Yo, I have lots of opinions and strong feelings about reddit and spez right now, but I don't think that's accurate.

Afaict/afaik that was from a time where anyone could be annoited to a mod position without their consent.

I'm happy to have more pitchforks, but I also don't (1) like lies being spread or (2) want to distract from the "righteous" cause with something that's not true.

The head moderator of that subreddit was violentacrez aka Michael Brutsch, a troll prolific to have articles about him in The Guardian [1], The Atlantic, [2], and The Verge [3] among others. It's well within the realm of possibility that he added spez as a joke.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/oct/16/reddit-vi...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/what-...

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2012/10/18/3523434/violentacrez-mic...

Your link contradicts your comment:

“In October 2012, Chen exposed the real name and details of Violentacrez (a moderator of several Reddit jailbait communities), a Texas Internet developer, who was subsequently fired from his job.”

Oops! Edited.