I know they throw each other a lot of shade, but from my perspective they look pretty similar.

Here are two plots to illustrate:

MarchAgainstTrump (9 hours)

http://i.imgur.com/qaeVt7X.png

esist (8 hours)

http://i.imgur.com/nu1Ud44.png

This is the EvilBuildings method in action.

What you are looking at are plots of thread scores over time. Time axis is along the bottom (x) and the thread score is along the left (y) in logarithmic scale. Each thread is a different color.

Pay particular attention to the threads that looked like they got chopped off. They had been growing but they got truncated and so immediately flatten out. What is going on is those threads get banned from the subreddit by a moderator such that it is no longer visible except by direct url.

By banning the thread, they "move it out of the way" so to speak. When this happens the front page "forgets" you had a thread up there recently. This is the perfect time to jump on a new thread as it quickly grows once it is seen in rising. After a while unban the old thread, and it re-appears so people don't wonder where it went.

The whole idea of the new r-all is to pace how many of your subreddit's threads can make it up there. It's based on things like your subreddit's size and activity and how recently you had a thread at the top. Banning your most popular and successful threads from your subreddit to clear your r-all history to make ready for a new thread of your choosing seems like exploiting a loophole to me.