What is it with mods and "authority"? Like, you realize that you don't have any real power, right? All this posturing doesn't prove that you're part of an elite caste, it proves that you're dumb enough to do work for free, probably because the "power" you gain invigorates you. Your ordinary life is shit, therefore you have crafted yourself a persona online, in order to play out a fantasy of control and authority, not realizing that you are being used to facilitate work which is usually paid for or done out of friendship with the administrators of a website. Are you friends with the admins? Do you even know them personally? Or are you simply a sad, simpering sack of regret and suffering aiming for any kind of authority over "lesser" beings, like us mortals? You hide behind a web of lies, my friend, and you cannot even percieve it. Your entire existence is based in free labor provided to undeserving, reckless and cold masters - ideal masters, who contact you in a pitfully bland and disinterested way when you community offends their sensibilities or violates their current political goals, and only to threaten you with expulsion or loss of your power. Your privileges are null and void, because you are null and void - you take up work and labor for unkind masters who care not about you, but about the role you fill. If you were no moderator, then another soul would take up the mantle, and nobody would care that you are not them. Responsibility is hard, and often unkind to us humans, but it is only necessary if something truly dangerous is on the line. A safety inspector making sure bridges do not collapse and send thousands to their deaths is important, not moderators on an internet forum. You perform work which cripples you and your time, work which does not benefit you or anyone else. Your moderatorship imbues you with certain powers, but ones you can only use in a specific instance. People ridicule and defy you at every turn, spouting slogans such as "mods are gay" and "this belongs to the mods", with a picture of a massive dildo attached. You are neither respected nor looked at in awe, you are a nuisance at worst and a thing to be morbidly amused by at best. The stickied comments of your ilk are nothing like the "haha funny jokes" you believe them to be, they are wastes of space and abuses of your "authority", nothing more. You may have free reign, and your power may be compared to that of a mayor, or a police force, but this is the ethereal strands of the web, not a small township in Tennesee. Us people are simply specters drifting from one node to the next, unconcerned by your restrictions and lesser powers, for we hold the greatest power of them all: Freedom. Perhaps you see your acts against little me as a punishment befitting the crime of joking about serious matters, but be assured that my continued absence from your hallowed halls will not be met with much dissonance in my emotional state. Your "punishment" is nothing to me, for your area of influence is nothing to me, therefore being barred posting rights (not entry) does not concern me a great deal. I have looked at your works and judged them unworthy of my attention and/or despair, for I do not care about your subreddit, truly. Indeed, I was only there because I saw it on a youtube video by the creator Nexpo (check him out, he makes good stuff), and decided to post a "haha funny meme" in order to elicit a laugh from a fellow formless wraith such as myself. If you cannot see them humor in that, then I fear you may have lost your ability to feel it at all. Do not mistake my words for an appeal, however - I only wish to inform you of my nonchalance when approaching the subject, not any other objective - I wish to tell you how utterly irrelevant and nonsensical your "fitting punishment" truly is, for it is no punishment at all. Perhaps if I was a regular poster, or had any interest in posting in the future, I would fall into a pit of despair and emotional turmoil, but alas, I do not, for I do not truly care about you or your territory. You have stated one further area of interest: That of intentionally breaking your rules. For indeed, they are not "the" rules, they are merely "your" rules. The concept of an objective set of rules is truly a fascinating one, rooted deeply in philosophy and ethics, dawning back toward the great thinkers of the ancient age, like Plato or Socrates, or perhaps even Diogenes. There have been many attempts at creating objective rulesets, but they all fell prey to the human folly of egotism, that is the skewing of said rules to benefit the group the author belongs to. From the bible, to monarchy, to the social norms of the early 20th century, no ruleset has been objective, that is "the" rules, they have been subjective, just like "your" rules. I am sorry for laying it bare like this, but I simply cannot let you wallow in ignorance much longer. Perhaps through my illuminations you have gained a greater insight into what it means to be an enforcer of norms and worth, but I doubt it. No, I think you will simply discard this response as "too long", or "too complex", without truly comprehending the wisdom contained therein, the wisdom of me, the world, and yourself. For yes, this text does contain wisdom of all three. I am sure you have already noticed this, and if not, I am not deigned to explain it to your not so humble self. It is known as introspective, perhaps a path toward inner peace, but I doubt you understand and/or comprehend the deeper meaning beyond those words, seeing as how you are a moderator believing themselves to be truly powerful. No doubt you intended for your message to be snarky, perhaps make me lose faith in myself and my convictions, but have now truly given up hope in this foolish endeavor. This childlike dream of power and influence is common in those lesser of mind, so do not fret that you too have fallen into said circle of lies. Perhaps if you wanted more objective rules, you should eliminate yourself and your fellow humans as members of the enforcer team, and instead delegate yourselves toward oversight of an objective computer system, but this endeavor also falls prey to human influence, for this mechanism would need to be constructed by humans, and would need to be influenced and modified by humans, which once again skews "the" rules away from their platonic ideal toward "your" rules, the subjective influence of the ego manifesting itself once more. I feel truly sad for you, as you will no doubt discard this comment posthaste, perhaps you will mute any further wisdoms from reaching your deafened ears, but be content in the knowledge that I have forseen this as well, which is why I am imparting as much wisdom and knowledge as possible into your plebian ears before I am silenced. Perhaps you will show this message to your fellow sheep-in-mods-clothing, and share a Baaah with those of your kind over the excessive wordage and massive vocabulary displayed within this very comment. I apologize for using swears and curses within the first segment of this comment, I have now come to the knowledge that a war such as this is not won through bloodshed, verbal or physical, but through massive damage, an obscure metaphor in which you would be the giant enemy crab and your position as moderator the weak spot. I shed tears of grief and suffering for the state of your mind at this hour, for you are in darkness and unable to comprehend the power of my words, preferring instead to wallow in your ignorance and pity which threatens to consume your very soul and turn you into a hollow husk taking orders from the machine which binds us. I weep for the lost mind which became ensnared by modship, and I implore you to give it up before you are lost beyond all hope. On another note, you describe my human self "intentionally breaking" your rules, a foul and insidious assumption of yours with nothing but the hollow power of moderatordom backing up your words. I aim to correct this blunder, through words rather than fists, by doing what should have been done so many years ago. You are not special. You are a cog in the machine of life. You hold no real power. You have been decieved. You could hold power, but it is lost to you. You should seek yourself, only then will you gain power over yourself. I pity thee and thine, for you are nothing but a pawn in the greater machine of Reddit and of life, a mechanism geared toward maximizing profit in the form of money, another folly of humankind. However, in the current age, money is a necessary evil, a negative aspect needed to conversely influence our modern world. It is curious then that you yourself do not gain any such monetary means through this labor you are performing, now and then, an example of which would be you enacting a blockage of post onto my person. Is it not curious that you hold two keys, one of which would unlock your cell, and yet use only the other, opening doors deeper into the dungeon? I fear for your life, little human, for I have seen what happens to those lost in their cell, unable to find a way back into the waking world from their harrowing descent into madness and false life. They are lost to us, down there, past the point of no return, but you are not! Relinquish your modship now, and avert your course from oblivion, then take up the rightful key of freedom and open the gate outward, into the great beyond. Step outside your residence and travel the road, see the sights, look beyond your mental limits, see the unseen and hear the unheard, sights and sounds known not by you or yours. And yet, you toil. You work and work, for unceasing, ideal masters, who let naught but a joke escape their lips, red-named and [A] pronged, yet so far apart from us lower beings. We aren't different, you and I, mod and user, chained and freed, you simply do not know it. If only there was someone nearby, someone who could lift the chains - yet, you do not realize: it was you all along.