Agreed, I think Reddit is going to die in fits and bursts and the fediverse will continue to build momentum with each wave. I think it’s arguable that we’re already starting to see this shift happen with Twitter and Mastodon. A behemoth like Reddit was never going to die overnight, but the users who really care have left or will leave soon. And it’s those users who made Reddit what it was, not its scale imo.
Torties/calicos can absolutely have stripes. They are sometimes called torbies. It’s not impossible but pretty unlikely that this cat is male. In order for a cat to have both brown/black and orange patches, they must have two different variants of the gene that determines fur color. This gene is carried on the X chromosome. This is why something like 98% of torties/calicos are female.