“Et tu, /r/startrek?”

I feel your pain. I "and my ax"ed a comment thread on /r/pics and got a ban.

When I went back to it, the entire thread was just deleted comments. Shadow-banned?

When someone finally responded to a plea for an explanation and we tried to discuss the error and a path toward a fix

• no context was available
• no one could explain the ban
• no one could confirm the ban was justified
• no one had an idea why "and my ax" was somehow bad in any context
• no one could offer anything I could do - apologies, I was thinking - to reinstate access

They just said "I don't know why but you're still banned" or so and that was it.

Power-tripping mod shadow-banned everyone in a thread? Some mod whose spelling I corrected, somewhere, projected guilt as wrath? We'll never know.