The Reddit Implosion

Reddit, formally known as the 'front page of the Internet' has been suffering some major popcorn drama in recent weeks. Perhaps thought of as the pinnacle of what the Internet can be, it has taken on a life of its own, mirroring the hypocrisy, challenges and tribulations of 'Murica and their stance on free speech. Here is a link to the situation.


First. 

Reddit, for those that don't know is a large quasi-socialist Internet community forum. It was formed in 2005 by some college kids who are super rich right now. Or dead. They sold to a company which sold to another company and is now this quasi-semi sentient Internet being barely controlled by Conde Nast (owner of Wired). It was officially labelled 'independent' of Conde Nast in 2011 and their parent company Advance Publications. Consider it a large trashy online newspaper in which you can edit your 'feeds' or 'subreddits'. The amount of subreddits is akin to a galaxy. In the visualization below, each dot represents a subreddit. The more popular the subject (say 'cats' or 'porn'), the more clustered the subreddits are.

And those are the one just on the outside

Chances are if you have a 'thing', there is a subreddit dedicated to it somewhere on Reddit. All you have to do is find it and subscribe. You like Phil Kessel? There's a sub called TempleofthePhil for all your pro-Kessel thoughts, observations etc. You like Science, physical fitness, the arts? There are all specific subreddits in which real unmuzzled scientists, health nuts, artists all congregate under funny usernames to exchange ideas, share articles and generally try to be good people. You like porn and pizza? There's a subreddit called sexypizza. You like Taylor Swift, join the sub. You like to look at traffic accident victims, body mutilations, My Little Ponies and other stuff you can't tell your closest friends about? Your fellow freakazoids are waiting for you on Reddit. Still don't believe me? Here are some of your options...

How it works;

You make up your own unique username and submit an email. That's it. It's free. You don't get junk mail. You get your own mail system in reddit to maintain your real world anonymity. You get a default 'front page' with generic yet popular forums, then using their search button or just picking random subreddit, you are off to explore the darkest or brightest corners of the Internet.

If you like something someone says or posts, you can click on an arrow which gives them a point of 'karma'. You can also downvote to remove 'karma'. Each subreddit is run by a moderator, who is simply the landlord/owner of the subreddit. They are the only ones who have the power to moderate what is put on the subreddit and it is their voluntary responsibility to ensure the rules are followed.

Here's what made Reddit popular;

From starting off as a place to post Not Safe For Work images to Geek stuff to the hodge podge
it is today, chances are if you see it on your facebook feed, it was on Reddit first.

They also had this cute, easy to draw mascot/branding tool;

Especially popular, besides the near-unfettered non-censorship of subreddits and subject matter were the AMA (ask me anythings) interviews done for any subject, in which qualified experts provided proof and were given a forum to answer any questions posed to them. It was like being interviewed by a hundred geeks at the same time. But as with all good things, it drew the attention of New York and Hollywood's public relations and in the last few years the AMAs have become another stop on the talk show circuit to promote movies/music, and careers.

Some notable people 'didn't' get it' and became instant legends. Woody Harrelson became the poster boy for how not do do an AMA by refusing to answer anything not related to his movie 'Rampart' which he was there to promote. Morgan Freeman also apparently answered questions while asleep. That did not go over well.

User backlash was fierce; Reddit learned two very important things those days; users expected more from those being interviewed and never show your interview subject as sleeping while answering questions on his behalf.

Anyways, I am digressing. Point is, Reddit is super popular and it took something pretty big to cause a stir over there, like the banning of the subreddit 'jailbait', which featured underaged girls in a sexual manner, for obvious reasons. This subreddit came to light thanks to CNN as they devolved from meaningful journalism to sensationalist journalism to shock your grandparents.

Skip ahead to 2015

We go past the Reddit lore of the Narwhal, the Safe, The Boston Bombers detective agency, using bananas for scale, the success story of RomeSweetRome, (a reddit user story first 'published' on Reddit and currently in development in Hollywood). TheFappening fappened with great fun for all (except Jen Lawrence and others), conspiracy (also a subreddit) goes near-nuclear over near anything, especially the 'downvoting' of pro-Palestinian articles or legitimate articles with an Anti-Semite tone to the Middle East. Skip over the bitching of continual reposts for upvotes, aka Karma-whoring. Major brands are discovered to be doing product placement under the guise of consumer-fed content which pisses everyone off because for some reason they thought Corporate America couldn't find them on Reddit. Guns are also no longer allowed to be sold via Reddit, which pisses Southern America off,

Yet, for all its problems, Reddit was (and is) still primarily a user-fed and supported website, only as popular as those that use it. There most popular AMAs involved Barack Obama and a man with two penises. When you see there are 1000 questions for Bill Murray readers know he isn't going to be able to field them all and nobody expects him to but if he answers your question, Karma! The users feel like they matter. And when you see Buzzfeed or Yahoo publish articles, pictures, etc you've already seen on Reddit a day or two before you know which way the wind is going and your proud to be ahead of it.

Recently two major events have upset the status quo and the foundations of what Reddit was built on. One is the administrator position to ban fatpeoplehate, an admittedly vile subreddit dedicated to shaming obese people anonymously. The reasoning is that it's hateful and bigoted. The collective shouts back it is Free Speech and This is America, dammit. We can do what we want.

No, you can't, was Reddit's response as the nameless/faceless IT department goes on a banning rampage, banning followup subreddits fatpeoplehate2 through 9, among a smattering of other similarly themed obesity related subs. Other subs pop up and are quickly banned, mostly involving Reddit's interim CEO, Ellen Pao who in Karma news recently lost her sexual discrimination case against her former employer (she was suing for $9 Million) and told to pay $275,000 in legal costs to her ex-employer.

Yet, here was the bigger issue - in a vast Internet forum/bulletin board with subjects more vile than making fun of obese people, why was fatpeoplehate singled out? Reddit hosts subreddits where inflammatory subject matter is evident in the forum's name; ie; Coontown, morguebabes, beatingwomen yet those survive the banning because apparently - they weren't as popular as FPH, Wake up America, aka the fattest nation on Earth, it is not okay to poke fun at yourselves because AMERICA!

The idea of Free Speech on the Internet is nothing new. Giving those in your community the ultimate concept of Free Speech and taking it away from them, well, is that what America is all about nowadays? Freedom with a capital F and lower case u?

At least America still has the freedom to not celebrate.

But it's not over. The sudden firing of Victoria aka 'chooter' aka Reddit's Director of Communications aka the one who spearheaded and organized the AMA interviews. She was the one in charge of correcting the perception of Reddit being nothing more than another corporate shill to sell movie tickets and alter public perceptions via social media marketing, of which Internet giants such as Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are massive data mines. She helped celebrities from science, Hollywood, Politics, books, and the man with two penises filter the questions from the witty asides during their AMAs. And apparently she was really, really good at her job. But being popular doesn't mean you can't be fired, even at Reddit.

In support of her and in protest of her unexplained firing, many of Reddit's most popular subs have gone private or dark. People scheduled to do AMAs have no idea what is going on. She was the glue that kept everything going, becoming a celebrity in her own right. Everyone who lurked on the AMAs knew who Victoria was. It's a nice, symbolic show of support which I doubt will last the weekend.

And Here We Are Today

Reddit is clearly undergoing some massive internal changes, from the move to San Fran or be laid off ultimatum to its remote employees, to the Ellen Pao saga, and now The Victoria Mystery. Reddit has fallen off its perch as the best least-known website allowing others to fill the void, such as voat, which was ironically enough, promoted so heavily after/during the Pao saga the site crashed due to the influx of new subscribers coming from Reddit. And it is happening again.

So if you are planning on firing the face of your company, you better have a back-up plan ready. Reddit didn't. And now, millions of users are looking to get their fix elsewhere. Sadly, with our limited attention spans and need for cheap and/or shocking laughs, most will come back. I will still check in as most of my subreddits aren't that popular to begin with, such as 'cutebabyelephants'. Reddit is too big to fail now. However, that is what was said about Digg and MySpace.

I think Reddit will continue to be an amazing drama shit show, the sheer amount of subreddits on there make it impossible to censor all of them. Companies that tend to wander away from the core values of what made it so popular in the first place seem to frustratingly succeed. And as long as we pretend all those upvotes and downvotes mean something, we will return to the trough.

Good? Bad? Like the argument goes, if you support Free Speech you have to take the good with the bad. If you believe Reddit's faceless board of directors has a right to do what it wants to their website and employees because that is the American way, so be it.