/r/alien is the best subreddit

About a year ago, I told a friend I was considering writing about /r/alien.

“Is that the subreddit for the movies or, like, real aliens?” he asked.

“Exactly,” I said.

I first subscribed to /r/alien for the same reason a lot of people do: I like the Alien franchise.

I think Alien and Aliens are awesome movies; I think Prometheus and Covenant contain Michael Fassbender’s greatest performance(s) and some cool world building, plus a well-played ironic “Ozymandias” reference; I thought Romulus also had cool world building; and you don’t need all my other Alien opinions.1

At some point, I realized that /r/alien had an identity crisis. It seemed to mostly consist of Alien fans but there were also various believers in aliens. Like, extra terrestrials. People who wanted to talk about the theories of UFOs, real-life aliens, or the possibility that they had been or would be abducted.

Here are a few important facts about /r/alien:

• It was founded in 2008, which makes it relatively “early internet” as far as Reddit is concerned. (You may recall that Reddit’s first big moment came in 2010, when a UX update on Digg sent refugees fleeing to Reddit.)

• At some point, it became lightly moderated. I don’t mean literally unmoderated, as the moderator peruytu (and founder) has been present the entire time, but they have taken a very laissez-faire approach to moderation (which some notable exceptions, discussed below.)

• Unlike most subreddits, it has no description or stated purpose. Just a name. /r/alien

• Within the last year, it gained one new moderator, but the mods have not changed the basic vibe. By which I mean they are fairly relaxed in their moderation and have not added any new description or statement as to what the purpose of /r/alien is.

Perhaps most importantly: when /r/alien was first created, it had an express purpose. And the purpose was not the Alien franchise. Here is the oldest capture of /r/alien that I was able to find on the Wayback Machine, from April 14, 2011:

You can see it right there. “All about the little creatures.”

That seems pretty clear to me, right?

Wait, does it? What are “the little creatures”? Now I’m second-guessing myself.

Did the original founder(s) mean “real” aliens? Or did they mean chestbursters, i.e. the thing that pops out of Kane in Alien? Or perhaps they meant facehuggers, i.e. the things that are always latching on to people’s faces in the first act of every Alien film?

Based on the only contribution, it looks like it meant alien aliens, not Xenomorph aliens.

Let’s jump ahead to 2019 to see what the content consisted of:

First, I chose 2019 because there is a stretch there with no Wayback Machine captures.

You can see that, in 2019, Alien content has started creeping in but there’s still a healthy mix. It’s definitely heavier on alien than Alien. Also, from 2011 to 2019, the subscribers expanded from 16 to 2500+.

Now let’s jump forward to present day. For consistency of comparison, here is the /r/alien subreddit today, set to the old subreddit userface:

Things have certainly changed. Unlike the days of the past, in this sorted view of the ten “hottest” posts, there are nine Alien posts and only one alien post in this view. You’ll also see much more engagement. There’s one in there with 275 upvotes and 200 comments!

This is the perfect mix of four major factors:

1. /r/alien has never had a clear identity, making it a potential home for anyone to assign whatever identity to it they might choose; at no point have the moderators made a rule about what can and cannot be discussed.

2. There name /r/alien implies to many fans that it’s about the movie and franchise.

3. Several other active subreddits exist for discussing aliens, including /r/aliens, /r/UFOs/, /r/ufo, /r/UFOB, and /r/HighStrangeness; the quantity and quality of these subreddits has resulted in less of a need for anyone to post in /r/alien about their theories of aliens, resulting in those who do post about aliens in /r/alien usually being either lost or confused.

4. Over the last few years, /r/alien has become a home for expatriates from the subreddit /r/LV426

Let’s go deeper into that fourth item, as it deserves some explanation.

/r/LV426 has been the subreddit for Alien fans since 2010. If you don’t know what the title means, you’re probably not a major Alien fan. LV426 is the name (assigned to it by Weyland-Yutani) of the moon where both Alien and Aliens take place.

From the beginning, /r/LV426 has been the intended home for discussion of Alien on Reddit. It has official Alien imagery in the banner, a description making it clear what it is and what it’s for, and a mod team dedicated to the Alien franchise. It’s also worth noting that it’s a home for Predator discussion as well, through the lens of Alien and Predator inhabiting one shared universe.2

If you search “/r/LV426” inside /r/alien, you’ll see that /r/alien has become a home for expats from /r/LV426. Over the last several years, the idea has become continually espoused in /r/alien that /r/LV426 is too heavily moderated and that users can be banned for criticizing recent Alien installments, specifically Romulus and Earth.

Here’s a look at at that search result. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that, even when searching for /r/LV426 in /r/alien, you’ll still get alien (not Alien) content sneaking in, as evidenced by “The alien in Las Vegas backyard.”

I’m not here to pass judgment on the moderators of /r/LV426. From my experiences as a mod for much smaller subreddits, it can be a total nightmare and sometimes dropping the ban hammer is the easiest solution.

What I do know is that it has resulted in fundamentally three kinds of content in /r/alien, instead of just two:

• People talking about aliens

• People talking about Alien

• People talking about the other Alien subreddit

The fifth post above is, I think, the most illustrative of the state of this subreddit. It also includes the rare example of the /r/alien moderators needing to step in, leave a message and lock a post.

Here’s a screenshot of the original post, in which a user announces they have started yet another Alien subreddit, this one expressly defined by being not /r/LV426.

Yes, we are looking at a subreddit popping up that’s literally called /r/not_LV426. The ensuing conversation consisted of 40 comments, the final of which was from /r/alien mod and founder peruytu who jumped into leave this extremely enlightening and clarifying message:

This community welcomes all critiques of the Alien franchise and the topic of extraterrestrials. We do not censor opinions, no matter how critical they may be.

However, we require that all discussions be conducted in a civil manner. This means no personal attacks, insults, or hostility directed at other users, subreddits, or their moderators.

To facilitate a productive conversation and prevent rule-breaking comments, we have decided to lock this thread.

Thank you for your understanding.

— The Mod Team

Honestly, I think this is the best use of moderation I’ve ever seen. We see the /r/alien mods clarifying that, yes, the lack of identity is intentional. You get to talk about either Alien or aliens in /r/alien. Also, you can’t be a jerk.

I have reached out to the moderators of /r/alien for comment but have not heard back. I hope they like this article.

Seriously. What about the people who want to post things like:

• “I’m open to friendship with extraterrestrials.”

• “maybe the reason we havent had contact with aliens is becuase they just arent as

• “If they can manipulate gravity as is theorized for their FTL propulsion, they could just throw a rock from the asteroid belt and annihilate life on this planet.”

• “So I hear a voice in my head, is the Alien communicating telepatically with me”

• “my lady saw a big/bright shooting star looking object in the sky out the window the light had come through.”

• “Last night I swear a grey shot at me.”

In every one of these threads, you get a conversation that goes something like this:

Redditor 1: Aliens are real!

Redditor 2: You’re in the wrong subreddit. Mods, fix this!

Redditor 1: Oh sorry.

Redditor 3: No, you’re in the right subreddit!

Redditor 2: No, they’re not! This is for Alien not aliens!

Redditor 3: No, this is for Alien AND aliens!

Redditor 1: Aliens are real.

Mods:

Here’s one of the funnier screenshots I found while researching this that sums up the entire situation:

Similar to the conversation I mentioned at the beginning of this. Which is it for? Yes.

Maybe you’re wondering why you wasted your time reading this entire thing. I don’t know that I have a profound revelation to share at this point, other than this entire thing is illustrative of how bizarre and beautiful the internet can be.

I love the approach taken by the /r/alien moderators. They aren’t enforcing anything but letting a beautiful garden grow. One in which people who are thinking hard about aliens can coexist with people who are thinking hard about Alien.

I also don’t know of any other subreddit quite like this, which is why I think it’s the best. Long live /r/alien.

Last note: as mentioned above, I realized while writing about this that I should give the moderators of /r/alien a chance to share their story. They have not responded yet but I’ll update it if they do or write a follow-up post.