The Reddit Communities That Hate Their Namesakes
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It would be weird for the members of a Red Sox subreddit to hate the Red Sox. It would be odd for the members of a Joe Rogan subreddit to disagree with the core tenets of Roganism. Indeed, most subreddits are pretty in line with how fandoms typically function on the internet: deeply enthusiastic, viciously protective, blind to the faults of their idols. But there are communities on Reddit where disdain for, sometimes outright beef with, their namesake is the norm.
I might as well come out and say it now: I love Reddit. I love reading about sardines on the tinned fish sub, learning about gentle parenting on the gentle parenting sub (I do not have children), weighing in on the plumbing subreddit (I know nothing about plumbing). In my lurking, I have discovered two massively popular subreddits that first baffled me, then changed the way I think about fandoms completely.
The first is the DeuxMoi subreddit, now called FauxMoi (we’ll get to that in a minute). This subreddit is named after DeuxMoi, a cosmically successful anonymous celebrity gossip blogger who does most of her heavy lifting on Instagram. She is known for the “blinds” she posts (people DM her with tea, and she posts it). For legal reasons, she is required to blur out the names of those she’s posting about, and therein lies the fun; commenters put on their detective hats and guess who the blind might be about.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
“Suing a subreddit for being named after you is pretty much unheard of. That would be like Gerard Way suing my sister for making a ‘Gerard Way’s Red Hair’ Facebook page when she was thirteen.”
As a lover of gossip, the DeuxMoi subreddit was one of the first corners of Reddit I wandered over to. The subreddit posts the real DeuxMoi’s blinds, and commenters hypothesize. But there are also more generic pop culture gossip posts on the subreddit, as well as gossip round-ups and the occasional meme. It all seemed rather innocuous and fun, so I was surprised to learn that things are not lovey dovey between the real DeuxMoi and her eponymous subreddit. Eight months ago, DeuxMoi threatened to sue the Reddit page, forcing them to change their name to FauxMoi, citing copyright concerns.
But it’s hard to imagine that concern about copyright is what actually prompted the legal action. Suing a subreddit for being named after you is pretty much unheard of. That would be like Gerard Way suing my sister for making a “Gerard Way’s Red Hair” Facebook page when she was thirteen. The response to the copyright incident from Reddit users was overwhelmingly critical of DeuxMoi: “She couldn’t handle the fact that more and more people are preferring this sub over her,” said one Redditor. “This is better anyway right?” wrote another. “IG [Instagram] Deuxmoi is kind of an embarrassment, so i'm glad this sub officially has its own identity now!”
DeuxMoi tweeted that her brand “is not in any shape or form associated with that [Reddit] page- never was.” Someone on Reddit wrote: “This sub may have a lot of differing opinions but the one thing that brings us all together is our strong dislike of deuxmoi.”
What the whole legal issue seemed to be, then, was a genuine attempt on DeuxMoi’s part to protect her brand from a group of people who were both interested in what she stood for and took issue with her individually. But as a wizard of social media channels, DeuxMoi should know that the internet itself is more powerful than one influencer could ever fathom being.
Elsewhere on the platform is the RedScarePod subreddit. Named after the controversial cultural commentary podcast of the same name, it’s a bit harder to pin down the premise of the forum. I wandered over there because I’d become fascinated by the popularity of the podcast itself and wanted to see what people were saying online. The co-hosts of the podcast, Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan, are widely polarising contrarians. They court right wing propagandists and openly wonder about contentious topics like the efficacy of the Covid vaccine and troll like middle school boys on Twitter. I was surprised to find that the posts were not really about the podcast that it’s named after.
Go on the subreddit and you’ll find photographs of old Russian houses, short reviews of Ishiguro books, and screenshots of viral TikToks with the caption “Bleak.” The podcast’s presence within the subreddit exists as a way of thinking, a way of being on the internet, a rebellion against the mainstream, a desire to say the things others aren’t saying. And while posters on Red Scare adhere to many of the host's ideologies, they, like DeuxMoi posters, agree on one thing: They generally dislike the girls themselves.
There is a trend on the Red Scare subreddit of posting photographs of Nekrasova with the caption “How does she do it?” At first, I thought this was a sincere display of thirsting, then realised the posters were in fact mocking Nekrasova’s vanity. Anna is likewise ridiculed, but more-so for her atrocious takes as she edges more brazenly into a right-wing populist space. Her tweets are frequently posted on the sub with captions like: “This was the moment I knew I couldn’t take Anna seriously.” The prevailing feeling is that the women who serve as the glue binding together this global internet group of nearly 100k people are superficial, out-of-touch, and fun subjects of mockery.
Like the real DeuxMoi, it seems the Red Scare girls are hyper aware of what goes on over in Reddit-land. Dasha tweeted: “People on reddit remarking that my interest in chess has supplanted my Christianity sorry bitch they are both unifying motifs of Slavdom, which is my main autistic interest.” If one of the first rules of being famous is not to look yourself up online, DeuxMoi and the Red Scare girls would seem to have failed.
Perhaps these women cannot help but read about themselves and reply defensively to hate. Or perhaps they know they are fuelling their brands by engaging with a rebellious part of an identity that has been foisted on them. On Reddit, the internet has taken the already complex phenomenon of fandom and turned it into something so knotty and advanced that it’s impossible to fully understand. Of course, there had to be room for fandoms to grow into something more tentacled, and, in doing so, fans escaped from their idols. Suddenly, it seems, the internet has turned fame into a sadomasochist hate-machine, where fans and stars exploit each other. Fans came together on online forums and created coalitions, communities - ones that first expressed scepticism toward the powers-that-be - then wholly rejected them, and became interested in each other instead.
Words: Celeste Amidon