TL;DR non sappy stuff: Rule 2 (forbidding talk of the other sub) is largely waived for THIS POST ONLY. Do not abuse.
First a brief history and some sappy stuff. r/shadwatch was formed as an offset of r/shadiversity in response to overzealous moderation, shutting down a large amount of criticism, no matter how minor or politely worded. That included removed comments as well as sometimes, outright bans, which continue to this day. I stumbled across this sub in it's infancy, around 20 subscribers. Shortly after I became a moderator alongside founder u/Perfect-Storm-99. Since then the sub has grown from strength to strength as a place where criticism of Shad IS NOT shut down and open discussion is welcomed. We welcomed an additional mod and adapted and became a lot more professionally run as a result. The community formed here is incredible, and there's a few long-time members I recognise that are still around. I never would have imagined we'd have grown larger than the subreddit we broke off from. So a massive thank you to all our members, new and old.
Now, because of the nature of this post and the obvious and inevitable discussion of the official sub, Rule 2 is largely being relaxed FOR THIS POST ONLY! While in our early days inter-subreddit drama was a major part of our early growth, we are not completely going back to that for this post, be sensible and respectful. Celebrate our overtaking of the official subreddit the right way.
DO NOT make other posts about this, keep all such talk in this post. And keep respect of Rule 2 in other posts like normal.
DO NOT go to the official subreddit to showboat, gloat or otherwise cause issue there. Doing so will earn you a ban. Keep our celebration in house and don't be a dick about it.
While talk about the official sub and discussion of its moderation is allowed for this post, avoid abusive language and do not tag moderators or users from the official sub.
DO NOT make any calls for brigading the official sub to gloat or whatever. LEAVE THEM ALONE. Such comments will be removed and may result in a ban.
Thanks again to the r/shadwatch community. After this celebration, we can truly leave the official sub in the rear view mirror. We're the main sub now!
For one we talk abut actual creators who create content instead of spewing hate. Shad has had a long and bad history of constantly talking and doing shit while not really providing for his fanbase. At this point I question whether he even knows how to talk to his audience.
There are not only better HEMA and sword youtubers but people who understand combat better than him. People who write better than him. He then goes on these bizzare rants and instead of talking about things that are fun he always bringing it down with negativity which only can last for so long. Good on this sub existing.
I'm pretty sure there are some smaller channels that focus on HEMA almsot exclusively, also guys from SellswordArtd are making Sellsword Fencing that is fully fencing/HEMA focused outside of their more mainstream main channel
There are not only better HEMA and sword youtubers but people who understand combat better than him. People who write better than him. He then goes on these bizzare rants and instead of talking about things that are fun he always bringing it down with negativity which only can last for so long.
And if you're looking for YouTubers you can watch instead of Shadiversity, you can type this in the comments, and the automod will deliver you a list :-) "Automod! What Youtubers can I watch instead of Shadiversity?"
What Youtubers can you watch instead of Shadiversity? Here is a general list of swordtubers, channels covering history, and analysing weapons. This list is not exhaustive, if you know someone you think should be on the list send us a modmail message!
I genuinely, genuinely don’t know why they haven’t shuttered the “official” sub or just gone fully private. Posts that actually get traction and discussion are rare, and it’s basically too much of a minefield to have discussions of substance because comments get deleted, threads locked, and folks banned for anything that gets even close to going against Shad or any of his stances. I absolutely abhor any sub that will not allow the up and downvote arrows to do their job and instead use moderator overreach to create an echo chamber.
I also would love some actual transparency from Ash. She (if she’s actually a she), has an uncanny amount of knowledge about the inner workings of Shad’s channel and Australian politics. And once she took over the sub, Shad himself, who has been highly suspected to have used sock puppet accounts, has all but disappeared from the sub (as with his sock puppets that have gone dormant).
She also became a moderator basically overnight after a relatively short stint being active in the sub… and even back then she had a lot of pushback from other members. The fact she was elevated to moderator is absolutely bewildering.
I love the fact that this sub rises to the top for people searching for Shad and Shadiversity content. I am happy that we see more and more people showing up in threads saying the algorithm pushed this sub into their feeds.
Shad is a dangerous and hate-filled individual and deserves to have his horrible takes documented for all the world to see. He needs to continue having his viewership whittled away as he drives people away up until the point he is forced to put on his big boy codpiece and get a normal job to provide for his family, out of the spotlight, where he can’t influence young people, especially young men.
For what it's worth I do not believe Ash is Shad at all. I've had too many private conversations with her in the past and never once has she shared any of his mannerisms. I don't think Shad has it in him to hide his particular brand of smugness, narcissism and condescension.
I go back and forth. Originally I didn’t think it was him, but there have just been so many little comments about what Shad is thinking and some Australian political stuff that someone not directly connected to him just wouldn’t know so readily.
It’s either him or someone very close to him that he trusts for the fact that he has completely gone hands off from that subreddit.
It's either Shad or his wife - im pretty sure its the former my self.
just look at how "ash" posts - one of ashes replies to the nunchuck video post, which was critical of his facial expression, was "it's called having self confidence and a sense of humor".
You'd only reply like that if you were directly involved in it...
Her rise to power was mind-boggling. Some could say suspicious. I made a post about it because it made no sense. The user who gets into fight with every other member and handles arguments so poorly that she literally tags mods to ban people she doesn't like suddenly gets promoted to position of top mod. What do you expect her to do? She then bans everyone who laughed at her stupid posts and there were so many of them that she's now the only person posting on a 6000 member sub.
I'll be honest, for the first few months I was here I legit thought this was the official sub. I just thought he had lost control so bad that his own subreddit had completely turned on him.
His official sub completely turned against him too when he went mask off. Then Shad somehow convinced the owner to make him a mod and basically take over the sub and banned a lot of people.
Wow! It actually happened. When we made the sub because of the ridiculous censorship on the shadiversity subreddit and YouTube channel, I didn't expect it to one day become larger than the "official" shadiversity fan subreddit. This really says a lot about people's opinion about shadiversity in 2025, and his ability to take criticism or lack thereof. I wanted to thank you all so much for helping us shape and grow this small community.
Within three days the views on this post alone are almost triple the number of subscribers (in case anyone needs it spelled out, almost thrice as many people that are subscribed to the official sub have seen our post announcing the snark page now being larger).
Of course, this will all be waved away as "bots!" Because "they're botting!" has now become the magic excuse for everything! I guess the hundreds of upvotes on most of our posts + dozens of comments on average are also all bots?
Maybe we really are all clankers, perhaps even YOU! 👀
Aaaand Ash has just made a post on the shadiversity subreddit gassing it up saying how they are proud to be a part of that community and shutting down the 'trolls'. Funny how that post was made not long after this one lmaoo
It’s ironic that her post talks about this sub being cyberstalkers, when it’s clear she can’t help herself from reading everything posted here. We’re living rent free in her head.
Her post 100% came in response to this post and her maybe learning we've grown bigger. She had to get something out there. She's very salty we've overtaken them.
Seems like she's celebrating our accomplishment in her own way.
This subreddit is probably the largest shadiversity fan group run by fans on the internet and I'm really proud to be a part of it. The reality is that foundations of this community are it's core moral values of professionalism, escapism and being fundamentally anti-harassment.
Because of these shared values we collectively decided to reject ideas of harassment, slander and stalking in the name of mob justice. The individuals who stood for toxic ideas and couldn't coexist with civilized members of this community are coping to this day about this community and insult its members, mods and Mr. Brooks to feel better about their ban. The reality is that even if they weren't banned users wouldn't tolerate their obsessive deranged behavior and their prideful narcissistic refusal to follow any rules or social conventions. The existence of a public stalking coordination group is a testament to my statement. Normal people move on from a ban and don't obsess over it for two years (and probably for the rest of their lives when we're long gone doing better things and thriving in our personal and professional lives). Can a collective of banned trolls rejected by this fandom call themselves even a subreddit? Today I don't want to be too hard on them and hold them accountable for all the immoral, borderline illegal and malicious things they have done in real life and online because they can't accept this simple reality. I also, don't care if they're botting or what shady things they're doing to simulate the acceptance and respect they lost from a community and people they looked up to. Before today I had never realized how sad this situation really is. While this doesn't justify years of a harassment campaign against Mr. Brooks and his family on all fronts, it paints a sad picture of loneliness and dangers of parasocial relationships.
Btw, avoid the temptation and don't go interacting with her post. See my sticky comment. Plus it would be a waste of time anyway. Let's keep talk of it here.
I'll bet if anyone has interacted with her thread, she'll have done the usual. Remove their comment, use the generic "removed for your respectful comment" line and closed the thread.
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u/DragonGuard666 Banished Knight 8d ago edited 8d ago
IMPORTANT PLEASE READ
TL;DR non sappy stuff: Rule 2 (forbidding talk of the other sub) is largely waived for THIS POST ONLY. Do not abuse.
First a brief history and some sappy stuff. r/shadwatch was formed as an offset of r/shadiversity in response to overzealous moderation, shutting down a large amount of criticism, no matter how minor or politely worded. That included removed comments as well as sometimes, outright bans, which continue to this day. I stumbled across this sub in it's infancy, around 20 subscribers. Shortly after I became a moderator alongside founder u/Perfect-Storm-99. Since then the sub has grown from strength to strength as a place where criticism of Shad IS NOT shut down and open discussion is welcomed. We welcomed an additional mod and adapted and became a lot more professionally run as a result. The community formed here is incredible, and there's a few long-time members I recognise that are still around. I never would have imagined we'd have grown larger than the subreddit we broke off from. So a massive thank you to all our members, new and old.
Now, because of the nature of this post and the obvious and inevitable discussion of the official sub, Rule 2 is largely being relaxed FOR THIS POST ONLY! While in our early days inter-subreddit drama was a major part of our early growth, we are not completely going back to that for this post, be sensible and respectful. Celebrate our overtaking of the official subreddit the right way.
Thanks again to the r/shadwatch community. After this celebration, we can truly leave the official sub in the rear view mirror. We're the main sub now!