It happens.

There was a smallish sub I used to visit, /r/greendawn ... it used to be all about furtively placing little plastic soldiers in interesting public locations (to 'capture' them in an amusing imaginary war) with a note that pointed people to the sub if the soldiers were discovered. I loved the idea.

There were funny rules like saying "over" at the end of any comment, and you'd see soldiers in interesting places all around the world... tucked into part of the Great Wall, lurking in a corner of a famous restaurant, hitting the red carpet at the Oscars, wedged somewhere in the Colosseum... it was quirky and fun.

Then the sub got mentioned in /r/AskReddit and other popular subs a few times, and hordes of new subscribers descended on it, and in a short space of time the sub became all about posing plastic soldiers on the coffee table or the backyard, including of course a zillion pics of soldiers encountering the family cat.

The new way got upvoted a lot. So it morphed into a very different place. Which is fine, I guess, it obviously was more fun for a lot of people, but I wasn't much interested anymore. There were a few "what happened to this sub?" posts, but in general the mods seemed okay with it. If they want the sub to conform to a vision, they can enforce it... but sometimes they prefer to just let a sub go where it goes and let the readers decide.

I'm so tired of the endless boatsex garbage I could scream. But I still like this sub better than the regular /r/gameofthrones