Oh, no. Not again. I thought I was done with running online Catholic communities for papists in recovery! Way back in 2008 I created an small social network on the Ning platform. That was nice, it lasted for a couple of years until Ning banned free networks. I couldn’t afford the cost and created an new place using my own hosting account. It lasted a year. Ghost town. Since then I’ve tried a Yahoo email group and a Facebook secret group. Meh. I may have forgotten a few. There’s typically some activity, but mostly dead, no matter how hard I tried to promote them.
It may be something related to Catholics and joining such things; take Calix Society. It has been around for nearly 80 years, and is barely in every diocese in the United States.
A few years ago I chanced upon a subreddit called: Catholic Recovery: A safe, redemptive place. It’s a subreddit on Reddit. If you don’t know about Reddit, it is a sort of combination of social network/old school discussion site. Discussion groups are called ‘subreddits,’ or ‘subs.’ People who run a sub are called ‘mods.’ There is a unique culture on reddit regarding proper behavior and so forth. I do not know all the rules unique to reddit (aside from the usual stuff against the typical online nastiness.) The one rule I do know is against ‘brigading.’ Brigading is when you recruit a bunch of friends to ‘upvote’ posts. Upvoting is like ‘liking’ a post on Facebook. Every time your post or reply gets ‘upvoted’ you get an increase in your ‘Reddit karma.’ It’s like a popularity contest; but it comes in handy as it is a way for some subreddits to restrict spammers and trolls. Many require you to have karma above a certain number in order to post. I am probably going on way too long on Reddit; you can look into it yourself! 😉
Anyway, the Catholic Recovery subreddit recently lost its creator. I do not know what happened to that person. I discovered this on Sunday when I tried to post about my Twentieth Soberversary and the post was restricted, awaiting approval. I’m like, “Huh? What? That’s never happened before!!” So I tried to message the mod and found that there wasn’t any. And so I looked into taking it over, to protect it from spammers and other evildoers. (I don’t know how ‘protected’ a sub is on Reddit from such things, but I figure hackers can try and take over unmoved subs. I did the same thing on Facebook two years ago when I discovered that a Militia of the Immaculata Group I was in lost its Administrator. Now, I know that spammers can hack into a Facebook Group and take it over, so I didn’t hesitate to do that. (If you’re in the M.I. and on Facebook, please join my Group: The Unofficial Militia of the Immaculata Group.)
So, back to Reddit. Please join Catholic Recovery: A safe, redemptive place, ESPECIALLY if you’re already on Reddit and experienced at being a moderator.
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