And it actually ties in with the theme of this blog. Behold, Reddit's Ask Me Anything feature:
Ask me anything.
What is this? It's one part an expression of a community, one part creepy stalker and the other part just hilarious. The basic premise is this: Reddit users start a post with "I am a...(champion scrabble player, writer, director, mental patient, soldier)....ask me anything. They then invite people to ask them questions. The questions are serious, sometimes hilarious and sometimes inappropriate. And as a bonus, the community learns about your life and you get to play expert for a day.
Now, why do I like this? Because I'm curious, because I like to know what makes people tick and I love somewhat creepily looking into other people's lives. I think that this feature is one of the things that makes the Internet so great- everyone gets to be an expert and just as important as the next person, regardless of real life social status. It's the ultimate class leveler. You're not learning about Tourette's syndrome or the ins and outs of Scrabble tournaments from an expert or a text book, it's from a real life person. And that's powerful.
Plus, who doesn't love to play stalker now and then? You get to hear what people's lives are like without ever leaving the comfort of your own home. Additionally, if the stories are really ridiculous you get to play spot the fake.
It's all part of the Internet leveling people and bringing us closer together. Below, find some of the links to my favorite Ask me Anythings:
Ken Jennings
The Old Spice Guy
A four year old
The Flying Spaghetti Monster Church founder
I personally think AMA on Reddit is both interesting and hilarious, but I think we need to be skeptical. If you should take Wikipedia with a grain of salt (and you should, I hope everyone would agree), then you need to take AMA with an entire salt shaker and maybe a gargle of salt water too. You could pretty easily claim "expertise" in something that you have no experience in, or journeyman-level experience in, and fool a good portion of the internet. I'm sure some people will do that just for attention.
ReplyDeleteHow closely is Reddit moderated for things like this? I think a moderated site that would ensure the authenticity of the people being questioned could be really really cool.
It honestly depends. A lot of the more "famous" people who have done it are supposed to post simultaneous links to their twitter to prove that they are actually on reddit at the time of the AMA. But the everyday layperson doesn't really need to do anything like that.
ReplyDeleteThere are moderators for the forum and I assume they take down any sort of gross misconduct but I'm not entirely sure.