Metafilter meets Jon? January 12, 2012 12:15 PM   Subscribe

Just out of curiosity, was it a Mefite who asked the SOPA question of Jon Stewart during The Daily Show's warmup last night, which inspired him to make mention of it during the show's opening segment?

Last night, someone raised their hand and said "The internet has asked me to ask you about SOPA" or some such thing. He took note of the usage, and had never really heard of SOPA. My first thought was "That cat is from Metafilter, cool."

Like I said, just curious.
posted by nevercalm to MetaFilter-Related at 12:15 PM (55 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

It was a Redditor.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:17 PM on January 12, 2012 [7 favorites]


I think I saw someone on Reddit mention this? *innocentface*
posted by Jofus at 12:17 PM on January 12, 2012


Nope

Well, I suppose the person could also be a MeFite.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:18 PM on January 12, 2012


Reddit is all over SOPA right now. Which has both upsides and downsides.
posted by Artw at 12:19 PM on January 12, 2012


Interesting. I never go to reddit, I just don't geddit.

Ahem.
posted by nevercalm at 12:20 PM on January 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


Dang -- too slow. I don't really hang out at Reddit much but I did a search after assuming it. Because if ever some place thought they spoke for the entire Internet...
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:20 PM on January 12, 2012


It's a young peoples thing...
posted by Artw at 12:21 PM on January 12, 2012


Well, he was young, but not THAT young. A typical hipster, but that's pretty much the audience EVERY night.
posted by nevercalm at 12:23 PM on January 12, 2012


And the question on what question to ask Stewart that led to this. Not really a Redditor but temporarily unemployed so needed to expand my online timewasting beyond MeFi for a while.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:24 PM on January 12, 2012 [2 favorites]


Boy, I just read that thread. They're really.....interesting folks, huh? They said he committed to doing a segment on it tonight. Rehearsals are in a half hour or so, I'll know more then.
posted by nevercalm at 12:32 PM on January 12, 2012


The thing Jon has been doing where he opens the show by riffing briefly on some bit of what is obviously a callback to pre-taping audience interactions but the home viewer wasn't in the audience so they don't have context and so it's just an annoying disorientation right as the show should be getting rolling?

I am not huge on that. That is a thing I am not very large on.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:35 PM on January 12, 2012 [12 favorites]


I see what you're saying, but it never fails to get the audience excited (the guy last night was practically doing cartwheels in his seat), and they are the laugh track, so it pays to keep them happy.
posted by nevercalm at 12:40 PM on January 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Internet sent me to ask you why you haven't called lately, what, it's too much to ask you should call occasionally I could be lying dead on the floor six days you don't call, I saw on the TV some show and the old lady's cats were eating the body! Lord, I never trusted cats, never was a cat person, ever since your Aunt Mimeo, God rest her soul, had that mangey little calico and I swear she knew that cat was pissing in my closet the whole time. But you, the bigshot. You're too important, you have too many things to do to call your poor old Internet, but still you don't have time to get married?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:41 PM on January 12, 2012 [11 favorites]


I'm from the internet and I'm here to help.
posted by griphus at 1:06 PM on January 12, 2012 [4 favorites]


I'm from the internet and I'm here to help.

Can you do the laundry?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:08 PM on January 12, 2012 [4 favorites]


Because if ever some place thought they spoke for the entire Internet...

it would be 4chan.

just a joke, don't come get me!
posted by Mister Fabulous at 1:18 PM on January 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


I'd say Reddit, at best, speaks for about half the internet. It's too busy telling the other half to "get back in the kitchen" to listen to them.
posted by maryr at 1:35 PM on January 12, 2012 [26 favorites]


Wife this.
posted by maryr at 1:36 PM on January 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


I maintain Something Awful is the Metafilter Alternate Universe Twin, not Reddit.
posted by The Whelk at 1:43 PM on January 12, 2012 [2 favorites]


The tone of Reddit's "community" varies wildly across subreddits, but the general rule of thumb is that the more people in a subreddit the more the standard of conversation defaults to "youtube comments". That said, Reddit is always more about the links than the comments.
posted by Artw at 1:46 PM on January 12, 2012 [2 favorites]


(I pretty much drop all my comics links on r/comicbooks rather than Mefi these days, for instance, unless it's something really special)
posted by Artw at 1:49 PM on January 12, 2012


maryr: unfortunately it gets so much worse. The beating women subreddit, the PUA/MRA shit, whatever the current replacement for /jailbait is. ick
posted by ODiV at 1:52 PM on January 12, 2012 [3 favorites]


There are a lot of guys on reddit for whom I'd gladly make a sandwich. A knuckle sandwich.

Sadly, my "execute remotely" code is just too buggy.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:57 PM on January 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


Oh, looks like we pretty much already covered Reddit here and everything I'd likely want to mention (and more!) is there.
posted by ODiV at 2:04 PM on January 12, 2012


Meh. Site on which anyone can create subsites contains subsites that some find distasteful.
posted by Artw at 2:07 PM on January 12, 2012


I'd actually hate on them more for their instance on linking to images for EVERYTHING and the fact that there appears to be no pitchfiork waving internet mob they won't jump on whether theres any evidence or not)
posted by Artw at 2:10 PM on January 12, 2012


Reddit's been totally meh about Mapstalgia so far, whereas I have quiet hope that Something Awful will knock it out of the park with maps if they got their goonish minds up to do so, so I guess that's the horribly biased lens I'm looking through today.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:11 PM on January 12, 2012


Artw, I love you, but diminishing women's concerns about the charged misogynist atmosphere of reddit as finding it "distasteful" is not cool.
posted by Sidhedevil at 2:21 PM on January 12, 2012 [4 favorites]


He was talking about my reference to some pretty reprehensible subsites. I don't think he meant the misogyny that permeates nearly the entire site.
posted by ODiV at 2:24 PM on January 12, 2012


Er, that should start out with "It looks like," which I somehow dropped while editing. That should lower the pomposity level of my comment by a bit.
posted by ODiV at 2:33 PM on January 12, 2012


Well, there's two things you could argue...

The first would be "does /r/[insert misogynist bullshit]/" existing reflect badly on reddit?

And maybe it does, but anyone can set up /r/[insert misogynist bullshit]/ in about zero seconds flat, as they can /r/[awesome thing here]/ - there is prettuy much no centralised oversight of these things as far as I can tell.

Still, you can argue that Reddit has people who are apparently keen on setting up /r/[insert misogynist bullshit]/ and it's like is a poor reflection on Reddit, I'd counter argue that it's just waht happens when you get a sufficient body of people and some of them are assholes and a maybe larger percentage of them just like trolling by pretending to be assholes (which is, in itself, probably covered by "being an asshole).

Still, I'd grant it's validity as an argument.

The other thing you could argue is that /r/[insert misogynist bullshit]/ is representative and emblematic of all of reddit, and i would not grant that, just like I would not grant that the existance of asshole Youtube comments is representative and emblematic of all of YouTube.
posted by Artw at 2:33 PM on January 12, 2012


In all fairness, I know the whole site isn't like that and I like a lot of what comes out of Reddit. I tend to surf imgur a bit when I'm bored (straight to the images, Artw) and I'm repeatedly appalled by some of the shit that comes up. Just 19th century stuff.
posted by maryr at 2:35 PM on January 12, 2012


Well, I don't know why the hell I would want to appoint myself defender-of-0Reddit-on-mefi, but a lot of it comes down to a) There being more of them, b) they trend a lot younger than Mefi, and c) general yukkiness of the unmanaged internets in general (see: youtube comments, your local news papers comment section, any unmoderated internet forum that is largely trolls).

There's big differences in whats acceptable throughout the various subreddits as well - for instance any reference to Occupy that doesn't treat them as earthbound saints will be downmodded into oblivion throughout much of the site, except in /r/seattle, which fucking hates occupy and loves any story about them doing something awful.
posted by Artw at 2:41 PM on January 12, 2012


Oh, and it;s when the image is of, like, SOME TEXT, or of a website that could have been linked to that it bothers me, maryr. Possibly they've learned that they have slashdot like crashing powers and avoid directly linking to things?
posted by Artw at 2:44 PM on January 12, 2012


(other grumbles: /r/technology used to be REALLY GOOD, and then it got flooded with links to torrentfreak.com, which is great if that's your thing, but I was kind of there for all the other stuff, okay?)
posted by Artw at 2:47 PM on January 12, 2012


maryr: "I'd say Reddit, at best, speaks for about half the internet. It's too busy telling the other half to "get back in the kitchen" to listen to them."

My son, who is fascinated with my iPhone, asked Siri, "Are you a feminist?"

Siri: Is that relevant?
Son: I want to know if you are.
Siri: I'm sorry, I can't answer that.
Son: Do you work out?
Siri (after long pause): It's possible.
Son: Will you make me a sandwich?
Siri: I am not good with food.

He decided she's a feminist, and she's strong, so he's going to watch his step. ; )
posted by misha at 2:57 PM on January 12, 2012 [5 favorites]


It's interesting to me how Reddit seems (I'm basing this mostly on observation by redditors so it's anecdotal reporting) to be going through a looping-nightmare experience with subreddit growth, where the maxim that growth equals cultural death isn't a statement that applies solely or even primarily to the site as a whole so much as to every single subreddit, where the mainstreaming of a previously niche /r/whatever is seen more or less as the beginning of the end of /r/whatever being worth visiting.

The "so start a new subreddit" approach means it's an arc that is played out again and again within the site, a sort of treadmill of banality. Crisis on Infinite Septembers.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:59 PM on January 12, 2012 [4 favorites]


Nobody goes to /r/gaming/, it's too popular.
posted by Artw at 3:02 PM on January 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


I was going to make a reference like " nothing on Reddit is as bad as the You Know What sub reddit" but then realized there are like eight answers to that assertion.
posted by The Whelk at 3:04 PM on January 12, 2012


Oh, and maryr, Reddit does have the TwoXChromosome subreddit, which is pleasant if you just want to relax and not have to deal with people doing the misogynist thing.
posted by misha at 3:04 PM on January 12, 2012


Initally, subreddits are created with a small group. On Reddit, the (very) general population is viewers > voters > commenters > submitters , with each level compromising between 10% and 1% of the level above it. When a subreddit is created, only people who are invested in that sub will find it, initally. Reddit now has a sub for almost any potential group. Most of them are tiny.

As subreddits grow, they attract more and more passers-bye, due to the ranking algorithm. These passers-bye can interact with the subs, but they may not be familiar with the community norms, and thus disrupt or don't abide by them.

The most popular type of posts are quick and easily digested. Pics, memes, catchphrases, simple and stupid jokes. At about 40,000 subscribers, a subreddit appears to become increasingly vulnerable to disruption, as its own internal voting population is enough to punch a submission onto r/all. As subreddits increase in size, they either succumb to these forces (r/atheism, r/gaming) or engage in fairly strict moderation or self-policing (r/askscience, r/fitness). r/twoxchromosomes is undergoing the transformation now.

Incidentally, other, smaller subreddits have attempted to divest themselves of memes and images (and therefore newcomers) and suffered greatly as a result. The process requires a community that is focused, which basically means a shared identity or goal (somehow) and yet broad enough to attract a large enough audience.

Time will tell.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:05 PM on January 12, 2012 [4 favorites]


My favorite subreddit sociological phenomena is how much the eInk purists on /r/kindle hate ANYTHING Kindle fire related and try to push it out to /r/Android (which does not give a shit about the fire except discussions of how to root it) or /r/Kindlefire, which barely exists.

Oh, and cortex, I assume you're subscribed to /r/LV426.
posted by Artw at 3:17 PM on January 12, 2012 [1 favorite]


r/mylittlepony is pretty much the only thing keeping me on the site.
posted by hellojed at 3:41 PM on January 12, 2012 [3 favorites]


...the TwoXChromosome subreddit....

I am admitting here that I have a reddit account and I quit that damn subreddit because it is way too much 'my boyfriend this' or 'look at my baby' that. It's as much a sign of progressiveness as having Cosmo on the magazine racks.

There's definitely enough to keep me interested though, which keeps me on. Like any giant group (SA, and, in the past, 4chan,) groups like that can, if they want to, harness the power of their numbers, and otherwise everyone can keep to their own corner(s).

Like the corner called /r/mylittlepony.
posted by cobaltnine at 3:58 PM on January 12, 2012


Metafilter meets Jon?

We've already met, thanks.
posted by jonmc at 4:48 PM on January 12, 2012


reddit to me is like usenet. It's just a huge centralized messageboard, and it can make perfect sense to never use anything outside of /r/thingthatIlike, and doing that doesn't mean you like or support /r/nastything. In the same way that participating in alt.thingthatIlike didn't mean that you supported alt.nastything.
posted by markr at 10:45 PM on January 12, 2012 [7 favorites]


I think of reddit as the comment section of the internet.

The bar for participation is way lower than it is here, obviously.

I like posting there without having to obsess over every aspect of my post - I don't feel that I have quite the level of intellectual jam needed to fully participate in MeFi proper. Plus it's easy to create a sockpuppet if you feel like oversharing/calling somebody on their bs.

I hang out in r/DIY quite a bit and find that the threaded commenting makes for better conversation than the flat AskMe style, especially when group problem solving.

I know the tone on MeFi has been more or less smug and dismissive towards reddit, but on certain levels they are the "competition" to sites like mefi - it wouldn't take too much of a shift in google ranking to have a significant impact on this place.
posted by davey_darling at 4:15 AM on January 13, 2012 [2 favorites]


If you want to not hate reddit, unsubscribe from all the default subreddits and subscribe to anything that blackstar9000 has touched. I describe how to do this on my MeFi profile if you're interested.

They have some really interesting* discussions on /r/TheoryOfReddit . They're still experimenting with ways to increase quality, and a small but growing contingent of redditors (including at least one founder that has since left the company but not the site) are saying that votes are mostly ineffective and that more human moderation is what's needed to improve the site.

*It's hard for me not to root for them at least a little. I kind of feel like they're the drunken Zephram Cochrane blasting into space in some primitive ramshackle vessel, and we're the Vulcans hoping they can get their shit together. And at this point, it really could go either way. But I am optimistic. They've got some smart, dedicated people, they know that they haven't really achieved the quality that the site has the potential for, and they're working on it.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:16 AM on January 13, 2012 [3 favorites]


TheoryOfReddit is (along with /r/linguistics, which is not great but at least it's people excited about language) the only thing I actually subscribe to. I enjoy watching other communities navelgaze. The thing I feel most often when reading ToR is a sense of frustration on their behalf that they have so much less of an actual direct line to the folks who run reddit than is the situation here. Metatalk is worth a damn in large part because it's got both the userbase and the mods involved; there's no real indication of that sort of reciprocity so far with ToR, that I've seen.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:35 AM on January 13, 2012 [1 favorite]


True- they don't at least in terms of the owners or admins of the site as a whole. But many individual subreddit moderators, including some of the default subreddits, are involved in ToR discussions.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:16 AM on January 13, 2012


If you want to enjoy Reddit, and you dislike misogyny, then you really have to unsubscribe from the default groups. Next, avoid ever actually reading the comments on anything.

At which point you may ask yourself, "Why am I even bothering to check Reddit?"

It is a valid question. I do not have the answer.

However, I urge you to never identify yourself as female anywhere on Reddit, except for /r/knitting and /r/twoxchromosomes. And possibly /r/aww, depending on the context (be cautious).

Otherwise, ucch, so many people will tell you to make a sandwich or show them your tits, words cannot express the unpleasantness.
posted by ErikaB at 4:42 PM on January 13, 2012


ErikaB- have you tried TrueReddit? I haven't noticed much misogyny there, but it's possible that I'm insensitive to it.

Also, if you want utility from reddit without ever looking at comments, you can get it by subscribing to the rss feeds from the relevant subreddits.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:18 PM on January 13, 2012


Y'know, for all the dramatic pronouncements i've seen on Metafilter along the lines of 'BEWARE FEMALES, LEST YE ENTER THERE' i've not had any shitty comments thrown my way, despite not having gone out of my way to disguise my gender at all.

Don't get me wrong, you are all totally correct that it happens and with distasteful frequency (I spend a lot of time pointing out that certain behaviors are things that people do, not that women do, fer instance), but it's not quite the inevitable misogyny-mob it's painted as here.
posted by pseudonymph at 11:36 PM on January 14, 2012


2X has gone to the dogs lately, it's like it's half completely banal and the other half is like a new outpost for r/mensrights. I think they've banned like half the r/shitredditsays regulars (or maybe mods), which is hilarious/depressing. R/femmit's been alright.
posted by NoraReed at 11:06 PM on January 15, 2012 [4 favorites]




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