John Oliver returns to TV, gleefully responds to John Oliver-themed Reddit protests

John Oliver has responded to those viral Reddit protests in which he played such a wonderfully large role earlier this summer.

The host reacted with predictable glee during the first Last Week Tonight Show back after the writers' strike came to an end last Wednesday, describing the protests as "a pretty inspiring act of malicious compliance".

The protests followed many major subreddits going dark to push back on Reddit's API changes, which led to major third-party apps like Apollo shutting down when they couldn't afford the fees. Major subreddits like r/pics reopened after the blackout, but decided to continue the protest in their own, unique way: by changing the sub rules to only allow images of John Oliver.

"For weeks, images of me were used as a form of protest on some of the most popular subreddits," the comedian said during his show. "And to their credit they used some pretty good ones, like this one of me as a muppet, this one of me as a blobfish, this one of me appearing in a piece of toast, and my personal favourite, this one labelled "John Oliver Wick", which is a pretty good way of showing you exactly what it would look like if Professor Snape ever committed armed robbery."

Oliver went on to delight in the confusion the whole story clearly caused local news anchors, playing a clip of KTLA 5 newsreaders discussing whether Oliver was being used because he was "boring" or, as the protesters wrote in their original mission statement, "sexy".

"Okay, putting my feelings aside – which they certainly did there – why does it seem like everyone on that show is completely unprepared?" Oliver laughed. "This guy is confused by the story entirely, and she's Googling it live on air. Looks like they're hosting an improv show where the audience gave them the words "Reddit", "sexy", and "John Oliver", and they had to build a scene around that."