Today Reddit announced a policy prohibiting using Reddit ‘to solicit or facilitate’ transactions around weapons, drugs (including alcohol and tobacco!), sex, stolen goods, personal information and counterfeit documents. [ Largest list I could find is here ]

One day I discovered /r/opiaterollcall/, an obscure opiate dealing sub, sharing monthly contact details of dealers in various US states. It notably closed in 2017 but I noticed it promoting /r/Shoplifting.

I wasn’t the first to notice that /r/Shoplifting, a hilarious place for edgy US teenagers regularly posted their ‘lifts’ of makeup, clothes and railed against the oppressors of loss-prevention.

Content featured dealing with tags:

I mean people were literally robbing pet stores:

You don’t want their fish to DIE do you??

The fairer sex was well represented:

I believe ‘stealing’ might count as ‘too much’ but what do I know?

Does the crime make you more beautiful?

Gaming was also well represented:

Cool bag dude

Man that’s a sweet ass-bag

For some reason I imagine this enraging /r/pcmasterrace

There’s something innocent about lifting Nintendo products. We’ll pretend they were Pokemon or something

Even hairy people were catered for:

Trimmer, doughnuts, projector and dip — what’s not to like?

<David Attenborough voice> And here we see the common shop lifter, displaying his successful haul to his tribe. They will all, shit post well tonight </David Attenborough voice>

Unlike other subreddits like /r/DarkNetMarkets/ or the fraud subs, there was something humanising about a subreddit full of little shits robbing things they didn’t even need.

It will be missed. :(