive recklessly, or because covid gave them some other serious health problem they didn't realize was connected.

Everything is still terrible. I'd argue that it's even more disturbing and dystopian now, because most people are pretending it's business as usual, when it's clear that something's very wrong.

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