EFFORTPOST The story of r/thesecretform: my first and only reddit gayop

Hi friends!!!

Recently I've stumbled back onto an old subreddit I used to moderate, r/thesecretforum

This sub was created August 7th 2014 and was one of the first things I did on reddit

It was made as an empty prank, a meaningless ARG-type thing that has absolutely no point to it other than to make people wonder what it is and why it exists

Since it's the now 10-year anniversary of this thing I did (yes I waited til today just because), I thought I'd share the story with you! At least, what I can remember of it and piece together through the old posts

BACKSTORY

The idea came when I realized you could create private subs which are only viewable by invite.

"Why not make a 'secret' private sub with no discernable purpose, then start inviting random users to populate it?"

It sounded fun so I made my first alt account, the now deleted /u/_Sideway, created it with the very mysterious name The Secret Forum, and started inviting people from random posts on the front page

Well first I made the background image, which is still up, and instead of upmarseys/downmarseys there's leftvotes/rightvotes for some reason

THEN I started inviting people, and they started to make nonsensical posts like Is this a circlejerk thing? and Roll the Bones

These didn't get much attention, but keep in mind I was inviting these folks by hand over the course of a few days, and only a few dozen had accepted and filtered in by this point

BRING IN THE SCHIZOS

Inviting people from just the front page comments was fun, but I needed some real "curious" types to start pouring in and piecing together the mysterious puzzle I'd constructed (that is, absolutely nothing )

Still pretty new to this site, I started searching for random math, puzzle, and cryptography subs. People who like to solve things and have time to waste on meaningless tripe. And hey while we're at it let's invite some loonies from conspiracy subs, paranoid, and schizophrenia subs and see what they have to say

With this assortment of characters assembled, there were now well over a hundred active users making posts. Some were afraid, some were asking "why me?", some were trolling aficionados and saw right through the whole thing.

It was now officially in motion

Sidenote: my main

As /u/_Sideway I made sure to invite my main at the time as well, which I used to comment alongside the others in order to stoke the flames and keep a man on the inside

THE SECRET MESSAGES

One of my responsibilities as /u/_Sideway was to keep interest going by making occasional posts.

The titles of these posts would always be a simple dot character • that counted up to 2 dots on the 2nd post, 3 dots on the 3rd, etc.

The first post also had the body be a single dot. It garnered much enthusiasm, with commenters leaving beautiful art of their own such as ╞▓╕and 8=====D

Unfortunately, because it was 2014 and I was a reddit newb, I uploaded all of /u/_Sideway's images to postimg. If you don't know about postimg, you're probably in the majority - it's been nuked off the planet by now. If I have the images saved then I don't know where. It's fine though, they were just a bunch of crap anyway like random perpendicular lines with dots and shit you'd see on an IQ test or something.

The second u/_Sideway post had one of these images, masterfully constructed in 10 minutes of MS Paint using the line tool

People speculated, one pointed it out as a "fantastic troll" , and soon after a third post, this time with a video (think it was a distorted picture with sine tones playing ) was uploaded.

One user, the now suspended /u/FutzBucket, was even slowing down and numbering the tones to decipher a hidden message

I liked his gumption, so I made him a mod for no reason other than to cause confusion.

By the time fourth post rolled around, /r/thesecretforum had over 500 users, each working tirelessly to piece together the grand narrative. There were even users making r/OutOfTheLoop posts asking about it. This fourth post was just arbitrary binary, 1s and 0s that apparently could be interpreted as CSS code if you try hard enough

This would be the last of the "regular" posts made by /u/_Sideway for a while. In the meantime, the schizos were figuring out a theory for time travel and immortality, the crypto boys were deciphering the image from the second post, and some of the more observant users were noticing the invites arriving in waves (i.e. I was sleeping and not inviting people)

Now it was time to pull the rug out from under them.

THE INSIDER

Shortly after the fourth post I decided to curb the numbers. Lots of people weren't participating and I had no further plan or anything so I wanted to start narrowing the sub down to the most invested users.

/u/FutzBucket took notice of this and made a post wondering if things are escalating

The few survivors, the chosen, were left in awe and dismay after the removal. Little did they know, my man on the inside was still among them, sowing dissent and spreading distrust among the ranks (I was actually just leaving dumb comments to keep the joke going).

The idea of a traitor being among them was funny though, so the next day I made the fifth and final u/_Sideway post, the first in plain English, warning that one of the users is not who they seem

Now it's funny cause I actually fricked up and committed the classic sockpuppet mistake of leaving a comment on your alt

One user noticed this and screencapped it before I deleted it, which ended up working out well since it only fueled the conspiracy behind the man on the inside.

THE GREAT MODDENING

By this point (1 week in) I was running out of ideas and started to feel so I decided to start modding everyone who was still actively participating and delete /u/_Sideway for good. This sparked some more posts speculating the reasons. Some were using their newfound mod powers to check the logs, even wondering if /u/karmanaut could be involved somehow.

Some were even making dank memes:

But the thrill was gone, the numbers were dwindling, and it was time to hit the dusty trail

My final act as /u/_Sideway was to give full control to my trusty protege, /u/FutzBucket. He announced this change to the rest and they seemed to catch on that this was a sign of the end times.

THE AFTERLIFE

After all this, the little sub quickly vanished into nothing. There's only been 10 posts made in the last 10 years, mostly by the few who were left by the end coming back and reminiscing. They still wonder if it's just binary cs-it neets doing cicada mit glowie like shenanigans or if they'll get any answers after all this time

Overall it was a fun experiment, though I'm disappointed I didn't have a better plan for it. Guess I never expected it to garner much interest. I suppose the lesson here is to never underestimate your gayops and always remember that