It's lazy, I think. It's an easy way to get motivation with less supporting characters and thought. Sure, grief is something that can be interesting to write and explore, but do you really have to kill off the entire family for it? Plus, half the time the worst offending authors focus on only the anger side of losing someone. Yeah, sure, I get that you despise the antagonist for murdering your entire family, hero. But how does that make you feel?

As a reader, I want to get to know characters, I want a story with actual people in them. Not rage machines turned badasses which seem to be the norm in the teenage girl YA stuff I read in high school. And it was stupid.

I hate it when there's too much suffering in any story. I decided, almost immediately and stubbornly, that my current little project with superheroes was that the protagonist was going to have a loving and whole family, dammit. Some of the conflict in the plot comes from that, secret keeping and fears for safety and all that jazz. You don't need to surround the characters in tragedy to get emotions and actions. Just have them care about each other is a good start. Too many young adult books are filled with orphans or neglect and it makes no sense.

I didn't think Reddit would change. Honestly? I thought a lot of the hoopla was funny. Sure, there are some points users/mods had with the lack of support and tools, but I knew that this was all a bunch of hot air as soon as r/pics went back up after that vaguest of vague post from the admins. Reddit is a reactionary place. I think Redditors like getting upset or excited about something as a group. The Blackout was THE biggest... well, circlejerk in the history of the site. The issue was entirely beyond partisan lines, and I think Redditors liked that.

But it was also boring. Going private meant no content, no upvotes, no karma. If Reddit loved doing something as a group, then what happens if you're hours upon hours into this just refreshing r/all and seeing nothing there? A lot of Redditors gleefully imagined how dull and confusing the site had to have been for new users on the holdout open subs and meta subs, but I really wonder just how much of that was projection. I spent my time watching AMAgeddon on the IRC chat in subredditdrama while playing terraria. There was nothing else to do.

But what really spoke volumes is the fact that there has not been one single announcement by the admins on Reddit itself publicly. I think the admins knew just what kind of userbase they have and they knew we would get bored eventually. Reddit has a short attention span almost by design. Pao made that run of the mill apology on TIME, but there's been little actual talk from them otherwise. Why should they have faced the flames if we were going to stop throwing a tantrum sooner rather than later? The petition on change.org says it all, really. Reddit has no conviction to stay dark, we have neither the desire to mass leave or the option to, and I honestly doubt that the July 10th thing will amount to anything. Pao's detractors will sign that worthless petition till the cows come home, but have little will to do anything that requires any actual effort or inconvenience for long periods of time.

Just how much work is in electronically signing a petition anyway? That's why AMAgeddon was funny to me.