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Also: gendercritical -> Ovarit, ConsumeProduct under the auspices of the .win network, OpieAndAnthony -> onaforums. Probably others, too.
There’s a meme that successful break-off communities are impossible, but it’s hopelessly out of date. General-purpose break-offs fail, but if people are in a habit of visiting specifically the community instead of just seeing it pop up occasionally on their front page, they will follow it to a new location. Honestly, fully unsuccessful community break-offs are rarer than successful ones at this point. The reddit diaspora is large and growing.
Took a look at all of these. They look to be pale shadows of their former lives as subreddits. The Motte has taken a hit but at least still gets comparable weekly comment numbers to a year ago. I don't think you can cite any of these other four as success stories.
The Motte's peak was a lot lower than Donald/WatchPeopleDie, though
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I doubt starting a general discussion community ever works. It seems to me that basically all the ones that exist started out as a discussion community for some specific thing, which then starts its own general channel for people into thing X to talk about anything.
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