According to my understanding of how Reddit works, it was the OG anarchist asshats who had mod powers, not the "liberal" noobs. Occam's Razor says the OG's got

According to my understanding of how Reddit works, it was the OG anarchist asshats who had mod powers, not the "liberal" noobs. Occam's Razor says the OG's got seduced by their newfound popularity. In trying to square the anarchist/liberal circle, they flew too close to the sun. That's too bad. But that's the end of story in terms of a power dynamic. Calling that "sanewashing and social gentrification" is incoherent. None of the noobs had mod powers. And there are plenty of examples of subreddits modded by irreverent types who would probably eschew a popularity bump in order to keep the sub pedantic. Try complaining about your job in lowercase on r/THE_PACK and you'll see what I mean. :)