Is Reddit's /r/OkBuddyRetard Shutting Down? Its Mods Post Conflicting Messages

One of Reddit's most notorious meme subreddits in recent years, /r/OkBuddyRetard, hinted at a shutdown on Sunday. It was relayed in a post from OkBuddyRetard (OKBR) moderator Fredn40 who stated that the sub would be killed shortly after reaching over 1 million members.

He gave other reasons, writing that he and the moderators "don't like the state of the subreddit" and that "it's now impossible to change it," mostly due to its size and reach. OKBR was created in late 2017, and since then, has been one of the main breeding grounds online for ironic meme trends.

Redditor Fredn40 also emphasized that OKBR would most likely be banned anyway after Reddit's IPO campaign, which aimed to prove the website was valuable to investors with a large active user base compared to other "big fish" companies like Twitter and Facebook.

Moderator Fredn40 claimed that the OKBR subreddit would be deleted on September 25th, 2022, following the announcement.

In the hours that followed, the members (or "buddies") of OKBR began posting en masse about the idea of a shutdown. With most being ironic meme creators, many didn't take the announcement seriously. Most of these Redditors seemed to either satirically celebrate the shutdown with Breaking Bad irony or over-dramatically emphasized their disappointment with Obama templates.

Roughly an hour after Redditor Fredn40's announcement, OKBR moderator Redditorsion uploaded a counter statement, stating that the subreddit would not be shut down at all. Redditorsion followed Fredn40's language but used antonyms of all the keywords, finally claiming that "It has been a hell of a ride and we would like to thank everyone who participated in building this community," in reference to reaching over a million buddies.

Celebration and confusion became prevalent in the subreddit's content going into Monday morning. Some humorously wondered if it was a "September Fools" prank and, overall, what the meaning was behind the hoax. It was most likely a viral stunt perpetrated by Fredn40 to commemorate OKBR's 1 million member milestone.