It is, but I’ve seen this question asked earnestly so many times I just can’t tell anymore…

The hell could O'Brien have done to get such a reaction?

Nothing. Tom just wanted to scare O’Brien off. Tom was worried O’Brien knew Will well enough that an extended conversation would blow his cover.

Based and friendpilled

That’s easy: unlimited SMS was common on most mobile plans in the US as early as the mid-2000s. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans had no financial incentive to use WhatsApp.

I feel like you are overselling "Alliances," but to be fair, this shot was pretty cool

They definitely blew the effects budget for the season, though. They put it in the commercial and I swear, it was every other commercial on UPN that week.

Heh, of course he did. It takes a real big brain to kill a community where the only rule is “there are no rules.” A big, smooth brain.

He definitely committed to the bit. 25 years later and there are still things I can’t unsee.

It's common enough that /r/startrek developed a reputation for being unfairly draconian with their moderation which spread beyond Reddit. I knew they were really in trouble when I encountered comments about how bizarre and punitive their moderation style is in places like Twitter, Mastodon, and YouTube comments. Every once in a while I would see someone recommending Daystrom to someone who was banned from /r/startrek because the "mods aren't as strict," which is wild when you think about it: Daystrom has many pages of very specific rules and they are all actively enforced.

It's pretty harsh and I'm biased because I've had some fun conversations about Star Trek with Value, but... no it's probably not unfair. My interactions with them never reached this level of intensity because I just left, but the stubbornness has always been there.

Fuck it, lets kick this drama starship into transwarp. I am the creator of /r/DaystromInstitute, /r/Risa, I modded /r/startrek for about a year, and I helped to create startrek.website. AMAA.

We are absolutely worse off in the real 2024 than what "Past Tense" depicted.

• Vin asks Sisko for a "UHC card" when trying to identify him. A universal healthcare card. In the real 2024? Still no universal healthcare in the US.
• The famous billionaire's role in the story of "Past Tense" was to get residents of the districts access to "the nets" to tell their story. In the real 2024, Elon Musk would just take to Xitter and advocate for crackdowns.
• Once on the nets, the resident's stories actually swayed public opinion. Can you honestly imagine the stories they told making a dent in the zeitgeist, even if they trended on YouTube and TikTok?
• Sanctuary districts exist too, they're just on the border and privatized.

Ira Steven Behr set out to depict a horribly dystopic 2024, succeeded, and undershot.

I used to mod /c/Risa so I will back it up: this is exactly correct. There's a disconnect at the very heart of their approach to moderation they refuse to acknowledge. On the one hand, they want their written rules to be simple and common sense: be civil, don't be a bigot, don't spam, etc. etc. But at the same time, many of them have strong and specific opinions about moderation and/or Star Trek and they moderate to that effect. If you ask them about a removal which has tripped one of these hidden rules, at best they'll tell you it was covered under one of the generic rules like "no spam" or "stay on topic" and at worst they'll just start insulting you.

For example, one of the mods there is a huge Discovery fan and so if you say anything bad about Discovery without taking the praise sandwich approach to delivering it, it's gonna get removed and you might be banned. Anyone who tried to be critical of Discovery back on /r/StarTrek is likely familiar with this de facto policy. And of course, the mod who took over for me in /c/Risa is apparently not a fan of AI art or tabloid gossip and has banned these kinds of content, without changing my very simple declaration for the community: there are no real rules.

This exact kind of user revolt happened to them back on Reddit but between the fact that they were sitting on /r/startrek, the obvious place to have a Star Trek sub, and the fact that the most successful attempt at splintering was taken over by conservative dipshits almost immediately, /r/startrek continued to be the big main community on Reddit.

I'd love to see them develop an understanding of why hidden rules are bad for communities, but I don't see it happening any time soon. Looks like it's ales for everyone.