Periodically a Reddit community turns on its subject matter and becomes a place to complain about the topic which happens to be its original purpose for existing. Most notably is the subreddit for the game No Man’s Sky which became a hotbed of resentment for both the game and its creator.
It seems the subreddit for the March for Science has taken this course. It was created as a discussion group for the upcoming Earth Day march which is supposed to protest some of Donald Trump’s science policies like his stance on global warming.
But when the march’s organizers appeared to be distracted on social media by social justice and intersectionality instead of simply focusing on science issues, the subreddit as a whole appeared to turn against it. Now the subreddit is filled with posts complaining about the march’s lack of focus around science.
One of the top posts of all time on the subreddit complained about a tweet by the official March for Science Twitter account which called social justice issues like colonization and ableism “scientific issues.”
“The website and twitter are more concerned with diversity and intersectionality than science and making this a bipartisan march,” one user wrote in a highly upvoted post. “I came here to publicly support science and demand factual integrity from this administration, not to represent the collective agenda of every marginalized group the organizers can put on their checklist, several of which I belong to.”
“Currently, the March for Science web page contains 559 words. 141 words are about Diversity. 57 are about government policies,” read another top post. “0 inform visitors where satellite marches will be. There is a problem here.”
This kind of backlash from Reddit is ironic considering that many consider the idea for the march to have come from a Reddit thread. However a group of organizers took control of the idea and decided to put diversity and inclusion as one of the march’s top concerns.
The march was co-founded by Caroline Weinberg, a public health researcher and science writer, and Jonathan Berman a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Some other organizers of the march have decided to remain anonymous due to the “political climate.”
Not much is known about the organizers or their agenda, so it has many on the subreddit questioning whether the science theme will be derailed by social justice issues. The march was billed as non-partisan, so taking stands on economic justice and immigration in the name of science will surely turn off conservatives who would like to attend.
The march’s organizers, however, have recently update the website to include more information about actual science policies and minimized the section on diversity and inclusion which used to dominate the site. This may be enough to get the Redditors back on board.
Follow me on Twitter @William__Hicks
