impeachment woes on reddit? xkcd to the rescue!

Some of you may have noticed a rather homogeneous reddit front page a couple days ago. Nearly all the top stories were for a good chunk of the day somehow related to the impeachment of the President and VP of the United States. Fortunately, thanks to the nifty "hotness" algorithm Chris and Steve developed, the links cooled and fell off the front page (they won't tell me how it works, partly because they know I'd quickly divulge it under torture [authorized here in the States] and partly because I just wouldn't understand).

What I do know is that over the course of the day, links actually rise and fall on the front page. So the older a story is, the more up votes it takes to keep it "hot". It just happened to take a little while for the front page to cool off.

Anyway, Randall over at xkcd had an idea (I don't even know why I bothered to hyperlink that, since it's on the reddit front page every MWF). He setup a wiki for folks to continue the reddit activism.

His comic also happens to be why in today's logo, our SuperSoaker™-wielding mascot is petting a velociraptor covered in grape juice while standing in a pile of pure Colombian blow.

Don't fret, mom, some things are best not understood.

new orleans, 18 months later

It was just a weekend getaway; I'd wanted to see New Orleans again ever since Katrina. And not in some voyeuristic way, although it certainly felt like that first, but like every American should want to see what progress has been made and help out as best as a tourist could -- with money. (Tourism was the city's #2 industry, not sure what it's ranked now). Then there was the guilt for only going as tourist, not as a volunteer. Fortunately, it's not that long of a flight from NY, so by the time we landed, I was ready.

What I wasn't ready for was the destruction that flanked the highway into the city. "Eighteen months later?" was the refrain in my head. It was never too muted, even during nice dinners in the French Quarter or smothered under fabulous beignets. Those sorts of indulgences can make you forget the whole thing ever happened. The downtown is just as it was five years ago when my parents took me. Except this time I'm allowed to go into the bars on Bourbon.

But I thought some of you might want to see the photos I took from my journey outside of downtown and maybe it'll motivate a trip down to N.O. Everyone we met wanted us to go home and tell our friends to come visit; the city, the people, they needed tourists to return and spend away (and if there's one thing we Americans do well...).

But folks were divided on the story we should tell. Yes, you could spend a weekend downtown, down a few Hurricanes (it's a potent drink) and maybe earn a few beads, just like always -- tell that story: things are great!

Or, tell them to get out and see the devastation for themselves, entire derelict neighborhoods -- even middle class neighborhoods -- with no power, no one coming home from work or going to school anymore. They ought to see that part, too, so they don't forget that eighteen months later hospitals are still closed and so many families are still living in doublewides. The scandal that this could be happening in this country, that part will never be on the postcards, but Americans need to know -- tell that story: things aren't so great.

So I thought I'd tell both. You can take my word on all the vices and delights of the downtown (they're all still there, I just wasn't foolish enough to upload any photos of me indulging in them). Here are some photos if you want to see proof of the rest.

about italy...

Just so it's out there, yes, I know that there are no leaning towers in Venice and there are no gondolas in Pisa. Frankly, Pisa just doesn't have much going for it other than the tower. And imagine how tough it'd be to draw all those pigeons for Piazza San Marco.

I have an artistic license that allows for this sort of inaccuracy. Really, it says so right on it.

I just happened to luck out with yesterday, since both Neuschwanstein and Lederhosen are in Bavaria (although in all my trips I've never once actually seen someone wearing them).

The last thing I want to do is set a precedent for being that thoughtful with my logo doodles.

old school gaming

This series was largely inspired by a movie I caught at Sundance called Chasing Ghosts. It was also during this weekend that I played the original Donkey Kong arcade game for this first time in ages. By the time I was hitting the arcades, DK was pretty antiquated, but I'd dropped a few quarters in it before. Sure, I'd dodged enough barrels to rescue the ever-in-distress damsel, Pauline (yep, I'd always that she was Princess Peach, too). Our heroic plummer has quite a history.

But back to the movie, which was quite good (and I imagine pretty enjoyable even for non-gamers). Lincoln Ruchti, the director, does a fantastic job retracing the lives of the 1982 Video Game World Champions from a group photograph they had in Life Magazine. Through interviews with a number of them, he brings us into the present -- men who have for the most part put down their joysticks, but still relish remembering the glory days. They really were ahead of their time, gaming long before the likes of Thresh and Fatal1ty came along and made lucrative careers with their l33t skillz. The movie runs just a bit too long, but it'd be a fantastic purchase (or download) for that special gamer in your life. Oh yes, it's a mighty geeky film, but it knows it. You'll be loling, you'll see.

Ok, enough of the plugging, I'm not even getting compensated for it.
On with the headers:

Pac-Man: Even my dad knows this one.

Donkey Kong: I get the "Kong" part, but "Donkey"? Does this make sense to anyone?

Joust: They're rocs? Still looks like an ostrich to me. Steve's a big fan of this game, but he also likes Halo CTF.

Q*bert: What's more romantic than getting flowers, chocolates, and dinner for your significant other? Making a reddit logo with his/her favorite video game. +20 points to me. w00t.

Space Invaders: You knew this one was coming. How else do you think our mascot got here?

Frogger: Well, it turns out that I actually hated this game, but I finally got my revenge on all those cars when GTA3 came out.

Kid Icarus: Not an arcade game, I know, but I'd totally forgotten it was Valentine's day here in the States. I usually remember it because it's the day right after Dick Cheney shoots an old man in the face.

Asteroids: Yes, that typo was intentional. After all the chatter about the Google header from the day before, I thought we could use one fewer "d". Guess everyone just assumed we couldn't spell to begin with (hence, "reddit"). For the record, it's not like "Google" is spelled correctly anyway.

PONG: Thank you for starting it all (and for finishing this entry).

*And a tip of the hat to Adam (yes, that Adam) for suggesting the Pong logo.

reddit logo confusion

Some of you may have noticed yesterday's reddit logo in celebration of classic video games and Greek mythology. Remember kids, be careful with those wax wings.

When looking at it, some of you may have confused Kid Icarus for someone else. This is absolutely incorrect. We apologize to any of you who thought we might have started getting sentimental -- Dick Cheney just didn't happen to shoot an old man in the face this year.

Our logo from last Feb. 14th, just days after that fateful hunting trip.

(As far as we know, old men were not being hunted that day, his face just happened to get in the way)

Oh, and if you're wondering about today's logo...

... you're right, it's the arcade classic, Asteroids.

beware the alien, influencer of news!

Sorry, I had some free time on a long flight today and I just couldn't help myself.

reddit rockstars

Reddit was mentioned in a recent WSJ piece that featured profiles on a number of "The Wizards of Buzz," top submitters on a variety of social news sites. Although the folks at Time had big plans for trumpeting the people really driving this Internet movement (hint: it's not the alien-artists or the CEOs in the photo-ops) they didn't include any interviews with the actual user themselves. To their credit and with our full encouragement, both of the WSJ reporters on this story were very interested in profiling a sample of the users on these sites. On that note, a big congrats to anonymgrl, fedquip, and idyll. Sadly, I think my irony-meter broke after seeing your profiles in the WSJ.

For our part, the interview was pretty routine, but past lessons learned kept coming back. You always want to bring up those fundamental differences: "Well, reddit is a bit different, the "hot" page has links that are constantly rising and falling, so it's not as simple as just getting enough votes for a link to automatically appear at the top of the front page." While also answering questions: "Remove the stats page? We don't have any plans to. In fact, we added some extra daily awards a little while back and we're hoping to improve that whole page in the near future." And of course, explaining the site's origin: "Did we have a vision for the site? Not really. We just started, we didn't know what it would look like, we were just aiming to build a site where people could find all the newest and most interesting content online -- we didn't even have the up/down arrows when we started."

Funny, they never ask about the alien. Oh well. I'm still waiting for the inevitable "didn't you guys just steal that change-the-logo-idea from Google?"

But one you've hung up the phone, you're replaying everything you said and trying your best to be sure you remembered everything you wanted to say and avoided saying anything you didn't.

Then the article prints, you hold your breath and skim through...

On Reddit, one of the most influential users is 12-year-old Adam Fuhrer. At his desktop computer in his parents' home in the quiet northern Toronto suburb of Thornhill, Mr. Fuhrer monitors more than 100 Web sites looking for news on criminal justice, software releases -- and the Toronto Maple Leafs, his favorite hockey team. When Microsoft launched its Vista operating system this year, he submitted stories that discussed its security flaws and price tag, which attracted approving votes from more than 500 users.

Besides an electric guitar and an iPod, "my favorite thing in the whole world is my computer," says Mr. Fuhrer, who has lately also been studying for his bar mitzvah in June. In spite of a content filter his parents use to block him from viewing certain sites (including YouTube), he has managed to consistently make it onto the list of Reddit's highest performers.

Well, "influential" is probably not the right word, since all of his submissions have just as equal of a chance as all the others being voted on by the crowds (the wise ones, right?), but it sure does make the weekend WSJ reader take a slightly larger gulp of coffee. A 12-year-old is one of the most influential users on reddit? Even Michael Arrington got caught up in the ecstasy of "twelve year olds are now helping to define what news is".

Considering how impressive the quality and diversity of reddit's content [usually] is, maybe it's a 12-year-old wunderkind? Either way, it's the community that is ultimately responsible for promoting the best content. Or maybe reddit really is a community of 12-year-olds... or for all we know, dogs... or 12-year-old dogs...

Regardless, with this model, the readers are defining what news is -- precocious 12-year-olds are just helping to find it, along with everyone else.



PS
Congrats to you, too, Adam. I had to laugh a bit when I saw the artist's rendering of what I can only suppose is "you" influencing the three enthralled faces pressed against their single monitor. I doubt you look anything close to that maniacal.

peyton finally does it -- wins a super bowl, alien celebrates

The Indianapolis Colts were crowned world champions on Sunday (funny, given that no other countries are represented in the National Football League). It seems that in the future, American football has still remained popular -- that or the alien is just trying to fit in here in the States (there have recently been some immigration issues).

This was an important day for me, because the Colts finally validated my assertion (since week 1) that the Bears were overrated. Granted, they made it all the way to the Super Bowl, but that says more about how weak the NFC is. And come to think of it, it wasn't really the Colts that beat the Bears so much as it was Rex Grossman (QB) who beat the Bears. Once again, the Onion has appeared stunningly prescient.

OK, enough sports, let's get on with real life. What's important at this moment according to reddit?

Oh, another "Vote this up if..." poll. Damn, where's pollground when you need it? But don't worry, folks, tags are coming. Really, they're being worked on at this very moment.

adium duck, meet reddit alien

A big congrats to the Adium team on the release of 1.0!

Steve turned me onto Adium shortly after he convinced me to finally get a Mac, the 12" powerbook I still use to this day (I'm writing this very blog entry on it). Sure, the tabbed chat windows, sleek interface, and multiple IM client integration were appealing, but I was hooked once I learned that I could create/download custom dock icons.

Enter the reddit alien dock icon.

(That's what it looks like when you're messaged -- a highly excitable creature, I must say)

I'm proud to say that it's actually one of the top rated dock icons. Sure, I'd love it if you download it and vote it up, but feel free to just vote it down if you'd prefer to just put it back in its place.

Granted, you'll need OS X for it, but Adium alone just might be worth upgrading (or finally vanquishing that old Windows box, if that's the case). Anyway, we at reddit just wanted to publicly thank the Adium team for all the work they've put in over the years keeping their software great.

mooninite on reddit? somebody set up us the bomb!

*Disclaimer: Before you go and phone your local homeland security office, this sinister image was all part of reddit's regularly scheduled logo doodles. Please do not be alarmed, the Mooninites have been treating us well.

You’ve likely already read all about the terror scare in Boston surrounding some Lite-brite Mooninites they strung up around the city. A couple weeks go by and a few folks get spooked by these "sinister" signs. The two suspects were arrested for the bomb scare that resulted from officials taking this advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force a bit too seriously. Although, getting to hear local news anchors try to describe the show and its characters ("a talking milkshake, fries, and meatball") almost made it all worthwhile.

Under the advice of their lawyer, the accused did not discuss the case at their press conference, choosing instead to discuss hair.

+13 points to those two for illustrating how absurd this whole story quickly became.

reddit redrawn

When we left our hero over the weekend, it'd been "puckered" into oblivion.

But eventually, even penguin got lonely, so something had to be done. Enter "pencil" tool.

It just wasn't the same, though. Sadness ensued.

The cursor had a moment of benevolence, no doubt touched by the sentimental gesture of penguin, who didn't even have opposable thumbs.

Wielding the mighty "magic wand" tool, it was time to bring this doodle to life.

And voila! It's alive!

**Yes, I know, this isn't exactly what the "magic wand" actually does in Illustrator/Photoshop. Throw me a bone here.

hello, goodbye

One of our users, Tvrtko, suggested that our mascot try drawing itself for a change. But in order for that to happen, the alien had to be erased.

It started innocently enough, with just a cursor.

Then a quick tug on the ear (at least, I think that's an ear).

Come to think of it, the alien always kinda had a big head, anyway.

Beware the wrath of the "Pucker Tool", scourge of Illustrator.

Hold still. Wait for it... wait for it... (yes, this one is animated, just keep staring...)

Something is missing here. It does feel kind of empty without the alien, maybe something will be drawn in on Monday.

Thanks again, Tvrtko, for doing my work for me ;-)

who plays to lose?

"Plays to Win"
Dwyane Wade is a basketball phenom, no doubt, but are there really any athletes out there who don't play to win?

It'd be much more remarkable if he played to tie (which is really hard to do in basketball). Then he'd really be the sportsman of the year.

reddit is hiring

Steve already posted this up on the reddit blog today, but I thought I could use a free post on my blog, too.

We'd love to add a couple bright programmers to the team -- gaming skillz are a plus (+10 points).

There's even some discussion on reddit about it.

so this is where shirt slogans come from

The folks over at Gawker wanted to see what would happen if we turned a reddit into a shirt slogan generator. Even Gawker's editors sometimes need help being clever.

Voila! This first one was submitted by swedishfish.



It turns out this one was editor-created, but here's proof that the crowds are not just wise -- they speak French, too.

dreaming of multichromatic harmony

Only a few clicks away from resubmitting last year's MLK header as this year's, I hesitated before committing this rerun reddit logo faux pas.

Instead, it seemed like a good alternative to illustrate a utopian world where aliens of all colors could hold hands and wear reddit letters on their stomachs.

But our alien hero should have known better. It was all a dream.

And like all dreams -- once the bubble pops -- they end.

With open eyes it's clear that we still haven't fulfilled Dr. King's dream (which, it should be noted, had nothing to do with multicolored florescent extra terrestrials). Judging from the time-traveling experiences of our mascot, it's not something that will ever be fulfilled. Sure, wholly achieving it isn't realistic, but it's something worth striving for, right?

A washcloth probably isn't actually going to do much, but it's a start. Although I suspect that just being a decent person probably goes a long way.

read it?

One of the things I've enjoyed most since the acquisition has been the chance to do a lot more reading. You see, it wasn't enough to tell people "Oh, I don't own a TV" -- now I can say that not only don't I own a TV, but I also read for leisure. I suspect this is why people don't talk to me for very long at parties.

On top of that, I'm deluded enough to think that some of you might care about what I'm reading (see the sidebar, you'll need to scroll down a bit). That, and I made these icons

and had nowhere else to use them. The links go to a personal Amazon Sellers account, but if you get duped into clicking one of the book titles and end up actually buying the book from Amazon (I wholeheartedly recommend their "used & new" section for this) I'm donating 99% of everything I get to BLAST Kid's Cancer.

Granted, it probably won't be much anyway, but you're nevertheless probably asking your monitor "Why the hell not 100%?" and muttering something about me being a cheap wanker.

Well, back when we first opened our Cafepress reddit store we priced all of our items at cost. In fact, we promoted the fact that it was zero profit -- Cafepress wasn't going to be giving us much in the way of profit even if we did bump things up a bit and we just wanted the free exposure ("someone was going to pay us to wear our logo?"). We figured not marking up our gear was the least we could do.

We didn't sell a single item. This went on for a couple months. Pretty dejecting stuff when you're the guy who draws the alien, ya know? But we had a fateful meeting with Joel Spolsky who said that he'd be happy to support us by buying a shirt -- if it were actually supporting us.

"Just make it 'minor-profit reddit gear' or something, and people will buy it to help you guys out."

And he was right. So I figured it'd be worth trying to apply that same lesson here -- hence the 1%. Besides, as Jason Calacanis once said, "everyone's gotta eat".

some links of note (that you wouldn't find on the reddit front page)

If you're not living in NYC, Boston, Chicago, SF, or DC (or planning a trip to any of them) you may want to skip this. However, if you're looking for the optimal route from your office to nearest Dunkin Donuts, look no further than Hopstop. Get directions just like you would on GoogleMaps, but since most urbanites prefer public transportation, the driving directions don't do you much good. Especially when you're trying to get to a meeting in Boston when you've never left the strip of the red line between Davis and Harvard -- hypothetically speaking.

Instead, you'll get directions for the optimal route on foot and via PT (that's what kids today are calling public transportation). Try it out, you can spend less time worry about what stop to get off at and instead spend more time overhearing conversations*.

On another note, if you've been looking for an easy-to-remember domain for all the reddit logos, checkout redditalien.com and redditmascot.com (they both go to the same logo archive).

*That link was originally submitted to reddit and yes, those quotes are very often embellished or entirely made up, but let the suburbanites** have their fun.

**OK, I'll admit it, but only down here in this footnote of a footnote: I am one of those suburbanites, I just happen to have been living in a city for the last couple years.

making the nytimes a little less selective

I thought this was an interesting read, but I couldn't submit it to reddit because sharing an article is verboten on TimesSelect. So, I've copied it here with full attribution (read: I am not David Brooks). If you pay for your online NYTimes articles, here's the link.

January 14, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The American Way of Equality
By DAVID BROOKS

Income inequality is on the rise. The rich are getting better at passing their advantages on to their kids. Lifestyle and values gaps are widening between the educated and uneducated. So the big issue is: Will Americans demand new policies to reverse these trends — to redistribute wealth, to provide greater economic security? Are we about to see a mass populist movement in this country?

Nobody was smarter on this subject than Seymour Martin Lipset, the eminent sociologist who died at 84 on New Year's Eve. Lipset had been a socialist in the hothouse atmosphere of City College during the 1940s, and though he later became a moderate Democrat, he continued to wonder, with some regret, why America never had a serious socialist movement, why America never adopted a European-style welfare state.

Lipset was aware of the structural and demographic answers to such questions. For example, racially diverse nations tend to have lower levels of social support than homogeneous ones. People don't feel as bound together when they are divided on ethnic lines and are less likely to embrace mutual support programs. You can have diversity or a big welfare state. It's hard to have both.

But as he studied these matters, Lipset moved away from structural or demographic explanations (too many counterexamples). He drifted, as Tocqueville and Werner Sombart had before him, to values.

America never had a feudal past, so nobody has a sense of social place or class-consciousness, Lipset observed. Meanwhile, Americans have inherited from their Puritan forebears a sense that they have a spiritual obligation to rise and succeed.

Two great themes run through American history, Lipset wrote in his 1963 book "The First New Nation": achievement and equality. These are often in tension because when you leave unequally endowed people free to achieve, you get unequal results.

Though Lipset never quite put it this way, the clear message from his writings is that when achievement and equality clash in America, achievement wins. Or to be more precise, the achievement ethos reshapes the definition of equality. When Americans use the word "equality," they really mean "fair opportunity." When Americans use the word "freedom," they really mean "opportunity."

Lipset was relentlessly empirical, and rested his conclusions on data as well as history and philosophy. He found that Americans have for centuries embraced individualistic, meritocratic, antistatist values, even at times when income inequality was greater than it is today.

Large majorities of Americans have always believed that individuals are responsible for their own success, Lipset reported, while people in other countries are much more likely to point to forces beyond individual control. Sixty-five percent of Americans believe hard work is the key to success; only 12 percent think luck plays a major role.

In his "American Exceptionalism" (1996), Lipset pointed out that 78 percent of Americans endorse the view that "the strength of this country today is mostly based on the success of American business." Fewer than a third of all Americans believe the state has a responsibility to reduce income disparities, compared with 82 percent of Italians. Over 70 percent of Americans believe "individuals should take more responsibility for providing for themselves" whereas most Japanese believe "the state should take more responsibility to ensure everyone is provided for."

America, he concluded, is an outlier, an exceptional nation. And though his patriotism pervaded his writing, he emphasized that American exceptionalism is "a double-edged sword."

Political movements that run afoul of these individualistic, achievement-oriented values rarely prosper. The Democratic Party is now divided between moderates — who emphasize individual responsibility and education to ameliorate inequality — and progressive populists, who advocate an activist state that will protect people from forces beyond their control. Given the deep forces in American history, the centrists will almost certainly win out.

Indeed, the most amazing thing about the past week is how modest the Democratic agenda has been. Democrats have been out of power in Congress for 12 years. They finally get a chance to legislate and they push through a series of small proposals that are little pebbles compared to the vast economic problems they described during the campaign.

They grasp the realities Marty Lipset described. They understand that in the face of inequality, Americans have usually opted for policies that offer more opportunity, not those emphasizing security or redistribution. American domestic policy is drifting leftward, but there are sharp limits on how far it will go.

wired and gawked

Now that we're shacking up with Wired, it was only a matter of time before some arrows got plugged into wired.com. Decide what 2007's top trends are going to be and thus what's going to be printed in this April's issue. See, a paper magazine and the Internet can still be friends.

Oh, and after cluttering the pages of the Gawker empire with reddit ads, we're returning the favor and powering their new shirt slogan generators. Well, technically, the readers are doing all the real work coming up with slogans and voting on them -- we just stuck an alien head at the bottom.

See Defamer's top shirt slogans, someone called Anonymous came up with this gem, "Work sucks. I'm calling in dehydrated."

That's the wisdom of crowds in action.