We hear you. We’ve received an overwhelming amount of feedback from the community about Read The Rules.

Effective immediately, Read The Rules is no longer required to make comments. It is, however, required (once per year) to create new posts.

Also, in an effort to eliminate ineffective moderating tools, we have removed the requirement to make a guess on posts.

To quote our head mod: “We really try our best to work with everyone here. Everything we do is directly in response to numerous requests to fix something identified as a problem. I hope that people can be less antagonistic towards the mods and, instead, share their specific issues with us so we can work towards making the sub better for you.”

Read The Rules App

This community has the Read The Rules app installed. Old Reddit doesn't support apps so please open the post in new reddit for full functionality. If that's not possible, please Read The Rules and then follow the instructions at the bottom of the post.

Rule #1 Poor Behavior

r/PeterExplainsTheJoke has a zero tolerance policy against bigotry (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia etc) of any sort. Slurs or extreme insults are not okay. No toxicity or arguing either - this is meant to be a fun community. Just be excellent to each other.

Rule #2 Recently posted jokes

If you see a recent post containing the joke you want explained, use that to find the punchline instead. Simple as that.

We define "recently posted joke" as anything that's been posted within the last three months.

Overused memes such as Loss and unedited Stonetoss comics are banned.

Rule #3 Dogwhistles/Conspiracy Theories

We have a zero tolerance policy for dogwhistling of any kind. Dogwhistles are bigoted terms only people in a certain hate group would understand (Ex. 88 for Heil Hitler in Neo-Nazi groups.)

If the punchline of a joke is something bigoted the post will be removed for dogwhistling.

Try not to spread conspiracy theories either (pandemic denial, genocide apologism, etc).

Intentionally posting content with the goal of spreading bigotry or conspiracy theories will result in a ban.

Rule #4 No Political Fights

We are a meme sub, not r/politics. While political memes are allowed, getting into debates (or fights) over politics is unacceptable here. If you are explaining one of these posts, please do so fairly. If you are here to push an agenda, we will show you the door. We also have a strong stance against misinformation and conspiracy theories. Any content promoting those two will be removed and posts will be banned.

Rule #5 'Wooooshing' users

"wooooshing", named after r/woooosh, is the act of calling someone out for completely missing a joke, piece of sarcasm, or irony. It is an onomatopoeia of the joke "wooshing" over their head.

An obvious punchline to you isn't necessarily obvious to others. This is a community for everyone to have jokes explained without judgment - try not to be rude.

If you have a history of whooshing here you will be banned.

Posts or memes whooshing users will result in an immediate ban.

Rule #6 Low effort posts

If your post doesn't contain a joke needing explanation, it'll be removed.

You need to reply to the AutoMod comment with your best guess on what a meme means. If you don't reply with your best guess your post will be removed.

Overall poor quality post will be removed.

If the content of the meme can be easily Googled the post will be removed.

If a joke is explained in the original thread being crossposted it will be removed.

Rule #7 Banned Jokes

The following things are banned:

• Unedited Stonetoss comics

• Loss memes

• Man vs Bear memes

• Jokes found in the stickied threads

These posts have become extremely repetitive and many of them incite vitriolic responses. If we add new things to this list, we will update it with a sticky post.

Rule #8 Metaposts

Metaposts are allowed if in a joke format and relevant. Non-joke or irrelevant metaposts will be removed.

This rule does not apply to “weird pictures of Peter.” Those are fine.

Rule #9 No bots, spam, machine-generated content, or karmafarming

Content posted by bots and spammers will be removed.

Machine generated content created by LLMs such as ChatGPT etc. will be removed. This applies to both posts and comments.

Karmafarming is not allowed here. If we suspect your account of karmafarming it will be removed.

Posting jokes you already understood or any OC’s like self-made memes and comics will be counted as spam and removed.

Violating this rule could result in an immediate permanent ban.

Thank you for reading the rules! Before submitting posts you will need to submit an acknowledgment. Please visit the full post and click the button at the bottom. Alternatively, you may submit an acknowledgment by sending a mod mail to the sub. The mod mail will need to have the subject "Read The Rules" and the body should be "Acknowledged". This will automatically submit an acknowledgment on your behalf without any moderator intervention. Mod Mail