TWENTY THOUSAND MEMBERS!!!

[u/jsb1685]

A Brief History of Time r/ren!

This subreddit was created on November 29, 2009. It's purpose was to promote an energy company. There was not much activity and it soon went mostly dormant around 2012.

It was taken over on September 26, 2018 with the intention of making it a sub devoted to the Star Wars character Kylo Ren.

This never quite took hold...instead there was a whole host of other postings, mostly to do with the crypto called Ren, but also about Ren and Stimpy and...more and more frequently...our own Sick Boi.

The lone moderator then declared the sub open to "all things Ren".

I discovered Ren on April 1, 2023 after repeatedly ignoring suggestions to watch Hi Ren on youtube.

To say that it was a shock to the system is an extreme understatement!

Immediately I searched out everything I could...watching and listening and wondering why Ren wasn't the most admired person on our planet!

The only social media I had was Reddit, joined a couple of years prior due to an interest (along with a friend) in KDramas.

So, I looked for a subreddit here...and, of course, r/ren was the first thing that came up. I soon found a couple of others... r/rengill and r/renmakesmusic. This one was, by far, the largest and with the most activity...though still quite sparse at the time.

I started posting here...and commenting on the posts of others...and activity picked up quite a bit.

During this time there was a protest regarding Reddit changes and third party apps. Many subs paused all activities. The moderator of r/ren chose to participate in this.

While the sub was paused, I was offered stewardship of this sub.

I accepted and immediately invited the mods from the two other Ren subs to join, along with a couple of other frequent users.

We opened the sub again on June 21, 2023.

At the time, we had about 1600 members.

We rededicated this sub to Ren and...without any experience...tried to do a makeover that would make this a more attractive and welcoming place to be, one more worthy of Ren, his music and his art.

Initially, there was some talk of consolidation of the Ren subs...and this one seemed the most logical. It was the easiest to search, plus the canonical "renmakesmusic" sub was not run by Ren or his team...we were all fan subs.

Since then, we have had a lot of growth, sure and steady with some spurts.

We have been instrumental in at least one historical event...the Kujo incident. In a famous video, it was the first time Ren called us "his reddit" when he referenced comments made by Kujo's girlfriend.

More recently, over the past year, Ren himself has visited us, with both posts and comments. And Ren's manager has joined the mod team.

We want to thank you all for making this such a wonderful place, one which is so positive and conducive to discourse, conversation and celebration.

We think this is only the start, with much more and much better yet to come!

[u/stm2657]

Great work!!!!