Berta Lovejoy And The Trolls Of r/RedditArmie
The general awfulness of YouTube comments is well-established, forever exceeding our expectations of what "rock bottom" could mean in terms of reasonable discourse. But if you've felt that popular videos — particularly those boosted by Reddit's nearly 6 million strong r/Videos community — have reached a fresh hell of trollerly as of late, you're absolutely correct.
Look at the above comment. It was posted on a video from January of a monster truck jam, but which only recently shot to the top of r/Videos. It's just one in a long series of comments that follow the same structure: a radical feminist interpretation of a popular video which decries the perceived sexism on Reddit while flying in the face of good close-textual analysis, punctuated with the same sign-off: "Berta Lovejoy, Feminist, Promoter Of Equality, Love, and Peace."
In recent weeks, an increasing amount of Redditors and YouTube users have taken notice of Berta and picked up on her strange style of commenting, questioning her identity in threads and comment sections. They were right to be suspicious.
The comments, and Berta Lovejoy herself, are in fact the work of a Reddit user named FriedCook, who, before inhabiting the persona of a misguided feminist, often ended comments with the equally tongue-in-cheek, "Kind Regards, James Dickins, Ambassador Of Reddit." Proof comes in the form of several threads, both where FriedCook accepts accolades for his work as Berta, and where another user, BertaLovejoy_, is shot down for posing as the "real" Berta Lovejoy.
Bizarre, inexplicable screeds are old hat for YouTube, but how did Berta's gender/automobile analogy get 540 upvotes and the #1 spot in the comments section? Berta isn't working alone. "She" just happens to be the sharpest tip of a particularly ugly iceberg.
The high visibility of these inane comments are the work of the intentionally-misspelled r/RedditArmie, a subreddit boasting over 1,600 members, formed three months ago by user vagslayer1999_, himself a prolific YouTube troll (the last line of his about page reads, "this is the 18th vagslayer account, for some reason i keep getting banned lol").
Visually, the subreddit is a sickening combination of bright, flashing colors, comic sans and an Uncle Sam-themed Reddit alien that expands to fill the majority of your browser screen, briefly rendering any threads unreadable. Their mission, according to their own sidebar is: "We login, we YouTube, we upboat."
The crux of Reddit Armie is a cartoonish distillation of Reddit's most irritating tendencies: narwals, fedoras, puerile references to marijuana culture, addressing other users as "gentlesir" and of course, a hatred of the website 9gag. Most threads exist as meta-jokes or celebrations of users' successful trolling.
The neckbearded, fedora-wearing, weed-smoking, Mountain Dew-slugging Men's Rights Activist is an easy caricature to target, and the only thing that makes Berta Lovejoy's comments more original, successful and threatening is that they prey on many commenters' inability to distinguish satire from actual feminism. But out of context — for instance, in the comments section of a website other than Reddit — the best of the Armie's comments are easily mistaken for the ugliest parts of Reddit culture.
Organized trolling is well documented, but usually amounts to needling a vulnerable target or some form of payback. The obvious question is: Why would a fringe group of Redditors go out of their way to parody Redditors on a completely different website? Well, because they may not be Redditors at all.
Reddit Armie members are regularly suspected of being 4channers in other threads, and their denials take the same exaggerated tone as their YouTube comments. Among the plethora of buzzwords they appropriate from Reddit culture is the occasional word or phrse like "Op" (as in "operation") or "We do not forgive. We do not forget," both of which find their origins in 4Chan's notorious b/ board and Anonymous's many dedicated IRC channels.
Based on their history of random prankery, it makes more sense that the Reddit Armie isn't disgruntled Redditors, but rather clever 4Channers taking advantage of Reddit's penchant for spiking videos and YouTube's inability to police the sheer volume of their comments. In a way, it's brilliant.
Not that anyone was expecting much meaningful interaction from YouTube comments, but the vulnerability discovered by Reddit Armie seems unassailable without a serious overhaul of YouTube's commenting system, or r/RedditArmie itself being banned, which seems unlikely based on Reddit's own laissez-faire ethos.
That is, of course, if it doesn't die by its own hand first.
Vagslayer's Google+ shows no YouTube comments since May 23rd, and about a month ago he posted the above thread. It reads like an attempt to bow out, the joke having worn thin for him. As the only user capable of adding new moderators, others chafed at his absence, and user 420fag420fag made a power grab, forming the parallel sub r/RedditArmee.
Currently the new sub has only 50 subscribers. Regardless, the satirical comments continue, and continue to be vigorously upvoted.
It's possible that without clear leadership we'll stop seeing Berta Lovejoy, Narwhal Bacon et al at the top of every comments page. In the meantime, all we can do is try not to feed the trolls.