It's one of our core cultural elements along with This Dope As Bear , our favorite podcast , and a few other things. There's years of site culture behind it. It was how we shut down people who came in to the sub expecting the normal Reddit habit of rounds of pointless debate where people yell past each other and no one learns anything. A huge part of the site culture was refusing both the Democrats and Reddit's civility culture and cloyingly false "nice"ness by being aggressively mean to people who came in trying to debatebro us, so bringing out something vulgar and shocking (but not that shocking by internet standards) was a good way to smack people with an awareness that they were not in Kansas anymore and would not get the usual treatment. It's getting thrown around a lot right now because folks are remembering their dirtbag left roots and flexing a bit, having fun, and taking the piss. It'll probably die down after a bit once things cool down. You might be able to block the link in your browser. I know that's a thing you can do but Idk how, I've never done it.