Obligatory Game of Thrones Season 6 Spoiler Warning.
Like the Freefolk of Westeros, Reddit’s own Freefolk community is drawing the ire of the kneelers. But instead of raiding their farmland, these independent-minded Game of Thrones fans are raiding Redditors’ virgin ears with spoilers.
R/freefolk is a relatively small community, but after last Sunday’s episode they upvoted a post to the site’s “All” section revealing the manner of death of a major character.
After many Redditors not savvy enough to watch Sunday’s episode on time complained about the spoiler, Freefolk held a vote to decide whether to disable their posts from appearing on the All page.
Their answer: Fook the King.
In true Freefolk fashion they defied the will of the larger site and decided to remain despite the kneeler’s protestations.
What is truly ironic about this event is that some could have been spared the ravages of the spoilers if it weren’t for the actions of the moderators of the larger Game of Thrones-related subreddits. Users of these subreddits could have known to block posts coming from Freefolk, but only if they knew it existed.
The anal-retentive, spoiler nazi mods at r/asoiaf (a subreddit devoted to A Song of Ice and Fire, the books Game of Thrones are based on) do not allow any mention of Freefolk after a particularly bad-blooded schism during the start of season 5. Users who even benignly mention the Freefolk could get their posts deleted.
The great schism arose when the first four episodes of Season 5 leaked on the Internet. The mods at r/asoiaf and r/gameofthrones would not let their users discuss the content of the episodes and banned some users that disagreed with the policies. Thus r/piratesofthrones was born solely as a place to talk about the leaked episodes. The mods at the original subreddits started banning users just for posting in piratesofthrones, only adding to the animosity.
Eventually piratesofthrones was renamed Freefolk, the subreddit we know and love today.
During this season, Freefolk rose to prominence as the host of the most accurate leaks of plot details. Leaks didn’t always originate there but would eventually find a home on Freefolk after being deleted by the spoiler craven mods of the larger subreddits. Lurking around on Freefolk one can spoil almost every single major plot point weeks before it airs on television. From Hold the Door to the Hound’s return, all was revealed in time.
Despite its small numbers of users, Freefolk has become more relevant in the broader media world than the stuffy official communities from which it was born.