In an interview with NBC News, [spez] also equated moderators, who are unpaid volunteers, to the “landed gentry” — a characterization that struck a nerve for the moderators of r/pics. “We — the so-called ‘landed gentry’ — definitely want to comply with the wishes of the ‘royal court,’ and they’ve told us that we need to run the subreddit in the way that its members want,” u/pics-moderator wrote. “To that end, we figured that the only reasonable thing to do was directly ask how you’d like things to progress from here.”

Both r/pics (more than 30 million subscribers) and r/gifs (more than 21 million subscribers) offered two options to users to vote on: have the subreddit return to normal, or to only allow pics or GIFs (respectively) featuring John Oliver. The results were conclusive

r/pics: return to normal, -2,329 votes; “only allow images of John Oliver looking sexy,” 37,331 votes.

r/gifs: return to normal, -1,851 votes; only feature GIFs of John Oliver, 13,696 votes

/r/art and /r/aww have since had their own similar polls