That DM from a stranger about my Greta meme changed my mind

I posted a Greta Thunberg meme that got removed from three different subreddits last month, and a guy named Dan from Ohio messaged me saying it made his climate-denier uncle finally ask a real question about carbon offsets. He told me the joke itself wasn't changing minds, but the fact that it got banned made people curious enough to look up the actual data. Has anyone else had a banned meme actually lead to a real conversation with someone who disagreed with you?

2 comments

2 Comments

sarahh481mo ago

Banning stuff almost always backfires and makes people more curious. Kinda genius honestly, that uncle got pulled in by the Streisand effect instead of the joke itself.

tessa_kelly1mo ago

Huh, I actually see it the other way. Banning things works fine as long as you're smart about how you enforce it. People say it backfires but that's mostly when the ban is stupid or hypocritical in the first place. The uncle in that story got curious because the ban was attached to something obviously goofy to begin with. But if a rule makes sense and the consequences are real, most people just move on to something else. The Streisand Effect only happens when the thing being banned actually matters to people.