Not quite. A big portion of that was Tumblr refugees setting up shop on Reddit after Tumblr banned porn.
This. Genderspecial shit was always a thing on Tumblr. Reddit in the early/mid 2010s was mostly pseudointellectual "facts and logic" debatebro types from various camps: libertarians, liberals, atheists of both the skeptic sort and the "Atheism Plus" type and even vaguely some conservative-leaning sorts. Gamergate and the 2016 election were the first major exoduses and then the terminally online tumblr troons made their way there and got into mod roles.
At the risk of sounding autistic... I'm kinda baffled at just how soulless and braindead Reddit is in general.
Not autistic at all, its an astute observation. Reddit has always had circle jerk tendencies, but its gone so far beyond that. Now nothing outside of the accepted narrative is tolerated. Take a look at the top comments for any remotely controversial topic in the major subreddits. It's usually one of three things:
1. Its mildly humorous "dad joke" kind of a comment which avoids taking any kind of stance.
2. Its an "informative" kind of comment that doesn't bring any inconvenient facts.
3. Its a passionate virtue signaling post expressing the
only the most tranny-approved views.
There is no honest, organic discussion on that website. Its not just that you can't express "bigotted" opinions, you can
only express the correct ones.
Just take a look at the
comment section of this one. Scott Weiner, a gay, Jewish, California Democrat state senator, whose views are basically everything you would expect of him, was being attacked at a troon march and in the comment section because (shocking) as a Jew he doesn't hate Israel and gets AIPAC money.