2y ago

now that i don't have a reddit account, i guess i can tell you guys about secret communities

someone on reddit made some secret subreddits for certain acievements:

controversial club - one of the most controvertial posts on reddit within an hour
popular club - top 25 posts on reddit of the day
eternity club - popular club clone
ternion club - popular club but you also got ternion

etc...

why they exist? who knows, but i guess they are no longer secrets

32 comments

There's shitloads of secret communities everywhere. Discord is particularly popular. The reason they exist is that average people are only averagely intelligent and averagely interested in most topics, so if you want a higher level of content than average, you have to go where they can't find you.
When a dance club is cool, nobody knows about it. When everyone finds out about it, those cool people go somewhere else. Being cool, itself, implies being something different enough from normal to necessitate its own word to differentiate it. Think hipster.
Average people made McDonalds the worlds most successful restaurant. Not everybody wants to live on big macs though. But on the internet, where the users control the content, they find your cool burger place and accidentally turn it into a McDonalds because they don't know the difference.
In my experience, most people outgrow the secret clubs phase eventually. But I'm sure not everyone does. Who doesn't like feeling special, no matter how unjustified it is?
- i understand that sentiment, but making a successful reddit post isn't the best way of finding people of above-average intelligence
  
  The first thing I said when invited to Eternity Club was a Groucho Marx quote; I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
- In my experience, most people outgrow the secret clubs phase eventually. But I’m sure not everyone does. Who doesn’t like feeling special, no matter how unjustified it is?
  looks around at the Free Masons, Skull and Bones, and Illuminati
- Yes and no. Invite only clubs risk become extreme echo chambers because they self select their members. Arguably much of social media often becomes echo chambers as people self select what they want to see. But if you then add in secret invite only clubs you're creating echo chambers within echo chambers.
  Beware the alure of exclusivity, it can be false gold.
- Eternity club was all boring selfies and what’s you’re favorite movie and shit.
  
  Popular club sucked too.
  I got added to it for a top post once. I opened the popular subreddit and the top post was something like, "Well, I'm here. Now what?"
  I knew immediately it was dumb.
  I think "secret" communities can be good when they're for a specialized interest. But they don't even have to be secret. Even just niche is great.
  For example, the discord for the game PolyBridge is fucking incredible. I mean, it kind of sucks right now because they just released PolyBridge 3, so a lot of new people have (temporarily) joined.
  But there are regulars who post hourly years after PolyBridge releases. There is even this one person called Arglin who posts absurdly complex essays on geometry and new discoveries within the game. They could be dissertations on mathematics.
  If anyone is still reading this, I have to tell you about the Linkage Repository. This document is insane. For an Indie studio's bridge building game lol.

I've been in a few for various reasons. There's one where they choose a few redditors at random and you get 7 days to talk amongst yourselves, after that you are banned from the sub forever. That was amusing. Kinda gutting when you get the ban notification.
- If you met someone who you really enjoyed talking to, what would stop you from staying connected to that person after the 7 days were over? You would know their username, right?
  
  You absolutely could, but that feels weird after you've kinda just met. It's not like having a one to one chat with people, I think there was like 15 or 20 people?
  But yes, theoretically you could.
- Oh yeah, i got invited to a couple of those on the same day, was like, meh, and then forgot all about them until just now

now that i don't have a reddit account, i guess i can tell you guys
how did having a reddit account prevent this?
- I'm guessing one of the rules of those clubs is "don't talk about this club"
  
  Can confirm, mentioned one of these subs and got banned

Weird. Didn't know that was a thing, also, never heard of a ternion.
- an award people spend about £100 ($125) USD on. Why? who knows, but i got one once

There were also:
Golden Club
Supreme Club
Centennial Club
Platinum Club
Apex Club
Pinnacle Club
500k Club
Don't have their descriptions anymore since I logged off of RIF but they were all variations of the same sort of thing
- yep. Tbh the only one i've ever found interesting is controvertial club. The rest are very empty and generic

There's also Century Club (more than 100k karma) and the 10 Year Club (account older than 10 years).
- Huh, that's odd. My account was 13 years old and I didn't get a super secret society invite!
  
  I was surprised when I got one; it just appeared in my inbox one day. When my account turned 11 I decided to see if /r/11yearclub existed and it did, but I had to message the mods and join manually.
  I had to request to join Century Club manually too; I didn't even notice I could do it until I had 200k karma...
- I joined the Century Club and it was just kind of boring. I rarely ever saw a thread I felt compelled to comment on. I suspect it's because there really wasn't much of a common interest behind it. Didn't know about the 10-year club but I suspect it would be similar, perhaps with more of a "aren't kids these days awful" vibe.
  
  Century Club had good vibes. It was generally like the same 5 users posting, though. I'd comment occasionally but I didn't follow it closely.

I can state one secret community that's been inactive since 2015.
TheTrumanPlan
Every 6 or so months a random redditor was picked and the whole subreddit would set up scenarios to involve the Truman.
One example was when they made a whole subreddit for a band one of them liked. Once they found out the Truman joined, the subreddit was immediately privated.
They then began messing with him by
1: Pretending the sub got sponsored by a Korean ship company
2: make the Truman think there was an song from the band that they all loved but didn't exist.
3: Fake an AMA with a band member from the band and then have them mention the fake song
4: Have that Korean shipping company post that the AMA was fake and state they are not sponsoring the subreddit anymore.
5: Not noticing that they were slowly fading in Jim Carrey's face into the sidebar image for weeks and then telling the subreddit he was getting a tattoo of it. They all freaked out when they got told he got the tattoo I think lol.
That was all just from the first Truman I think. There were 7 more after that.
Here are the full megathreads from back then over the first two people picked. https://imgur.com/a/oHmC1NW

I was in the popularclub sub, the only interesting thing about it was when newbies posted their story about how they got there - there was sometimes backstory/ follow ups/ chat about what happens when you "go viral"
Otherwise it was mostly cat pics and random boast posts
- Yup, basically Facebook: "Just got married today" as if some stranger on Reddit gives a damn

Iirc, you got an invite to Eternity Club if you posted something that hit #1 on r/all/top. Most active topic was Selfie Sunday.

Yeah, I had a post blow up a while ago and got invited to some "secret clubs". I just ignored them lol.

I was part of eternity club before i deleted my account. Never really used it though.

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