Community size and reach plays a big part in this. Aside from the the whole "Am I trolling as a racist or am I a racist trolling?" issue, communities get away

Community size and reach plays a big part in this. Aside from the the whole "Am I trolling as a racist or am I a racist trolling?" issue, communities get away with a lot more when they are smaller, more insular and more hidden from the public. Once the community starts to bleed out beyond the immediate site, you start to run into issues. Not just because the jokes and content are spreading, but the attitudes behind those jokes. And those attitudes (even if they make up just a portion of the users) have a tendency to not be great. I think a perfect example of this would be what happened on Reddit with the /r/antiwork subreddit. As soon as the community got too large and started spilling into other areas of the site, the cracks started to show. Culminating with the interview by one of the mods (?) on Fox News I believe. All of a sudden a chunk of the users are questioning "Wait, this is who I'm siding with?" and then the only people left are the people who aren't bothered.