Behind Reddit’s new obsession with John Oliver

Millions of Reddit users were bombarded with a seemingly endless amount of images, gifs, and videos featuring comedian John Oliver over the weekend.

And usually, this means the person-in-question has done something to go viral – cheat on a partner with their best friend (*cough*Sandoval*cough*), oddly message a former flame asking to name your new baby after them, etc. But this isn’t your usual case.

🌐 Background: Last week, a majority of Reddit’s largest communities – aka “subreddits” – participated in a mass strike by effectively taking their sites offline for 48 hours. The move was prompted by Reddit’s forthcoming plan to charge for access to its vast reserves of data.

But even after the strike came and went, many major subreddits continued to protest against Reddit’s upcoming changes with some rather… interesting methods. Which brings us to John Oliver.

The r/pics, r/gifs, and r/aww subreddits, which have a combined 85+ million subscribers, each polled users on whether they should continue to operate their respective communities as normal – or only allow images of “John Oliver looking sexy” to be posted. The comedian won by a landslide in all three.

Other ongoing protests include:

• r/iPhone changed its rules to only allow images of Tim Cook following a similar subscriber poll.
• r/WellThatSucks, previously an ode to all the sucky things in the world, is now a subreddit dedicated to vacuum cleaners.
• Video game subreddit r/Steam is now about actual steam.

📅 Looking ahead… Protests are expected to continue through July 1, which is when Reddit’s new changes come into effect.

Many subreddit moderators – who are integral to the platform’s operation but aren’t officially affiliated with Reddit – say the company’s forthcoming plan will end up eliminating most or all of the platform’s third-party apps, which they’ve overwhelmingly used to perform their duties for years.

But CEO Steve Huffman – who r/HarryPotter now calls “Voldemort” – has rejected the idea of walking back the changes. His argument is that allowing free access to its data runs counter to Reddit’s goal of becoming a self-sustaining business ahead of a possible IPO later this year.