I am starting over (here on Reddit) because there sure seem to be some great people on this app—and people who appreciate connecting with my image work—so I'm back.

But it's been a frustrating experience this week, trying to get my previous account restored. All the communities I made have vanished too.

R.I.P.

Aside from persistent navigation issues in the UI, the whole system has always been rife with arbitrary, hidden barriers. I'll put time and heart into typing a comment in some community, not knowing I'm ineligible to post there, until I hit the Post button, and then it tells me I have to wait till I have more followers or "karma" or whatever...? That's just bad design, mentally and emotionally draining for the user.

And the rules for posting often aren't consolidated into one place. I'll read the rules thoroughly, compose my post, and then discover my post got deleted because of a rule from some hidden corner of the group. (And the rules are sometimes misguided themselves, like when their author/moderator doesn't realize "content creators" don't post selfshots only, but instead may post imagery they shot of other people, while retaining the copyright themselves. For me, this one comes up frequently.)

I still don't know the reason my previous account (u/ThePurityPixel) got deleted, as my attempts to reach out to Reddit have resulted in no substantial reply. So if I made some mistake, or if the problem is in the interface, neither party currently seems to have any way of knowing, and so all my efforts may be for nothing, again, if my account just gets deleted again. When this sort of thing happens in relationships, it's psychological abuse. Do better, admins of Reddit.com, because this isn't okay.

A big issue, also, is that I don't want people to see my NSFW posts if they don't want to. Again Reddit has a significant UI issue, because if people don't know they have to toggle off NSFW visibility on the website (because that option is strangely gone on the app) they may blame me for being insensitive. They may not even know they have the option to curate their feed themselves, and so they attack me. I love my work, but there's a time and a place for it. Admins of Reddit, give the control back to the user. Don't keep basic functionality out of reach. I'm being considerate of the communities here, you undo those attempts, and then I get blamed for it.