By Ari Kogan

5/21/11

J201

Professor Harsha Gangadharbatla

 Throughout this term we have spent a great deal of time discussing such social

media sites as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. All these sites have undeniably played an

enormous role in shaping the landscape of the Internet. There is one site, however, that

has not only flown under the radar of this class all term, but is largely ignored in the

discussions of the elite social media sites: Reddit. This paper will be broken up into four

sections. The first will explain the basics of how Reddit works, and how its community

driven structure combines with its democratic voting system to create a one of a kind

Web 2.0 experience. The second section will discuss some of the incredibly unique ways

Reddit has contributed to, and ultimately benefited society, through its truly powerful

community. The third will explain why Reddit is still largely unheard of in comparison to

the aforementioned sites. Finally, the final section will tie everything together, explaining

why Reddit is currently among the most important social media sites, despite its relative

lack of mainstream success.

1. The Structure of Reddit

Reddit’s frequently asked questions (FAQs) section defines the site in three lines.

The first, “a source for what’s new and popular on the web,” immediately deviates from

the more sheltered structures of Facebook and Twitter, where content is limited to the

friends you have, and who you are following, respectively. The second line explains that

all content is user submitted, and that any user can vote a submission up or down. This

deviates from the typical message board, which tends to use a chronological

organizational system. The third line explains that the submissions with the most up votes

rise to the top page, which, combined with the huge numbers of submissions and votes
every second, means that the top submissions are always very current and relevant.

Other sites such as Digg have achieved success following a similar model

(Wauters). However, while both Reddit and Digg have made enormous contributions to

the Web 2.0 experience, there are several aspects about Reddit that make it truly unique.

The first is its organization. The site is entirely composed of user created sub-

communities, informally known as subreddits. These subreddits, which anyone can

make, and range from the standard ‘r/technology’ and ‘r/politics’, to the unique ‘r/IamA’

and ‘r/TodayILearned’, can be freely subscribed and unsubscribed to. Each user’s front

page is personalized by the subreddits that he or she subscribes to. This alone is an

extremely powerful resource. My front page, personalized to include subreddits about

world news, hip-hop, Israel, Premiership soccer, rage comics, and 10-minute recipes (to

name a few), provides me with the latest, most popular information on all the subjects

that I consider important. It truly has become my own personal newspaper, albeit one

that is constantly updating.

Another unique aspect about Reddit is how it has adopted the concept of karma.

Users, known as redditors, have a running karma tally in the top right corner of the site.

Every up-vote gives the redditor one karma. Karma does not have any obvious

incentives to the individual, but it is the driving force behind the mantra to Reddit’s

success: provide content that truly benefits the community, and others will do the same.

This community is what truly sets Reddit apart from other social media sites.

Both Digg and Reddit allow users to submit links. Reddit goes one step further, giving

redditors the option to submit text instead of, or in addition to, a link. Subreddits like

‘r/IamA’, which have attracted everyone ranging from the IBM programmers that created
Watson to United States congressmen and senators, are possible thanks to this option.

Providing redditors with a voice adds a whole new dimension, and has created a very

close-knit group with a shared goal. A somewhat superficial example of the power of

this community occurs every December, when Reddit hosts the largest Secret Santa

exchange in the world (Kincaid). However, the community’s true influence extends

much further.

2. The Power of Reddit

Although no recent total number of redditors was available, the most popular

subreddit, ‘r/funny’, which is a default subscription, has 674,320 subscribers. Although

this certainly pales in comparison to Twitter, which recently had its 300 millionth account

registered (Bennett), Reddit has one key advantage: its community. It is for this reason

that some truly amazing events have resulted from Reddit’s cohesiveness.

The most significant contributions are naturally the hard news stories that Reddit

helps spread. Redditors regularly post summaries of the latest important WikiLeaks

findings, such as videos shedding light on U.S. troops killing civilians in Baghdad.

Egyptian civilians turned to Reddit to help shed light on the true situation there during the

protests. About two months ago, a redditor made the following post: ‘Should be Front

Page- My parents and friends are in Bahrain reporting a massacre. Why isn't the media?

PLEASE HELP.’ The submission was quickly upvoted to the top page, and whether it

was a coincidence or not, the next few days saw an increasing number of newspapers and

television stations printing and broadcasting stories on the state of unrest in Bahrain,

starting with BBC reporting on ambulances being shot at, then commandeered by Saudi
troops (Hawley). Reddit helped depict the sheer horrors of the protests in ways that other

news outlets could not, as horrifically gory, inhumane pictures and videos (the thread

contained at least half a dozen) were not removed.

Naturally, Reddit has had just as much sway in soft news. When Stephen Colbert

announced his “March to Keep Fear Alive”, it came months after a redditor’s suggestion

for Colbert to hold a rally skyrocketed to the number one spot on the front page (Bell). In

between the initial post and the rally itself, redditors went into overdrive, starting an

r/colbertrally subreddit, and ultimately raising over $100,000 to donorschoose.org, which

Colbert is on the board of (Friedman). Colbert not only held the rally, but also showed

his true redditor colors by writing a thank you note chock-full of Internet memes and

inside jokes that spawned on Reddit, then followed it up with an AMA (Ask Me

Anything, the format for r/IamA posts) (Hathaway).

For all the hard and soft news that Reddit helps uncover, it can be an equally

powerful tool on a more personal level. A particularly touching example occurred in

March, when Lucidending, a redditor suffering from terminal lymphoma posted an AMA

on r/IamA, announced that thanks to Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, he was no longer

taking his medication, and would end his life in 51 hours (Marklein). When he wrote that

he was spending much of his time on the Internet because it was the closest he would get

to travel the world, a redditor set up a virtual world tour on Google Maps. Thousands of

redditors ‘checked in’, posting pictures and videos from all around the world,

accompanied with various well-wishes and messages for him. The thread received

national attention, including an article in USA Today. Feats such as these are only

possible with a truly unified community. This phenomenon is no coincidence, and will be
discussed further on.

3. Reddit – A Medium Between the Raw and the Filtered

No matter how long I talk about Reddit’s power and its benefits to society,

nothing will change the fact that it is not even close to being the most popular social

media site. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr all have much more heavy traffic, and a

quick Google Trends comparison showed that barring a drastic change of events, this will

likely continue for the foreseeable future (Alexa). So, why is Reddit lagging behind? No

amount of research yielded any definitive answers, so I can do little more than put the

puzzle pieces together how I see fit.

Although a large part of Reddit’s community is devoted to posting the latest

information (with redditors voting the most relevant posts to the top), another enormously

significant aspect revolves around the sort of inside jokes and memes that Colbert used in

his letter. This humor may seem trivial, silly, and not particularly important at first

glance, but the truth is far more complicated. Reddit has enough original content to last a

person browsing the site a lifetime, and a hefty share of it contains matter that the

inexperienced Internet adventurer would find shocking, at best. The truth is that for all of

Reddit’s seeming unadulterated content, there are digital lands far more lawless, and

Reddit serves as a primary medium between the more popular social media sites, and the

undisputed underworld of the Internet: 4chan.

A brief but necessary digression from the topic at hand, 4chan.org is in essence an

imageboard that combines complete anonymity with an absolute lack of political

correctness to simultaneously result in one of the most controversial websites, and one
that has consistently put out new, creative content. Internet memes such as lolcats,

Rickrolling, and ‘Chocolate Rain’ can all be directly attributed to 4chan. Unbelievably

explicit content is posted on a daily basis, website hacks and raids are executed, and real

life protests were organized against the Church of Scientology (all protestors were

wearing Guy Fawkes masks, to remain anonymous) (Grigoriadis). On 4chan, anything

that isn’t completely illegal is perfectly reasonable posting material, and considering the

site’s 22 million daily hits, a mind-boggling amount of content is constantly being posted.

Much of it is obviously garbage, but a very small percentage, which relatively speaking is

still a huge amount, has proven to be sane, funny, insightful, and/or relevant enough that

the masses are able to appreciate it (see: lolcats).

So where does Reddit fall into this? Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian explains,

“If 4Chan is the primordial ooze of the Internet, then Reddit is the place where interesting

content crawls out and makes landfall and then is sanitized for the rest of the Internet to

consume.” 4chan is simply too raw and unfiltered; it takes a true stomach of steel, not to

mention a virtual immunity to being offended in order to survive browsing the site.

Reddit has emerged as a sort of Brita filter for the unsanitary tap water that is 4chan.

4. The Most Powerful Filter on the Internet

My original claim was that Reddit is one of the most important social media sites

on the Internet today, along with such giants as Facebook and Twitter. This is a very

bold statement, seeing as Reddit has nowhere near the same number of users. It would be

difficult to walk down the street and find someone who has never heard of Facebook, but

the same certainly cannot be said for Reddit. So, why is Reddit among the elite? The
secret is very simple: it has the most powerful hive mind.

The closest definition for a hive mind is a collective consciousness. This alone

separates Reddit from Twitter. “‘[Reddit] does a really good job of separating good

content from bad,’ [explained Ohanian]…Twitter is constant and immediate. Reddit is

timely and considered. You can blink and still catch relevant information” (Errett). In

2009, Ohanian delivered a TED lecture that captured exactly why Reddit’s hive mind is

so effective. To summarize his anecdote, Greenpeace wanted to name a whale it tagged

in its efforts to prevent Japanese whale farming by way of voting in a poll. A redditor

posted a link to the poll, encouraging redditors to forgo the more serious, scholarly

options for the final name, ‘Mister Splashy Pants’. The post reached the number one spot

on the front page, and Mister Splashy Pants not only won in a landslide, but also quickly

became an Internet meme. Greenpeace capitalized on this, creating Mister Splashy Pants

merchandise, and eventually the whaling expedition was called off. Did Reddit’s hive

mind really care a lot about whales? Of course not. Ohanian explains it as nothing more

than “a lot of people who were just really interested and really caught up in this great

meme…this wasn’t really out of altruism. This was just out of interest in doing

something cool.” That is where Reddit flourishes. While 4chan’s equally, if not even

more powerful hive mind cares about little other than trolling and wreaking havoc, Reddit

tends to use its hive mind for good.

This is where Reddit finds its niche among the elite. Twitter simply has too much

content; popular hashtags change too frequently, and because a user only follows the

people that he or she selects, a cohesive hive mind is virtually impossible. Facebook’s

social network is even more closed off, with an emphasis placed more on staying
connected with friends and family than spreading ideas with the entire community.

Reddit is not only the filter of 4chan. Because of its ability to nest in between the

mainstream and the outlandish, it has emerged as the leading filter of the entire Internet,

all thanks to its democratic system. Just as 4chan contains mostly pointless garbage,

most CNN and Fox News stories are relatively unimportant, and the majority of self-

posts by redditors are relevant to few. Reddit takes everything in, and organizes it by

what the hive mind considers to be the most important. Reddit’s official slogan is “The

voice of the internet”. This is true to an extent, but a more accurate (though far less

catchy) motto would be “The voice and filter of the internet”. This filter, powered purely

by democracy, has propelled Reddit to the top echelon of social media.

Examples of Reddit content

r/TodayILearned

r/politics

r/firstworldproblems
r/israel

r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu
Work Cited

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<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com>.

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Kincaid, Jason. "Reddit Users Band Together For Largest Secret Santa
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<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
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Marklein, Mary Beth. "'Ask me anything': Man's end-of-life Q&A." USA

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<http://www.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2011-03-07-dying07_ST_U.htm>.
 How To Make A Splash In Social Media. Ohanian, Alex. TED: Ideas Worth
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