I was planning to make a post about r/196 for a while before this whole thing but I guess I'll just say it now.
I find it interesting that 196, a subreddit with the only rule "post before you leave," didn't become a right wing community. Essentially, since there were no other rules, someone could post pretty much anything. But I think through site guidelines preventing hate speech and just chance, the community began posting memes about estrogen supplements and femboys instead of bigoted political agendas. In general, it became a very queer-friendly and left-leaning subreddit. Now, when a homophobe or someone like that stumbled upon the sub, even though they could post what they wanted, seeing this whole community of queer people deterred them.
And that's what's so amazing. Peace begets peace. Even though there are no rules, a loving and accepting community just pushes away people who would change that love. A queer community spontaneously formed out of nothing, and it remained that way. I think that's pretty cool.
Now that the sub is shutting down and users are moving here, I just want to say it's been fun watching the community evolve since like 2019 from a distance. Welcome to Tumblr. Yeah, like from the screenshots.