
How Reddit Got Obama - rkudeshi
https://allthingsd.com/20120829/how-reddit-got-obama-there-are-quite-a-few-redditors-at-1600-pennsylvania-ave/
======
JohnsonB
They didn't "get" Obama at all. He has so far answered a total of 10
questions, all of them canned, standard set pieces from his campaign that you
could have just as easily read off his website. And he wasn't even the one
interacting with the community; it's questionable if he was involved with this
AMA at all. This was essentially a complete abuse of the AMA system but no
one's calling him on it because he's the POTUS.

~~~
noodle
> He has so far answered a total of 10 questions

I'd point out that he did say he only had 30 minutes, and given how poorly
reddit handled the traffic, I'm surprised he managed to get 10 answers in,
copy/paste jobs or no.

How would you have preferred it to go, anyway? Seems like he's not going to
make everyone happy no matter how its sliced, so perhaps he should have just
not done one?

~~~
mikeash
That's by far the least of the objections raised. 10 interesting, insightful
answers that offered new information would have been fascinating. But we got
10 canned answers that told us nothing we already knew. _That_ was the real
problem here, although nobody should have been surprised.

~~~
CKKim
"But we got 10 canned answers that told us nothing we already knew."

What do you mean?

~~~
001sky
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4451556>

------
jonathanberger
> "Not surprisingly, every answer he’s offered up so far has been studiously
> on-message."

This part was a bit disappointing. Part of the fun of an AMA is finding out
the unexpected.

His one-liners about the Bulls or "NOT BAD" were my favorite parts.

~~~
derleth
What do you expect? When you're in an office, and I mean a _high_ office, you
represent that office and all that office represents. Right or wrong, the
office of the President of the United States represents America on the
international scene.

And people are unfair. People take things out of context. Occasionally, people
just make shit up and shove it into your mouth. You can't stop them, but you
can avoid helping them to the extent it's physically possible.

There's always going to be a noise floor in politics: The rampant idiocy,
blatant lying, and absolute unreasoning psychotic hatred honestly felt by
certain groups. Going off-message can either raise or lower that floor, and
the sad fact is a single bad statement raises it a lot higher than a large
number of good statements can lower it. Look at Muskie: He lost the nomination
in part because he _possibly_ cried on stage. _Possibly_. It could have been
snow, but the implication was there. Nixon's lies hurt him, but it was likely
the 'tears' that broke him.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Muskie#Presidential_cand...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Muskie#Presidential_candidate)

~~~
waterlesscloud
Then frankly he shouldn't be going on a forum known for its impertinent (to
say the least) questions and saying "Ask Me Anything".

The abuse of Reddit AMA for boring, dull, traditional PR purposes takes one of
its more interesting contributions to the internet and makes it just another
venue for the Same Old Thing.

If a politician wants to be careful, let them go to the old careful outlets.

------
jcr
Is it "Reddit got Obama" or is it "Obama got Reddit"?

I think the best answer is, "Yes," since it seems to be mutually beneficial
exploitation of Reddit _USERS_ for the sake of press coverage (both Obama
getting press and Reddit getting press).

------
nl
"Front page of the internet" was always an ambitious tagline.

Reddit is living up to it now, though.

~~~
redthrowaway
That comes straight from pg, as reddit was his idea. He sold it to Alexis and
Steve as "the front page of the Internet", that is, a user-curated list of all
of the most interest links out there. While it may be read as ambitious, it
was originally just intended to describe what reddit was and how it worked. It
was the precursor of the "AirBnB for lightbulbs" taglines that dominated
pitches a couple years ago.

~~~
ibelieveinx
This comment confuses me.

~~~
redthrowaway
Alexis and Steve applied for the first YC batch with a cell phone food idea
that pg rejected.

He told them that he liked them, but not the idea. He suggested instead that
they build "the front page of the Internet". They did, and the rest is
history.

People have a tendency to think that phrase is somehow bragging, but it's
really just what the original idea for reddit was. It's not about their size,
but about the intended purpose of the site.

------
edw519
_There are quite a few redditors at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave..._

Your tax dollars at work.

~~~
nacker
It's so sad to see so many HN and Redditors so intent on their "upwardly
mobile", morally relative dreams that they fail to take account of the
totalitarian state they have come to live in. You will NOT be alright, jack.

Listen. As of September 2012, the AppForThat, Startup, bubble is just about
over. I say this as someone who warned others of the dotcom and real estate
bubbles. If you want to think of it as a "technical", or chartreading thing,
fine. The bottom line is: GET OUT NOW, the shit is about to hit the fan. Yeah,
I know you don't want to hear it. Sorry to bear bad news.

If you haven't heard of it, this is the Fourth Turning. (Startpage.com it). If
you think life is going to go on as as usual, think again.

Get ready. Hunker down. This is for real. Don't trust the government.

~~~
vecinu
Wait, what's going on? I want to understand but I can't decipher your words.

~~~
nacker
Wait, do you _really_ want to know? Really, really?

OK, <http://www.obamasrealfather.com/>

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s9StxsFllY>

~~~
andreasvc
[http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/birthcertifica...](http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/birthcertificate.asp)

------
leeskye
I wonder if Romney will follow up with his own AMA

~~~
stfu
He should send Ann to do an AMA on ColbertNation and only questions regarding
Rafalca and dressage should get answered. Would make some entertaining reverse
trolling.

------
shmerl
His answer about Internet freedom was not to the point, sounded more like
standard blank political talk without essence.

------
rdl
The question I wanted to ask was "under what conditions would you call for an
accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan, or an extended presence in
Afghanistan, compared to the announced 2014 withdrawal date." But Reddit was
in read-only mode most of the time.

I really hope Romney/Paul and Gary Johnson (again) do IAMAs.

------
ORioN63
Or how Obama killed reddit.

------
sharkweek
As much as I love it, Reddit has some pretty unsavory corners. Assuming this
makes any news outside the tech space, I'd be curious to see what comes out --
"President Obama answering questions on website affiliated with necrophilia" ?

~~~
emmett
As much as I love it, the internet has some pretty unsavory corners. Assuming
this makes any news outside the internet, I'd be curious to see what comes out
-- "President Obama answering questions on new technology associated with
necrophilia AND child porn".

I'm being snarky, but it's comments like the one you just made which are echo-
chambered into "there is something wrong with communications medium X because
it was once used by group Y". Reddit's a big public forum: any big forum will
have those issues.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"the internet has some pretty unsavory corners."_

Average voters actually use the internet and understand it. There's porn and
stuff "out there", but most people don't run into it when they're visiting
facebook, yahoo, espn.com, and other mainstream sites. The average voter isn't
going to question the judgment of someone who "uses the internet" because it
doesn't seem seedy to them.

The average voter doesn't know what reddit is, and wouldn't "get" it from the
homepage. On the homepage right now, there's Obama's AMA and a couple of other
serious political stories -- sandwiched between half a dozen memes, a picture
of a canker sore shaped like a penis, and several instances of the word
"fuck". You don't have to go looking in the unsavory corners of reddit to find
stuff that would make my mom question the judgment of people who use the site.

~~~
batiudrami
I've recently been wondering why they don't move away from the 'default
subreddits' model homepage and to a splash page: "Welcome to Reddit, a place
where you can share links and talk about your favourite subjects. What are you
interested in?", with a big search box, and a list of suggested subreddits
that you can subscribe to. It gets users to create an account, and can allow
for a friendlier experience for new people. Of course, there'd still be a 'go
to the front page' link for people who preferred it, but this would help
change the 'default' reddit experience, which for most people isn't great, as
well as helps convey the message that reddit isn't a singular, rage comic-
loving, pro-weed legalisation commmunity.

~~~
kn0thing
Believe me, this comes up every time we talk about product. A better
onboarding experience is coming, with better subreddit discovery.

~~~
batiudrami
Back when reddit only had about 10 categories, I made a joke about how I
wouldn't be surprised to see an xkcd category, because of how frequently the
comics posted. When that actually happened, I rolled my eyes and wondered what
these idiot admins had done, segregating the community into separate, yet very
similar categories. In hindsight, it has shown itself to be a great idea, and
by far reddit's greatest strength. I'm glad you guys have plans to highlight
that to people.

------
RandallBrown
Look, I get it. The President's time is extremely valuable, but 30 minutes?
Seriously? I got the page to load 1 time, and by then it was over. I would
have rather he didn't do it at all.

I did like that one of his answers referenced the Obama Not Bad meme, but I
imagine that was pre-canned by one of his interns or something.

------
majormajor
Something overlooked in the "he didn't give interesting answers" complaints is
that just being able to ask a question (even if it goes unanswered) is a form
of communication with the President that's never been available to an average
citizen in this way.

~~~
akldfgj
I'm pretty sure that Americans have been able to send to-be-ignored letters to
the President since Ben Franklin invented the USPS.

------
mintyice
>if he doesn’t want an uncomfortable “boxers or briefs” moment, he can control
that.

Jokingly I did actually comment that.

------
rorrr
What a disappointing AMA. He answers stupid questions about his favorite
basketball player and the white house beer recipe, but completely ignores the
important ones about decriminalization of marijuana.

Fuck him. I'm not voting for him. He's a mild and more sociable version of
Romney.

~~~
redthrowaway
Why on Earth would he go touch marijuana legalization with a 10-foot pole?
He's not Ron Paul; he's actually trying to _win_ the election. The average
swing voter is a middle-aged mom, and you want him to talk about marijuana
legalization?

You can either be a frank politician who addresses all questions honestly, or
you can be a politician who wins elections.

~~~
001sky
_Why on Earth would he go touch marijuana legalization with a 10-foot pole?_

Well, if its good enough for TED, why not Reddit?

[http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2012/03/best-of-
ted-20...](http://whohastimeforthis.blogspot.com/2012/03/best-of-
ted-2012.html)

 _Hands down, the best [TED] talk this year was from Bryan Stevenson on
injustice in the US criminal legal system. For example, the number of
prisoners in the last 40 years has grown from 300,000 to 2.3 million
(primarily, I believe, due to non-violent drug infractions). One third of
young African American men are in prison, on probation or on parole. Ours is
the only country in the world that gives life sentences to 13 year olds. As
for the death penalty, one out of nine defendants sentenced to death have been
exonerated. in California a billion dollars will be spent defending and
executing the death penalty in the next 5 years, although a referendum is on
its way to re-direct those funds to police enforcement budgets.

What made the talk great was Stevenson's ability to weave in his personal
stories, recounting memories of what it was like to grow up among activists
like Rosa Parks. There was so much enthusiasm for Stevenson and his cause that
TED Curator Chris Andersen jumped on the occasion to solicit donations for
Stevenson's private foundation. Right there many of us stood up and, in
aggregate, pledged close to a million dollars!_

~~~
redthrowaway
You just wooshed my comment, hard. I'm not saying it's not a real issue, I'm
saying he'd have to be an idiot to address it. It's a no-win situation for
him: either piss of the young voters he's trying to court, or piss off the
swing voters he _needs_ to court. There is simply nothing for him to gain by
addressing marijuana legalization.

Ron Paul doesn't suffer from this problem. He's not trying (or able) to win
the White House; he's trying to bring issues to the forefront of the public
consciousness and raise awareness of libertarian positions. Ron Paul can
afford to address the issues that would lose real candidates elections, as
he's not about to win any elections outside of his House seat.

~~~
derleth
> He's not trying (or able) to win the White House; he's trying to bring
> issues to the forefront of the public consciousness and raise awareness of
> libertarian positions.

No, he's trying to make money from campaign donations. He always succeeds.

