It's a weird dynamic, and it's one that I would love to see researched, because being a moderator is a thankless job that doesn't really offer the use any real

It's a weird dynamic, and it's one that I would love to see researched, because being a moderator is a thankless job that doesn't really offer the use any real power - but evidence suggests that people will go to great lengths to abuse that power. It gets especially weird in some of the football subreddits. Some moderators try to push the narrative that having a popular football subreddit, or controlling the subreddit for a particular football team (e.g. /r/reddevils) gives them the ability to pretend to be "in-the-know", and to speculate on transfers, pretend they know decisions going on at the club, etc.