Election Night, Politics on /r/MMA, and a BIGLY announcement.

Hello all,

Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the past couple of years, our little sport that we used to watch on VHS tapes from video stores, or bought from shady video stalls, has grown to finding a home on screens all over the world. It went from famously being called “human cockfighting” by the late John McCain, to being the only sport going during the pandemic, watched by millions.

With more eyes and more attention, the sport has evolved in ways we could have never imagined.

Dana has (mostly) stopped arguing with twitter trolls. The Fertitas are gone. The most popular networks have MMA shows, and most people now know the difference between MMA and UFC.

…okay SOME know the difference now.

But what was once purely a fanbase of hardcores, that gathered in dark corners of the internet to celebrate technique and sporting exploits, has now seen its stars grow into cultural icons.

As a result, the lights of public opinion and scrutiny have now been shined upon the sport, as well as bringing in a new breed of fan who is interested in discussing the intersection of MMA and these topics.

We have heard the call, however we have had a number of concerns on how to tackle this problem.

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We still believe that /r/MMA is at its best when it cannot be brigaded by political subs, week old accounts, and those who never post here, attempting to stir up drama on political and cultural lines.

This makes up the majority of the political drama that comes up on this sub (Including this recent Khabib issue, and the periodic Colby issues). Our current rules regarding politics and religion allow us the latitude to prevent the sub from going completely off the rails and becoming a toxic environment. People do not want to go to places when there’s constant fighting, and politics and religion are a guaranteed way to make that happen.

However, we also understand the desire, by some, to discuss these topics within the context of MMA (with other posters of /r/MMA) in a more open environment.

As a result, we have created /r/MMAPoliticsAndCulture.

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In the future, when these sorts of crazy topics come up, we will crosspost or link them from /r/MMAPoliticsAndCulture on the issue, to /r/MMA.

This will have the advantage of allowing the 1.3 million subscribers from /r/MMA the visibility to see and discuss these topics openly with other /r/MMA posters. It will also allow those who are uninterested, to simply ignore them if they so choose.

From a moderation standpoint, we’re going to be pretty hands off with /r/MMAPoliticsAndCulture. While there may be isolated cases of needing to go a bit further, we will be looking almost entirely for Reddit TOS violations.

Additionally, we want this to grow out.

If these sorts of discussions interest you, head on over there, subscribe, and let’s build this out into something really cool.