Looking back at r/CircleOfTrust
  • 170 points LgDog

    I still don't know how it worked.

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    124 points [deleted]

    [deleted]

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    49 points xwt-timster

    yea really. You can only trust yourself not to fuck it all up.

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    18 points aff_it

    Broken 😶

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    14 points jackblade

    Someone else might've gotten it wrong.

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    3 points OrionFOTL

    F

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    3 points ATR2004

    Not even...

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    2 points the_minnesota

    Yep

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    25 points Pm_Me_Gnarly_Labia

    I too gave up immediately because it didnt make sense to me.

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  • 466 points [deleted]

    Wait, what? This is just a normal sub now?

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    466 points mjmayank

    Only admins are allowed to post into the subreddit 😎

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    296 points [deleted]

    Aww, I wanted to post circle memes.

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    156 points mjmayank

    Check out r/CircleOfTrustMeta!

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    23 points zammba

    Thanks for the shoutout. ;)

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    24 points mjmayank

    We all loved that subreddit!

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    16 points Picax8398

    Well I guess you're gonna have to wait until your time comes around

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    6 points M15UCK1

    So what’s happening now will COT ever be active again?

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  • 207 points OminousG

    No stats, big winners or losers?

    Kinda disappointing.

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    186 points mjmayank

    We'd love to do a more technical post that goes into some details like that! I'll check in with our data team and see if we can put something like that together.

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    72 points orbilo

    please do.

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    22 points wwowwee

    Holy moly

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    2 points DrunkenMasterII

    623? How?

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    5 points orbilo

    623.. I was at 1263? or something. My buddy leaked like 600 keys of mine :/

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    6 points orbilo

    "buddy"

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    3 points DrunkenMasterII

    Damn, did you sleep or what?

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    4 points orbilo

    Considering that I was only getting keys for 3 days , i slept about 12 hours in total, but on the third day I missclicked at 962 keys I think , and betrayed sadly. Tireness kicked in there I guess and then lost motivation to keep going. i’d have easily made 2k

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    3 points DrunkenMasterII

    Why people gave you their keys?

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    10 points orbilo

    Mhhh , at the beginning it was hard , random people gave me keys , at 100 , nobody even asked why , at 500 , i started to leave comments on top circles too and people just started to message me out of the blue with their keys. The higher the number the faster I got keys. Why? Probably because I seemed trustworthy with such a high number.

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    4 points DrunkenMasterII

    I believe that. I had to work so much to get a couple keys tho and there was really no reward so it didn’t took long before I said fuck it at just quit.

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    9 points Agent_Star_Fox

    Half the fun is seeing all the great ‘teams/factions’ that come from these things. Swarm and The April Knights were neck and neck in the discord rooms. Swarm wanted to take the Knights out, but besides the bot circle the April Knights became the largest circle and had three circles in the top 10. Stuff like that is really awesome to think about. Each April fools day adds more lore and stories to existing factions.

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    6 points spiderhoodlum

    I enjoyed this post and would love to read about some stats! And more highlights, because there definitely were a lot.

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    4 points elbowe21

    Is it at all possible to make a venn (not the right name for this, but similar in look) diagram of the circles I understand it'd be huge undertaking to do them all but even just the largest few would be cool.

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    3 points Puls0r2

    Pls do

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    2 points being_root

    Please do that

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    2 points [deleted]

    Pleaaaseee

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    12 points timawesomeness

    Check out the leaderboard post in /r/CircleOfTrustMeta

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  • 45 points Iamspeedy36

    Why did you end it so quickly? I had big plans for my circle, damn it!

    Also, there was much confusion about the use of alts. I was part of a circle that was quickly one of the biggest ones. Then, there was the first bug shutdown. The circle was betrayed (we think by the admins?) and a bunch of peeps got 48 hour suspensions for using alts. Yet, the person who came out on top used ALL alt accounts?

    Edited u/mjmayank

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    22 points timawesomeness

    Yeah I didn't get that either. My circle was all my alts, then an hour later it got betrayed by nobody and I got suspended for vote manipulation for 24 hours on all of the accounts. And then like you said the top circle was all alts. It really would've been nice to get some clarification on that beforehand.

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    6 points [deleted]

    At one point, there was a bug that basically allowed to betray without a key

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    2 points Iamspeedy36

    Yes, but that wouldn’t lead to account suspensions...

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    6 points Iamspeedy36

    The answer is still unclear. You got a 24 hour suspension, I know a bunch of peeps who got 48 hour suspensions, and then some were able to get away with it. Whatever the undeclared rule was, it was not applied equally to all.

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    3 points Agent_Star_Fox

    !hail

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    2 points Iamspeedy36

    !hail

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    3 points smarvin6689

    /u/mjmayank answer plz. Double standards and unclear rules on the use of alts isn't too fair.

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    9 points mjmayank

    Since these are short lived experiments, we usually turn it off after we feel like we aren't seeing any drastically new behaviors/strategies from users. Since a big part of this year's experiment was "you only get one", it naturally led to the experiment being on the shorter side.

    In terms of the alts, I would've loved to have had a better solution, but the power of alts is definitely one of the takeaways from the experience for us this. I also think that given the permanence of the actions in this year's experiment, we could have been more clear about the rules upfront. It's tough to predict all these things ahead of time though since we launch these experiments to 100% of users all at once, and the concept is always something brand new that has never been done before.

    Either way, the experiment was never really about winning or losing. Different people defined success in their own ways. Here are the some of the measurements for success that we saw, and I'm sure there were more that we didn't pick up on or that I'm forgetting:

    • Having the biggest circle
    • Joining the biggest circle
    • Joining as many circles as possible
    • Betraying as many circles as possible
    • Keeping your circle alive until the end of the experiment

    Not to mention ancillary things like having silly conversations with random strangers, solving puzzles, making puzzles, etc.

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    4 points smarvin6689

    Thanks. /u/Iamspeedy36 see above.

    So would you say going forward, alts shouldn’t be allowed in these events? Because some people were dealt heavy punishments, while others got off scot free

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    3 points Chalupa_Dad

    this

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    5 points umnikos_bots

    That.

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    3 points Chalupa_Dad

    and the other thing

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    3 points smarvin6689

    But what about that one?

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    3 points Iamspeedy36

    Smarvin, getting it done!

    Still not a satisfactory answer, though.

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    2 points rideride

    ayy glad they actually addressed this but im still unsatisfied :/

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    5 points gryph667

    "Either way, the punishments were never really about what was allowed and what wasn't. Different admins defined exploits in their own ways."

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  • 316 points TheEjoty

    At first it was really meh, as a circle owner, but what I found really fun was the creativity and interesting interactions people built for getting into circles; Started with people just making circles and not thinking twice about it, and turned into people discussing favorite films and tv, books, creating a like-minded circle of sorts, deciphering clues and whatnot to find the key on some random imgur picture. Definitely wasn't a letdown.

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    175 points [deleted]

    [deleted]

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    61 points INTERNET_SO_FUCK_YOU

    My first invite betrayed me I'm still salty. He sent me a message saying "You've already been betrayed :(" without realising he was the only person I sent the code to..

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    16 points jack88z

    I can't stop laughing at this.

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    4 points htmlcoderexe

    omfg rekt

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    49 points S3Ni0r42

    Just try not having friends. That way your circle will live forever

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    29 points pokemonsta433

    True story. Me and my wife. That was my circle. Good times

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    18 points SnZ001

    Me and my wife. That was my circle.

    That was my circle.

    was

    RIP your wife?

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    12 points BoothTime

    I need to get myself one of those.

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    8 points Iamspeedy36

    The metal corner of their bed!

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    3 points Harmonex

    The metal bit that's supposed to be against the wall because it's supposed to hold the headboard, but the bed they found on the side of the road didn't come with said board and they've never had a new bed before so they didn't know better!

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    6 points [deleted]

    This is why my invite code was only sent to like 3 people lmao

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    16 points [deleted]

    I loved the resumes people sent me to join, they are god damn hilarious.

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    5 points TheEjoty

    I forgot about those, but I saw a lot of really good ones.

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    3 points CanadianAstronaut

    Disagree, thought it was a letdown

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  • 52 points Fighter_spirit

    Honestly, this year's experiment was lack luster, but Reddit seems to have a history with on and off years with this stuff. Here's hoping next year we get something that tops r/place or even r/thebutton.

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    15 points GrilledCheezzy

    Oh boy I loved the button. That was a stroke of genius.

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    4 points [deleted]

    Filthy presser reporting in!

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    4 points GrilledCheezzy

    I pressed but I was in the last week I think. I pressed within ten seconds or under five seconds - whatever was one of the more difficult time to get. One of my proudest moments honestly. Is that sad?

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  • 49 points timawesomeness

    One interesting thing from my own data is that about 1% of circles had the key in the title, which was how I joined so many.

    I really enjoyed /r/CircleOfTrust, and I'd rank it just behind /r/place. I saw a lot of people using different tactics to join circles and to build circles, including a lot of fun scavenger hunts and puzzles (my favorite of which was /u/DanielJohnBenton's circle). Hopefully next year's April Fool's event is just as fun.

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    35 points [deleted]

    [deleted]

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    48 points EpicLatios

    I don't think they will ever surpass place, it was lightning in a bottle. It gave us the best representation of the site and all of it's users.

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    23 points lurkinggoatraptor

    I was glued to place for pretty much the entirety of its lifetime. Joined a group, joined the discord, spied on enemy groups, it was a blast.

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    10 points Emerphish

    I didn't know about the yearly April Fools thing when place happened and I was so surprised by it. Spent all weekend making sure r/smite and r/paladins were represented, and it just feels so cool having a little slice of something bigger.

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    2 points k_princess

    Now see, I absolutely hated place. I didn't have the time to commit to figuring it out. My favorite was robin.

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    6 points timawesomeness

    Don't forget reddit mold

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    10 points CanadianAstronaut

    the button was definitely #1, get outta here. The circle was garbage.

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    7 points timawesomeness

    The button wasn't that great, it only allowed one action once. Everything else around it was the community, which I didn't really interact with. Place, Robin, CircleOfTrust all let you do as much as you wanted to, and you could be a loner and still come up with a way to "win".

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    3 points CanadianAstronaut

    it was great!! it's always the community which is the best in any of these things. You can't say it sucked and then say you basically didn't participate. The circle was brutal dude...pointless and lasted a couple days. Pretty hypocritical of you.

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  • 36 points FishFruit14

    Imo CoT was flawed because it wasn’t open ended enough. You make a circle, so what? Almost nobody will see it. You join a circle, so what? All that happens is a number increases by one. You betray a circle, so what? Now there’s just... one less circle. You can’t really build off of any of those. There’s not much room for creativity.

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  • 10 points MichaelMoore92

    I didn’t win but I had fun so that’s the main thing.

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  • 9 points [deleted]

    Puzzle circles were the best part :))

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  • 9 points [deleted]

    No archive?

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  • 7 points Fishinadish1

    It was annoying that it ended, but they’ll bring back something better

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  • 10 points Bleeqo

    Snek

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    8 points Batman123579

    rip snakeroom alliance discord

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    2 points [deleted]

    You can always join the splinter turt server which is and always was superior

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    2 points [deleted]

    Osmosis Jones?

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  • 6 points haykam821

    Autobiography during Circle of Trust

    So, I am going to write my experiences before and during the experiment.

    I joined the Snekroom Alliance Discord guild, hoping to join the craze that was us trying to figure out r/sneksnek. Eventually we discovered through PMs with the admins that it would be starting on Monday, and that ARG was all fake.

    We decompiled the Android version of Reddit, and found references to a circle of trust. We theorized it was an Agar.io clone controlled by large groups of people via democracy, but then found the icons and discovered the key mechanic.

    My most proud moment was going to the redesigned Reddit and prettifying each JavaScript file, when I found it:

    The next morning we played some Cards Against Humanity with everyone’s favorite admin. Even if their cards aren’t as good as ‘1,000 Syrian Refugees’, we still had a good time playing with them.

    Later that morning, we were researching the APK and I discovered some more information in the redesign’s JavaScript. I then documented the API.

    Finally, the experiment went public. We went crazy trying to decode each color’s meaning and warning the members in case we needed another circle to use for the Snakeroom alliance. The admins made a fucko wucko by allowing non-members of a circle to access the key and the subreddit had to be closed at one point... and another time later which admins were not able to restore exploited circles from.

    My circle got to 16 members (proof in flair) before my friend betrayed it. 🖕 That middle finger was for you, u/Mega_Mewthree. I betrayed him back as well (proof also in flair).

    Although the Snakeroom Alliance enjoyed Place more than Circle of Trust, the Snektectives (a group of about 15 including me) definitely enjoyed decoding Reddit to get early access to the experiment. But most importantly—praise u/MiamiZ!

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  • 4 points Blankyblank86

    Wish i made one, i took too long and missed out.

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  • 4 points Bold_Wolf

    It was fun.

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  • 5 points Realpazalaza

    I miss my circle

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    3 points [deleted]

    [removed]

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    3 points Agent_Star_Fox

    r/wholesomememes

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  • 4 points TotesMessenger

    I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

    • [/r/aprilknights] Circle of Trust Retrospective is Up! TLDR; Knights unmentioned, Admins did nothing wrong

     If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)

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  • 3 points sid3aff3ct

    I had fun! I got active and messaged people instead of my typical lurking. My circle never became popular, but I did amass quite a few people.

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  • 3 points ethanguin

    I remember being so confused April 1st when I saw the circle symbol. When I clicked it, nothing happened really and on April 2nd, I was even more confused than before.

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  • 3 points FlaviaTheTerror

    My circle was great. I got betrayed and was kinda disappointed but I LOVED talking to everyone before they joined my circle. It was really wholesome

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  • 3 points edgelord_gg

    I'd say it was ok. At least, for a few days, I got over my social anxiety and could freely communicate with other people online

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  • 3 points ItsRainbow

    It didn’t really have the same interaction that Place did, but it was interesting nonetheless, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year.

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  • 3 points Jay-97

    "Feel like pure shit just want her back x"

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  • 3 points TheRoyalHun

    It was pretty lame

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  • 3 points [deleted]

    My circle was the coolest.

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  • 3 points cpguy5089

    This was honestly a failure tbh

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  • 3 points GenocidalGenie

    Comments are still open on this post? In that case I'm putting mine here for posterity.

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  • 6 points Lance74

    looking back at it, it was a rushed, last-minute piece of shit.

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  • 3 points sailirish7

    honestly I thought this was pretty stupid

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  • 2 points Hanta3

    I never understood how it worked or what we were supposed to do tbh. As far as I could tell, it didn't work properly on mobile, and I was on Spring Break all that week. It ended before I even got back to my computer to check out what it was, which is disappointing because The Button is what drew me to Reddit in the first place, and I've actively participated in the April Fool's event each year since.

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  • 2 points TheRealAblert

    Wasn’t particularly a fan, just never really caught my interest.

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  • 2 points [deleted]

    I didn't even understand it.

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  • 2 points WinstonCup28

    I have no idea what this is. At all

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  • 2 points [deleted]

    Looking back on this sub I couldn’t figure out how to do it so I ended up with a virgin circle but hey at least I didn’t get betrayed 🤷🏽‍♀️

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  • 2 points CernalRobertHogan

    I still don't know what happened

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  • 2 points nousernamesleftsosad

    Top 10 anime betrayals

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  • 2 points fuuretsu

    I want even in that many circles and most got betrayed

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  • 2 points WratheInvader

    Still don't understand how the thing worked, but was too worried about anything happening.

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  • 2 points blizzy399

    This is a late comment but here are my thoughts.

    When it started, I didn't really know how this worked until my friend told me how it worked. I ended up making a circle about people's fav Monstercat song since commenting about people's fav thing was a common tactic to gain a lot of people into your circle. I remember waking up the next morning and seeing a bunch of comments about their fav Monstercat song and just giving them the key so my circle can become big. Overall, the circleoftrust thing gave me an opportunity to hear a lot of people's opinions and interesting stories. I also managed to make the Monstercat community talking too. It was fun until my circle got betrayed. Unfortunately, I focused on my circle too much that I didn't really get a chance to join a lot of other people's circles. It was really hard to join other people's circles when you've only joined a few.

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  • 2 points ellixin

    Even the admins are filthy betrayers... Great summary of the event though.

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  • 2 points Rudey02

    Hm

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  • 2 points LovePurpleTeams

    I got a good one

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  • 2 points moss812

    Leaving my comment just for the sake of preservation

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  • 2 points billy4569

    Oink

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  • 2 points GrooseIsGod

    I have the last comment

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  • 2 points [deleted]

    [deleted]

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    2 points TehVulpez

    7

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    2 points __-_------___---

    8

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    3 points BroekieChan

    9

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  • 2 points KurlyJeff

    Don’t nut!

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  • 2 points KurlyJeff

    Je

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  • 3 points [deleted]

    COT was an shite. I got into a few circles and had a handful of people in mine. It got boring very quickly and eventually the discussion threads were just people begging to be let into circles.

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  • 3 points erinthecute

    It was most interesting in the first 36 hours when people actually had novel ways of offering people keys. Asking questions, starting conversations, etc. It was genuine and fun. That died out quite quickly and it just came a cynical circlejerk. People trawled for circles to join just to get their numbers up. The sense of community that you were going for never materialized because the format wasn't conducive to it. Circles were too fragile and there was a criminal lack of encouragement for communities to actually form. There was no space created to engage with your fellow circle members outside of the thread, and I never saw a circle thread that had genuine discussion going on. I never felt like I was part of a circle, just that I'd joined it and now I was done with it. There was one distinct exception, but this was the only exception.

    The resumes were funny for a bit but got old fast. And then you ended up with juggernaut joiners with hundreds of joins who advertised themselves everywhere. Half the sub became copypasted responses. And god knows how much everything was gamed using alts and the like. It didn't help that the overwhelming majority of circles never got any traction or got betrayed early, so nearly nobody got to experience owning a successful circle. You either had to strike gold with the title and key on your first try, or you were fucked because that was your only shot at it. If you messed up you'd get no attention and get left behind as new circles got made, or you'd get betrayed too quickly. It wasn't really fun since most people didn't know what was happening when they first made their circle. And then they'd get bombarded with impersonal robot requests to join their circles and never got to actually enjoy the game as it was made.

    And on the subject of serial betrayers and the groups like the Swarm who organized to do that kind of thing, I don't think it's inherently bad. Obviously there needs to be some level of risk here. But compare them to the Void from r/place. On place there was a way to counteract the people who wanted to screw with the game. You counter-organized and pushed back with stronger force and clever strategy/tactics. It was fucking awesome. With the circles, there was no way to stop them. When a circle got betrayed, it got betrayed. You couldn't do anything about it after the fact, and you couldn't tell ahead of time who was going to fuck you over because people who joined, even if they were totally clean, could use an alt to betray you or tell someone else the key. Sucked a lot of fun out of it.

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    2 points jack88z

    Thanks so much for posting this LOL, the fuckin succubus story man, wow

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  • 3 points KingKingsons

    Oh wow. I completely forgot about this after the second day. I guess not every year can be as memorable as last year.

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  • 1 points [deleted]

    Its still open?

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  • 1 points vicious_viridian

    If this comment gets 3 million gold, I will personally DM u/spez to bring r/place back for the whole year.

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  • 1 points Rhamni

    When The Button 2.0?

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  • 1 points disignore

    The best part of r/circleoftrust was r/snek

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  • 1 points randvoo12

    what disturbed me the most is that you have the ability to monitor the content of users chats !

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  • 1 points Zeek2517

    This is terrifying.

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  • 1 points PicklesRep

    It was soooo much fun but when your circle lost stamina it got a little boring

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  • 1 points chootingfeng

    Just typing here to see my score

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  • 1 points Chartis

    My strategy was to leverage what Reddit credentials I had and advertise that I'd join any circles that sent me their key. It was hard though as that sort of thing wasn't planned for and I had to get permission to post. By the time I was cleared the experiment was almost over. I never did betray anyone, and my circle had a couple of users, people I knew who had asked. Obviously the ball was dropped when it came to the logistics, perhaps next year we can run it again as well as something new too (even as a head-fake, but then again with confidence lacking perhaps it's best to let it die).

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  • 1 points Dnguyen2204

    Stats?

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  • 1 points normie_girl

    FUCK /u/ed_butteredtoast

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  • 1 points 244958

    edge racial offer fuzzy head boast frighten sulky rich bag

    This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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  • 1 points d0gco

    Idk anyone so mine was empty. I didn't get killed though so that was cool

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  • 1 points [deleted]

    i miss the circle of trust

    i would be very happy if they brought it back

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  • 1 points diamondketo

    Just checking my score

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  • 1 points MyMomBeatsMeSensless

    Had fun.

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  • 1 points NoFucksGiver

    i never figured out how to create a post in it

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  • 1 points constantdisplay

    r/place was cooler imo

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  • 1 points H1ddn_

    Will there be any more admin posts here or is this it?

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  • 1 points jwdewald

    9

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  • 1 points clunkyyyyyyy

    It was fun, got to communicate with a ton of people I wouldn’t have otherwise!

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  • 1 points [deleted]

    Ech

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  • 1 points [deleted]

    Why did the experiment end? I only found out about the sub after it was over :(

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  • 1 points drocks27

    No mention of the top circles? :/

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  • 1 points The_Fossils_Guy

    I trusted you but my the sub has been untrusted

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  • 1 points teeler_det

    I only added 2people lol

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  • 1 points SpicySadDad

    Can somebody please explain what Circle of Trust is?

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  • 1 points TheGoldenCowTV

    Welp I think I kinda did alright

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  • 1 points Vapemichigan

    Let’s make it happen again!

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  • 1 points [deleted]

    My circle glitched up, so I never got to participate

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  • 1 points [deleted]

    [deleted]

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  • 1 points Kidvette2004

    I never got to experience it because I didn't have my phone until it was over...

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  • 1 points KkaiserWilhelm

    Ya

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  • 1 points damian001

    Do another one of these because I just found out about it right now.

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  • 1 points JohnnyAlabama

    Fuck

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  • 1 points newtester8

    erf

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  • 1 points newtester8

    3yr

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  • 1 points ButterKnight12

    F

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  • 1 points dan2580

    I feel like this whole thing was a flop, just one user’s opinion though

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  • 1 points Mooseymoose32

    Test to see my flair

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  • 1 points MarioFanaticXV

    So was this just some sort of obscure April Fools joke that wasn't funny at all?

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  • 1 points 1ozlie

    B

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