What Drama Can I Create In 2025?

Matt Mullenweg started a Reddit discussion in the r/WPDrama subreddit asking what kind of drama he could create in 2025, which sparked an avalanche of responses that then generated a spinoff discussion about one of his responses to another Redditor.

The public r/WPDrama subreddit was created in October 2024 as a place to discuss the fallout from Mullenweg’s conflict with WP Engine. It currently has over 1300 members.

Mullenweg and drama

Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of the WordPress CMS (Content Management System), was involved in a self-described “nuclear” war with WP Engine in the second half of 2024. The conflict sparked a general backlash against Mullenweg and led to calls for a restructuring of the management of the WordPress open source project Joost de Valka (co-founder of Yoast SEO plugin).

So it was somewhat surprising that he took to Reddit to ask what other drama he could start in 2025. The post was provocatively titled: What kind of drama should I create in 2025?

His intention for the post was not to create actual drama, but rather to discuss the changes that can be made in WordPress. The title of the post seemed to be a stingy but provocative choice for a discussion on Reddit.

Mullenweg posted:

“I am very open to suggestions. Should we stop naming releases after jazz musicians and name them after Drake lyrics? Remove all notifications from dashboard? Download core plugins? Change from blue to purple?

I think we can think together and come up with much better things than I could on my own. ☺️ Also, Merry Christmas!”

His discussion thread generated nearly 600 responses, seemingly all negative.

A subreddit moderator pinned them answer to the top of the discussion, which reads in part:

“I have a fantastic idea for some drama that we can start. Why not create a charitable foundation to manage our open source software product, instead of our for-profit company. Why not also run our main website as a separate entity, with staff and volunteers provided by another entity. So why don’t all of these entities take action against one of our competitors and their entire customer base, refusing to do business with any clients until they stop doing business with our competitor. Why don’t we ban ALL of these people from our services and try to force them to use our service instead?”

That pretty much set the tone for the whole discussion.

ryanduff he answered Matt’s question with:

“You should check out and find a good therapist”

Matt Mullenweg answered:

“Hi Ryan, freelance WordPress developer. I’m glad that WordPress and WooCommerce have been tools that have provided you with some benefit and economic benefit in the past, and hopefully in the future. Your profile notes your strong religious beliefs, I would like to ask you before you post something like this again: WWJD?”

WWJD is an acronym for “What Would Jesus Do?” Redditors responded with riffs on that comment.

His answer received 85 downvotes, representing the dissatisfaction and unpopularity of his post among other Redditors. One response to his WWJD post mentioned a federal judge granting WP Engine’s request for a preliminary injunction.

They published:

“What would the judge (Araceli Martínez-Olguín) do? We’ll see.”

Another Redditor answered:

“Maybe you should ask yourself WWJD (What Would Joost Do)”

That branch of the discussion went completely off the rails with various suggestions about what Mullenweg should do and spawned a stand-alone discussion entitled, “Is Matt threatening with restraint or trying to intimidate this r/WPDrama user?“

That spinoff discussion spawned answers such as this one:

“He either thinks it’s funny, likes the attention, or is psychologically so far gone that it doesn’t register in his mind that your/our views matter at all. I guess it’s a combination of all of the above.

The best thing we can all do is to quit WP completely and withdraw all volunteering, all financial interactions, stop using it, stop recommending it and use something else for clients or use a fork.

He enjoyed being a bully before he chose WP Engine and now he’s losing the plot as they say and hopefully Joost can start his own fork that will finally be supported and marketed well enough to go or he can organize some sort of eviction of spoiled babies MM .”

Matt Mullenweg’s response to the negativity

The response to his discussion was extremely negative. Still, Mullenweg ended his participation by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

He published:

“I’m checking out for the night, it’s time for a family movie. Thank you all for the conversation. 🙂 I really enjoy talking to people online, even if we don’t always agree, and I appreciate everyone taking the time to voice their opinions. Forums like this are how I got started as a teenager. If you think Reddit is spicy, you should have seen Usenet and IRC sometime! I hope you all have an amazing Christmas and a very happy new year.”

That relatively optimistic post received seven downvotes.

Read the whole discussion here:

What kind of drama should I create in 2025?

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