Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 60 Alexis Ohanian - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: March 13, 2015

Entrepreneur, author, and co-founder of reddit, Alexis Ohanian, joins Rhett & Link this week to talk about how a Waffle House in Virginia played an important role in the creation of one of the most popular websites in the world, the gravity associated with protecting the internet as a level playing field, and what reddit reveals about the current state of social interaction. Visit http://www.godaddy.com/deals2/?isc=gmm or use the promo code “GMM” at checkout for $1.99 Domains. Some limitations apply. See site for details. *NOTE: This conversation contains adult themes. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. Joining us today at the round table of dimmed lighting is entrepreneur, investor, author, and co-founder of Reddit, one of the most popular websites on the internet, Alexis Ohanian. I got to take issue with you there, Link.

You said dimmed lighting again. I'm just, you know, you can say it how you want to, but it's dim lighting. The lighting is dimmed, but dim lighting is, I mean, I'm just, I'm gonna take a stand here. I really think you should take the D off. I too am gonna take a stand and it's dimmed. So you say it your way, I'll say mine.

Alexis sold Reddit just over a year after starting it, but now he's back as a Reddit board member, but when he's not Redditing, he's focusing his time and energy on founding and investing in companies that fit his model of creating something people love and making the world suck less. Alexis is an inspiration to a generation of people

born on the internet, and he demystifies entrepreneurship by encouraging people to use the tools around them to be self-starters and to do the things they really wanna do. He's also recognized as one of the most influential activists of net neutrality and a champion of internet freedom. Forbes actually called him the mayor of the internet.

Well, Forbes says it. Well, they say it. It must be true. In this biscuit, we talked with Alexis about the role of Waffle House in the formation of Reddit, the origin of AMAs, ask me anythings in case you didn't know what that was, the latest on net neutrality and protecting the internet

as a level playing field, and what Reddit reveals about humanity in general. Really had a great time talking to Alexis and I hope you have a great time listening to it. But first, maybe you've got an idea for the next Reddit. Well, don't let somebody else take that domain name. Register a domain name now and put your idea online. How does 199 sound?

$199? $1.99. Oh, that sounds really good, Link. For a.com domain. Go to GoDaddy.com and use our code GMM. You want I have to pee right now, but I'm gonna hold it.com. It's totally worth it. Yes, I do,

because I was thinking that, how'd you know? I also was thinking that, that's why I said it. Did you see it in my eyes? No, I had to. I have to pee right now, but I'm going to hold it. Dot com. Dot com. Were you thinking the dot com part? Because for $1.99, it can be yours only with our coupon code.

Well, not anymore, I just took that one. No, you didn't. While you were talking, I just took that one. No, you didn't. While you were talking, I just registered it. Visit GoDaddy.com and enter code GMM at checkout for a new.com for only 199. I know it's a little interesting, we're using the GMM code on Ear Biscuits, but guys, it's always a good Mythical Morning

and we do both shows, so you know what, don't get too confused about this. Some limitations apply, see website for details. Now, on with the biscuit. We read that you were planning on becoming an immigration lawyer. Yes. That had an epiphany in a Waffle House.

Tell us about that Waffle House. You all will appreciate this. You know what? So I went to school in Virginia, Charlottesville, UVA. And there's a Waffle House on Route 29 where- There's none of them out here, man. We really miss it. This is why I know you all appreciate it. I did a college tour for my book.

And I visited 81 or 82 universities talking about my story and entrepreneurship and trying to get people to do amazing with technology. And part it is like go to waffle house and have an epiphany there and unfortunately that's like a point in your like powerpoint presentation no literally i'll say i will send you the deck and i i do that in atlanta and it's like a standing ovation right do that at georgia tech oh yeah everyone's there's seven within a mile radius yes and incidentally that's why i know way too much waffles that's why it's yellow and black is because the guy who founded it was a georgia tech alum um i don't know if this changes people's opinions there might be some bulldogs out there who are like never going to waffles but um you know there are parts of the country where no one has ever been to or even heard of a waffle house and it

that powerpoint totally flat and And I have to just delete. What is the furthest west that they go? I mean, it's not further than Texas, Oklahoma, probably. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it can't be further than Texas, Oklahoma. I looked it up yesterday. That's a fact. Not much past Texas.

We can change that, though. It's not in the Northeast either. That's where a lot of good things stop, you know, West Texas. How do you like your hash browns? Oh man, scattered and smothered. So cheese and not in the long. I'm gonna break it up, I like the crunch, man.

But I'm a simple man. I like them scattered, smothered, and what's onions, covered? Capped. Not capped. You totally made that up. How do you eat yours? Capped is mushrooms.

Oh, I don't like it. I do capped, smothered, covered. What do you put when you put jalapenos in there? Spiced. I do everything that they offer. Oh, wow. We got to brush up, whatever that is. I'm a simple man.

I try not to, I just don't want to ruin it. But you had an epiphany there. Oh yeah, right, because I was going to be a lawyer and I walked out of an LSAT prep class on a Saturday morning with my buddy Jack and we just went to Waffle House because we were hungry. We decided, we were... It was 3am and you were totally drunk.

We were probably recovering. Okay. But it was very early on a Saturday and it was one of these SAT things like Kaplan does where they put you in a room. It's like a mock LSAT. It's like a mock LSAT where you're in there for like however many hours. And it just, I don't know, an hour in, we looked at each other. And we were just like, do we really want to be here?

And we were both hungry. And so we just got waffles instead. You bounced. We left. And it was a weird thing because you have to imagine like for all of – I guess for the first two or so years of college, I was really – I was obsessing over things like my GPA. I was so just neurotic about – I was a history major too and I loved history. But it was eating away at me because I was thinking like, I got to study for the LSAT. Like if I don't do this, I don't do this.

And I was trying to check all these boxes. And for me to just walk out of that and then sit there eating waffles, I realized, you know, maybe I don't really want to do this. And if it's going to cost as much as it's going to cost and it's three years and a piece of paper that says I can basically only be a lawyer, I should really want to do it. And it was then that I just decided, oh, the law. I'm going to have to figure out something else to do with my life. And fortunately that was, you know, start a company

with my buddy, Steve. And so the complete epiphany, like the complete plan didn't scatter out of Waffle House. It did not. You didn't have it covered right from the start. It was a general feeling at that point that I've got to do something that I want to do. Yes. But it wasn't like, oh, and hey, and here's the idea. Here's the plan. And it's on the napkin. I did not draw this on a Waffle House napkin. But your first idea was food related, right?

It was. Yeah. Sheetz Gas Station, another institution that a lot of folks, depending on where you grew up, have no idea. It is- It's a big luxurious gas station. Like a Wawa. It's like when you drive into Sheetz,

it's like you're in Vegas. Yeah. Like I'm afraid. I'm afraid of Sheetz. Don't be afraid. Really? You can press the freaking screen while the gas is pumping

and get a cheeseburger by the time it's done. Yeah, that's magic. When I'm pumping gas and those fumes are like going up my nose, I immediately crave a hot dog. And I want to touch a screen and order it. Yeah, because you're normal, right? Yeah.

You invented cheats. Is that what you're trying to tell me? Steve Huffman and I invented cheats. That was the place you'd look forward to stopping when you were driving and you needed to get gas because you knew that you'd have this amazing touchscreen inside. So you wouldn't, it's not that I don't like talking to people. It's just that like.

It was cool. Cool experience. Yeah. In 2004, like to know that you could just like walk in, touch a screen, place your order and then go like mess with like, I don't buy some peanut M&Ms or something. It's one of those moments where you're like, I am in the future. Yeah. I love those moments. Yeah. When you're at Sheetz and you're moments where you're like, I am in the future. Yeah. I love those moments.

Yeah. When you're at Sheetz and you're touching the screen, you realize you are in the future. And my buddy Steve, ever the efficient technologist, was like, why do I have to go inside to touch the screen? I have a phone. Why can't I just place the order out here and then it'll be ready?

And he's telling me this. And we were having, I don't know, we were probably drinking, eating some pizza, whatever, sitting around the living room. And I'm like, but dude, you could use this anywhere. Like anywhere you want to skip the line, you could just use your phone. Now remember, this is before smart. Like the smartest phone at this point was like a BlackBerry or a Trio.

This has got to happen on a flip phone. Yeah. And so this is like how do we – so basically using SMS, like is there a way to allow people to place orders and and the more we thought about it the more we thought this could this could change the world right classic startup stuff okay and and i talked him out of his he had a job lined up pretty much from freshman year he had a job at a software company in virginia that was like as soon as you graduate like we don't care what your gpa is like you got a job you're great and i talked him out of it to work on this company with no certainty whatsoever, no funding, probably no hope of being profitable anytime soon.

I think just based on the premise that we could keep working in our underwear and, like, hopefully work on stuff that we loved and play video games the rest of the time. And it's a good thing he said yes because I don't know what I'd do. Did you lay the groundwork for this? Or what exactly happened with the idea? So we did all the things and it's funny now if someone just were to hit Google, I mean, YouTube didn't even exist, but you could find a wealth of resources for how to start a company. And you guys just trust me, there just weren't nearly as many back then. And so we went that, I remember asking my commercial law professor, how do we start a company. And you guys just trust me. There just weren't nearly as many back then. And so we went down.

I remember asking my commercial law professor, how do we start a company? And he was like, well, go down and talk to this lawyer. He's like, I'm a professor. I don't know. But I mean, in theory, he said he'd just go talk to this lawyer. So he found a lawyer in town who incorporated us as an LLC in Virginia. Lawyers are really good at introducing you to other lawyers.

I wonder if he got a kickback. He was a good professor, though. But, you know, so we got the little certificate of incorporation. I went and, you know, opened a bank account at Bank of America. All this stuff that, like, at the end of the day, excuse me, at the end of the day wasn't that important. Like, it was just the sort of window dressing stuff you have to do. And then just started talking to restaurants in Charlottesville. Did you have a name? Yeah. I started talking to restaurants in Charlottesville.

Did you have a name? Yeah. I was very proud of this. Let me know what you guys think. It's called My Mobile Menu or mmm. Oh, not bad. Mmm. Yeah.

Tastes good. Right, right. Very 2004. Tastes like. I know. No, I know. No, I like it. I'm happy. I'm happy it eventually got shut down.

So we'd worked on this for a year, and I talked to – there are not a lot of restaurants in Charlottesville, but I talked to all of them. And I was like, how do we get you signed up? The way we were going to hack it was going to involve fax machines because at this point, faxes were the way people were doing online. I'm putting in quotes. Ordering is like you'd see your computer and like, it was delivery.com, campus, food. You'd go online, place the order, and then it would spit out a fax inside of the restaurant.

So not the most high-tech solution, but we thought, all right, we can hack it. We can make this work. And we spent about a year doing research, sort of signing up, not quite, yeah, basically signing up clients. And then we went and had this chance encounter with this guy, Paul Graham, who Steve had idolized, who was really making a name for himself as this sort of internet pundit. And we heard him go talk on our senior year spring break.

We went up to Boston. We were the only kids in Charlottesville who were going north for spring break, their senior year. And there was a lot of snow. We heard this dude give a talk. And I approached him afterwards and said, I think I probably said, Dr. Graham, it would totally be worth the cost of buying you a drink to get your opinion on our startup. Like we came all the way up from Virginia. And I think that's what clinched him

because he was shocked that we, I don't know, had trains or like that we came all the way up from Virginia. And I was like, yeah, we came from Virginia. And he met with us for coffee that like yeah we came from Virginia and he met with us for coffee that night we pitched him on mmm and he loved it and we were like yes we did it like this is amazing like this is the guy he had started a startup in the last bubble sold it to Yahoo done very well like this was a guy who Steve really respected we're like this is amazing like we have an advisor now we have a mentor we might even have an investor if we play our cards right. And about a month later, he announced Y Combinator, which was this pretty radical idea

where they would give a little bit of funding, it was about $6,000 per founder, to basically just work for a summer, three months, just do nothing but write code and get users for your company in exchange for a little bit of equity. And then at the end of those three months, they'd set you up with a bunch of investors for like a demo day. And you'd pitch what you're talking about or to a room full of rich people. And hopefully they write you some checks. And you know, this announcement comes up and Steve and I look at each other. We're, we're now probably two months away from graduating at UVA. And, and to be clear, we're not like the cool dropout story. Like we, we did get our degrees, but we saw this and we thought, get our degrees uh but we saw this we

thought this is amazing like we met this dude he liked our idea he started this program to invest in companies just like us we have to apply so we did we think we got a good shot of course he already liked us so we get back on the train we go up for interviews because we had to meet the rest of his partners and um we pitched and it was the pitch of our lifetime dude we it was amazing everyone's asking questions and I've just got answers and Steve's just killing it you were like flipping open your phone and like typing text and then food was showing up hearing it was everybody's going they loved it loved it and that night we got the call one guy was like Campbell soup already has the corner on the oh that's rightmm. Oh, that's right.

We could have rebranded. We could have rebranded. Well, that's mm-mm-mm. That's different. This is just one mm. Oh, right, right. Screw Campbell Soup. Campbell Soup.

I've only watched Shark Tank. I've not been on it. Okay. But you can imagine this room was electric, and everyone was so excited. And so that night, Steve and I go out. We're celebrating, and we get the call, and they let us know. And so that night, Steve and I go out, we're celebrating, and we get the call, and they let us know that they had rejected us. Oh.

They said, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. That's exactly what Paul Graham said on the phone. It was awkward. It's more like, mm-mm. Yeah. Mm-mm to mm. Mm. Yeah. So the good news was we were already drinking,

so then it went from celebratory drinks to misery drinks. And it sucked. It really sucked. And did he give you a reason? Yeah. Yeah. And it was the right reason. He said it's just so early right now.

Too soon. Both the setups are going to be really hard because getting – so consumers are only going to use it if the restaurants are on it. Getting the restaurants on board, it's kind of a chicken egg thing but the restaurants back then especially were like not at all interested in any kind of technology in their uh back rooms like they're still using fax machines right and the technology we would offer was kind of an ugly hack like it would have been some kind of sms there was no app store so it would have been these ugly text messages like it just it was just too early but it led to the net did it lead to reddit was that the next step well that night uh oh yeah so we were drinking and and it sucked it really did um and then the next morning we're hung over on the train back to Virginia, and we got a call from Paul.

Waffle House. I wish. I have an idea. Waffle House. Waffle House called. They're like, get in here. We got fax machines at every location. You know, it may not be too late for this.

Yes. But I pick up, and it's Paul. And he says, listen, we still don't like your idea. But we like you. Thanks, Paul. Were you on that call? Yes. That's exactly what he said. And it was specifically, it wasn't even Paul. I have to give credit where it's due. One of his other, one of the other founders of Y Combinator, Jessica Livingston, she was the one. She was the

only advocate of the four who banged on the table and was like, their idea is terrible, but I really like them. We should give them a shot. And she was the one who got us in. And so- Oh, so you were in. So we were. There was a twist. And they said, listen, as long as you change your idea- Work on something different. Start over. Work on anything else. Start on something in a browser, not on a phone. That thing that you've been working on for over a year. Take it out back, shoot it in the head, forget about it. Yeah. That's what happened. And we went,

we got off the next stop, took the first train back up to Boston. We were somewhere in like, I don't know, Connecticut at the time. And they gave parameters. They said something browser related, you said? Yeah, they said, don't build it in a phone, build it for something in a browser. And we sat down for about an hour and had like a brainstorming session.

And PG or Paul basically said, well, what do you all do every morning? Like solve a problem you have every morning. Like sit me down, let's talk. This is, and he's, he's very good. Great advisors, I think are really good at sort of drawing out this stuff, um, with questions. And Steve was like, I read slash dot every morning. And, and I'm really interested in the commenting section. There's a lot of interesting content there. And I would, their tabs were new thing back then. And so I'd open up like 20 tabs every morning and look at 20 different news websites just to

get a broad range. And he was like, do you think either one of you have a good solution for that? Like do you think either one of you are getting all the sort of news you think is interesting? And we're like, well, no, these don't seem optimal. And he was like, all right, build a solution for that. Build your front page for the internet. And I was like, okay, this guy wants to give us 12 grand to build a front page for the internet. Sucker.

All right, all right, we'll do it. And so that's what we set out to build. And that was that one phrase we tried to fulfill and are still trying to fulfill to this day now. What was the process like? So when you're given this money, you go to San Francisco, right? No, this is all in Boston. Back then it was in Boston. It's in Boston.

And they put you up someplace. And what kind of space do they give you to work? Like what was the day to day? So what was so, and this was one of the things that set it apart, that set Y Combinator apart was they didn't give you space. And they didn't give you a place to live. Like they basically said, here is a check. You're grown.

You'll figure it out. And if you're going to start a company, like you should be able to figure out, I don't know, how to rent an apartment. Right, right. It's not like you're in bunk beds next to other guys

doing the same thing. But that's how, like incubators, that is how, that was how they were always done. Like the way of doing things was exactly that. Like let's just, we'll take care of you.

We'll give you a space where you can come in. And, you know, their thinking really was like, just go figure it out. You can come once a week for these dinners. We'll bring in an expert who will talk off the record about what it was like starting a company or doing various things. And there you'll meet your sort of compatriots, the other dozen or so companies that are in this batch.

But that's it and and and you'll meet once a week and it creates this weird like social this this weird social dynamic where you're all friends none of you are actually competitive with each other but you're competitive because you're all working on companies and you feel so like guilty if a week goes by and you haven't shipped anything interesting or meaningful because like if you saw each other every day, it'd be like, what'd you do yesterday? Oh, I, you know, I changed the color of a button to blue and, and that, that doesn't feel very meaningful, but in a week you've got enough time to actually ship like real features and see real growth. And so it just created this amazing dynamic. And we were in the first batch that

is Reddit. But in the years since, I mean, some of the most, I mean, Airbnb, Dropbox, Twitch, formerly known as Justin TV, Stripe, like these are amazing billion dollar companies.

They're all part of the same program. Um, they're all sort of started through Y Combinator in the exact same way. And dude, it's just, it, it's been amazing to watch and be a part of because I get to see, I mean,

front row. Like I remember when Airbnb was just three dudes who were just barely scraping by trying to fund their business. I mean, they were selling cereal boxes. And then when they couldn't sell a bunch of them, they just ate them and lived off them. But that was a struggling startup for a year and a half. Oh, yeah. Big fan of Airbnb. Look at it now.

I know that San Francisco is too with all those taxes they just paid. But how quickly did it take off? I mean, what was the launch of Reddit? Was it at the beginning of this process? Was it live? And how different is it now than when it first launched? All right. So aesthetically, not terribly different.

We need to work on that. Not drastically. But when we were the – actually, we were the first Y Combinator company to launch. We basically showed up in June and about three weeks later, three, four weeks later, Steve and I launched the first version of Reddit. So it's like three weeks worth of development and I launched the first version of Reddit. So it's like three weeks worth of development. And it was janky. But give us that moment of launch. Because I would imagine it's got to be pretty anticlimactic.

Extremely anticlimactic. Because you put this thing online. And also, because it's 05, there's no social media. So you have no way to really tell people about it. Other than, like, I had run a message board in college. And so I had maybe like 500 emails. And so I emailed all those people. We emailed our collective, I don't know, a bunch of people are probably listening, being like email. But like, dude, that's when we made videos back in the early days, we had a, an email list that we, it still converts. It converts super well. But

when you, but ours didn't we we had like two people actually use the site and we're like what we're telling them i made it go to my website where what the the pitch was and back then there was only one front page you know now there's like there's over 8 000 active communities on the network but there was just one back then because it was just me and steve and we were just submitting the links and we would say like here is a place where you will find what's new and interesting online and anyone can contribute you just submit a link choose a headline and then people will vote it up if they like it and vote it down if they don't and it'll be this like rising and falling list of just interesting stuff from all over the internet and the premise hasn't changed much it's just we're now at a scale where we like

the ambitions of the site back then were let's build this place where like we have this vast network of thousands and thousands of communities so if you're into uh if you're into the tar heels there's a community for you no we are not oh geez oh Oh, jeez. Oh, wait, NC State? Yes, we are. You know, there was one other option, and I didn't want to even say it. You're smart. You made a good choice. Alright, that's fine. Yeah, you didn't put us third, at least. We would have really kicked you out.

If we're really into the Wolfpack, because somebody's got to be. Alright, so if you're really into the Wolfpack, really into NC State, there will be a community for you there um if you're really into there's one called reddit lacqueristas which are people just showing off photos of their um fingernail polish i'm into that or ret found grilled cheese oh yeah that's a great there was actually a schism there because people were posting images of what I guess are considered melts. Yeah.

And they were like, this doesn't belong on our grilled cheese. This is a community for grilled cheese, not for melts. If you add anything to it, what were you saying? The purists just want cheese. Yeah. And butter. Right. Yeah.

I don't want to get in the middle of this. I want to believe that these two communities can coexist, like the melts and the the Grilled Cheese. But if they can't, they can each have their own subreddit. Exactly. And that was the hope. It's just when we got started, we had two users, me and Steve. But the vision was what it is now.

Yes. Basically, the essence of it. That was the one thing we got right. We screwed up a lot of other things. But then, yeah, how do you get there? You got, okay, you posted a link and then he upvoted? No, Steve actually downvoted the first ever submission to Reddit by me because he's a d***. What was it?

It was a link to the Downing Street memo. And I submitted it and again there's only two people on the website and i see it gets downvoted and i'm looking i'm looking across the table i'm like really really steve ah there's no one else and and and there's got to be a thought it's like this website may always just be me and steve let's change it to me and steve.com well we we wanted so desperately. We knew because we were the ones submitting a lot of the early content. And for the first week, for the first two weeks, we actually submitted under different usernames. Of course you did. So that like someone showing up for the first time would understand it wasn't just Steve and Alexis

submitting links on this weird looking website. It was like anyone can. And the moment we knew it was working was about a month in when we just used the website like anyone else. We just went on and just read stuff and didn't submit anything. And it just worked. There were enough people. There weren't a lot. There were enough though that were contributing and it was good content. And that was when, all right, we knew we weren't totally wasting our lives. And so you get this initial funding from Y Combinator. That's to develop, right? Then if they like the idea, how are you making money the first year? So we got $12,000 from Y Combinator, six grand per founder. And then at the end of the three months, they have this demo day. Now today, demo day is like, it's one of the most sought after demo days for anyone doing early stage tech investing. Ashton Kutcher, all the celebrity folks,

like it is a scene. Back then, it was like Paul's 12 rich friends in a room in Boston who were just like, why are we here? And we ended? And Steve and I ended up raising $70,000. Now, to us, that was a lot of money because we were like, dude, we're not paying ourselves anything. We can live off this for a year and a half, two years. This is amazing. Today, a typical company is going to raise a million, million and a half at that same stage. But back then, we just had different mentality. And we thought, all right, great. We raised 70 so that we have 82.

We were very lean. I mean, that's the other great thing too. When you come right out of college, your standard of living is really low. And it's a great time to start a company because you hopefully don't have any dependents. You're fine living cheap. Like it's a good time to start a company. So then what was breakthrough?

You know, once you started using the site with like a number of people. Yeah. Was it a slow growth or was it all of a sudden, you know, Bill Gates has started using our website? Well, that was a big moment but it never felt like reddit has consistently doubled basically every year since the start but it's over 10 years and you look at stories like i'm a snapchat's what everyone's talking about right now but even instagram still and that growth is obscene like in and reddit never grew that fast it kept growing consistently so it never felt like this kind of whiplash like oh wow whoa but there were these there were definitely moments when we

kind of thought all right like this is this is a new milestone like when the president did an ama um i guess it was four three four years ago um like that was amazing and he also did it from charlottesville coincidentally and so it was already pretty huge i mean yeah it just was there an earlier it was it really just a slow growth there was never a whoa we just went up by a thousand x because no of somebody you know you think about oh so-and-so tweeted something and then a company blows up or so-and-so's on snapchat or you know it's interesting that snap or Instagram, they all blow up. Everybody jumps on the bandwagon of the quote, will it be the next thing? Right.

Because of Reddit and the other predecessors that didn't have that. So, you know. Well, and because of the way social media works now, which was not the case when you guys were getting started. I mean, we watched Twitter get started. We watched Instagram. We've seen all these come up. And it has occupied this other – here's what it is.

I think the growth has been very consistent. And we've had milestones for sure. There was a rally to restore sanity and or fear that Stephen Colbert did. That was, it wasn't, it, it, it looks like it was started by some random user on Reddit who had this idea of doing this rally, but the rally, sorry, was already in the works beforehand. But what happened over the span of a couple months was – oh, I know Stephen's a son of South Carolina, so let's just go easy on him. But he really did a great job sort of egging on Redditors. And to get his attention, they ended up raising – he's on the board of DonorsChoose.

I think they raised $800,000 for basically the explicit purpose of getting Steven's attention to hold this rally. And so watching that happen was another one of those moments where it's like, what is going on? And I don't think it's been as explosive or it's been as like, oh, we got to be there because every one of the other social media platforms plays really well with celebrities. I can tell whether you're a brand like the New York Times or whether you're a brand like Lady Gaga, I can tell you or your people like here is how you play on Facebook, Instagram. Snapchat's a little trickier, but like

there are rules of the road for how to do that, and it benefits you as a celebrity. Because Reddit is just a username, and because what could be on the front page of Reddit could just be a dude who took a photo of his cat, and it was really interesting, and millions of people are going to see it, it is more democratic in the sense that it is less about who you are and more about what you have to say. That's not perfect, but- Is that why it's all about text? I think the first time you go to Reddit, it's like, what's with all the text? I have

to read? Reddit is the YouTube for text. That's mostly a hangover. Frankly, it's mostly a design hangover from 2005. Just because image hosting back then sucked. The reason imager exists

which was born out of reddit um was because image hosting was terrible if you linked to an image and you got a deluge of reddit traffic that image host would probably go down and would have all these obnoxious ads to top it off and so like a lot of this stuff evolved and i mean a lot of reddit has stayed constant um when it comes to the like i said the aesthetics evolved, and I mean, a lot of Reddit has stayed constant when it comes to the, like I said, the aesthetics of it. But the text heaviness of it, is that not a strength of the site? Oh, it is. It really democratizes all of the content. It's a level playing field.

If you're Lady Gaga, or if you're pamela the armenian woman yes or whatever you said her name was jane the worst jane the armenian it doesn't you know you're just gonna get your nice text out there you might get a little thumbnail but yes and and i think what's interesting is i think that's part of the reason why so we have you know there are communities on reddit like our writing prompts which are amazing I mean you anyone can go up there and just put up a writing prompt and you'll get amazing submissions from really talented writers who are writing entire narratives in the comments and and stuff like that is unique to reddit just because of the the platform works so well for text there are parts um. There's a whole, like, what's a

good example? Like food porn, earth porn. There are all these safer work porn communities that are just, it's like beautiful high-res photography of like earth or, you know, space or food. And it's funny how Reddit works for that, even though the photos are still not the primary focus, in part because the discussions around them, all the text, is really, really interesting. And like I said, that was not something we thought about and were like, yes, this is what Reddit will be. It's just sort of happened that way. And it's kind of created its own culture. I mean, you talked earlier about the aesthetic and feeling a pressure to change, but I can only imagine. I want to know what changes you've made over the years,

but I also want to know the response to those changes because I can only imagine the backlash that you would get if and when it's tidied up to, you know, when something like Twitter or whatever launches today, it's like the aesthetic is such a big part of it. Yes. Just because of the timing, you know, when it came about. But now you guys are kind of up against that. Yeah.

It's we would never. So the guiding principle. I mean, you could tell this was our first. I'm pretty sure this was the first web app Steve or I had ever built. We just graduated from college. We're clearly. I'm really proud of was the first web app Steve or I had ever built. When we just graduated from college. I'm really proud of my mascot designing skills, but I take responsibility for choosing Verdana as the font of Reddit. There's a lot of design baggage just because I'm not a great designer.

But the red-eyed Reddit thing, you designed that. Yeah, I was bored in class. And you're proud of it. Very proud. That one I will totally take credit for. Let's take a little tangent. Just give us the rationale behind that dude. Oh.

I was bored in class and I was doodling and I drew this thing that I thought would make for a good mascot for a site that we still hadn't figured out what it was going to do. All I knew is at this point we had been accepted into Y Combinator and I had a couple months left in school and we knew we were going to build the front page of the internet.

But we had no idea what the – anything was going to – how it was going to work or what it was going to do. But I was hell-bent on having a mascot because I felt like – But then what is it? It's an alien from the future. It's a time-traveling alien. Maybe it's a little bit nibbler subconsciously from futurama maybe it's a little bit snork i've heard that from folks that that short-lived kids show like it really was a board doodle but then i went home threw it into photo no paint shop pro oh yeah and five and it was a

cracked copy but i threw it in there and and tidied it up a little bit and was like this is going to be our icon this can be our mascot and the only rationale i can give you is the time traveling part was important because if it time traveled from the future that means we did not fail right as a as a company so that makes you feel better that's how we feel that your doodle came from the future. Yes. That's a great story. I mean, not really.

But the story of it, and what's crazy is- But you convinced Steve that. Yes. That's all that mattered. Yeah, man. Dude, it's from the future. He was like, I'm in. Landed on my napkin and it's an MSP.

Yeah. And then Reddit, the name, that's just a play on words for I read. I read it on Reddit. Yeah. We were trying to get SNEW, S-N-E-W. Like, so people would ask, what's SNEW? And we'd be like, exactly. But the guy who wanted it, yeah, the guy who wanted it to sell it wanted four grand.

And we were like, nope. So I'm just looking for other domain names. And I found Reddit was available. It was almost spelled R-E-D-I-T-T as well as R-E-D-D-I-T. And for like a day, I was calling it the former. But then one of my friends talked me out of it. You were calling it Reddit? Reddit, yeah.

Yeah, I know. What was I thinking? I don't know. How did AMA start? Randomly. Some user. So the AskReddit community, which has always been a pretty popular one. Once you go on and you ask a question, you know, people answer, um, had someone who came on there

and instead of asking a question, they said, oh, I'm so-and-so, ask me anything. And everyone in that community was like, what are you doing? Like, that's not how this works. Go start your own. And so they did and they called it IEMA. And the IEMA community is, you know, that's the home to just, I mean, daily multiple, just amazing real time crowdsource interviews. And now other communities on Reddit have sort of picked up the AMA thing, uh, meme,

just like at replies on Twitter. This is all very organic stuff. Right. And, and it's great. If you go on our science, the science community, one of the science communities on Reddit, they'll have regular AMAs with like legit scientists practicing in the field. I was at a science conference in San Jose last week and everyone was telling me I'm obviously not a scientist, but actual scientists were telling me that those Reddit AMAs, those science AMAs are one of the best ways to bring science to the public. And you'll know they are posers by their lies.

Right? Pretty much. Well, here's what's cool. So they do a certain amount of vetting where you have to like, you know, you can verify whether it's through Twitter or whatever that like I am who I am, Dr. So-and-so.

But what happens on the science AMAs in particular is if you aren't like, if you're slipping up in the answers that you're giving, like, there are other scientists reading that stuff who are going to call you out in real time. And it's happened on a couple of occasions. And it gets a little awkward, but, you know, you're- Self-regulating. Yeah. And this is how the internet, I mean- Like someone's correcting the president on his AMA. I'm sure that happened. There's probably one or two.

Some of them are pretty- Maybe ups. But like, you know, when I first heard about AMAs, oh, people are going to answer anything. But like the president is not going to answer anything. You can ask him anything, but he ain't going to answer. But there are people who some will you might get some like, whoa, answers. You have you have any examples of that? Yeah, this one., and this is also a slight shameless plug for the Reddit podcast. So, I interviewed him. It hasn't dropped yet. But we had an amazing interview with, the guy goes by DoubleD***Dude on the internet. He is, he has two fully functioning penises.

They're fully functioning? Fully functioning. Yeah. And he goes into vivid detail about what he can do with them. This is a horizontal or vertical orientation? Wait, what? That's the only question I have.

That's the first question. Oh, I mean, so you'll have to read the AMA. He did an AMA that spanned, I think, 36 hours. Like, he just answered everything. Well, he's got double the stamina. He just... I don't think that's how it works. I mean... How do you know? Like he just answered. He's got double the stamina. He, he just, I don't think that's how it works.

I mean, how do you know? You got to ask him. Yeah. Right. You should, you should read the, the it's fascinating because it really,

it has, because it's a real time kind of crowdsourced interview format and the best stuff gets voted up. Like you really get this atmosphere of it being like just a bunch of people around a table just asking someone questions and it we have celebrities all the time tell us like this was the best interview i have done ever but what did it just feels human the double penis dude drop did he drop like a bombshell he he taught he answered imagine every question going through your head right now including you listeners about what it's like to live a life with two fully functioning penises and nothing was off limits so it gets a little not safe for work uh but when i followed up with him and when we spoke about it

for the podcast it was like a whole nother side to him because he started talking like the stuff that we were interested in and the advantage that upvoted gives us is that we can have someone who does this amazing ama who's talking for 36 hours to millions of people answering all their questions about everything you can imagine and then we can come back and be like all right we saw what happened there that was amazing but like let's talk more like let's try to understand you as a person, not just the spectacle of being this dude with two penises. So it's not just a freak show. He's a human being. Yes.

But I do have to ask. Yeah. You were in the room with him. No. Oh, so. He's very, very secretive. Yeah. We did this over Skype.

I don't even know his name. So you didn't see him? No. You didn't see that? I did not. I mean, it has been verified, let's just say. I did not personally do it, but he is who he says he is. So you sold Reddit.

Yes. When did that happen and why? 2006 for a variety of reasons. Pretty early. Yeah, it was insane. I mean, that was part of it, right? It was 18 months, 16, October, June. Anyway, 16, 18 months into it.

And to be 22, 23, and have the opportunity for that kind of life-changing thing to happen, I really, for me personally, i did not want to that up because it seemed absurd right we'd work on this thing for 60 months like it was going well but it seemed absurd and i had a bunch of other i had a lot of personal stuff going on at the time too with my mom and it just it was it was the kind of thing where i did not want to because who knows what was going to happen. I did not want 10 years from now to be looking back on that moment being like, you idiot. You greedy idiot.

And so it was pretty much a no-brainer for me. The best – seriously, the best phone call I've ever made in my life – well, two phone calls. Where the first phone call I made to my mom when the money cleared and everything was done. And I told her like, thank you for believing in me for the last 22 years. And then the second best call was, it should have been to my dad, but I was calling, um, the Washington Redskins ticket office, upgrading his season tickets from the nosebleeds to front row. And then I called him, um, but those were the best, like, those were the best two phone calls in my life. And I will never have a better phone call than that. And, and so for me it was totally worth it.

And now, you know, I stayed with the company for another three years, a little over three years, then did the Armenia thing for a minute, came back, was an advisor to the company for the last few years, been on the board. And about three months ago, rejoined the company in a full-time role as executive chair. And, and now I'm back and the company in a full-time role as executive chair. And now I'm back. And this company is so much bigger. And I'm just thrilled. I'm thrilled to be back.

So being back 10 years later, is there a sense of regret? Or is it like, no, I'm glad that everything worked out this way and I'm back and it happened the way it did? Or is it like, no, I'm glad that everything worked out this way and I'm back and it happened the way it did. I would be such an a**hole if I regretted anything that has happened to me in the last like seven or eight, nine, well, I guess nine years since we sold Reddit. It is like everything I've been able to do. And I mean, I literally, I have, this is the big thing. I'm always, I mean, like I know how lucky I've been. this is the big thing i'm always i mean like i know how lucky i've been this is part of the reason why things like kiva are so interesting to me because i know that like i could have a genetic cousin who especially at least in armenia who like would have just had the bad luck of being

unfortunately just born in armenia like i was born in new york like right i just got a bunch of advantages and i've lived every day since college looking forward to my work. And like that alone, I mean, I know the jobs my parents did. Like I, I worked enough jobs at like Pizza Hut to know the difference. And I so appreciate being able to look forward to what I do every day. And, and so the fact that I've been able to do that for every day since college, because of Reddit, because of that sale. Like I have no regrets whatsoever. Have you and Steve just, uh, continue to work together? What has that relationship been like? So we, um, so we both left Reddit about the same time he went and got married. Uh, and then he started another said, I know what happens after you get

married. Well, he started, he had another company in company in him and uh it's a travel search site called hip monk like chipmunk without the c and uh and i rejoined uh up with him about a week or two before they launched to sort of run i created their mascot as well um to sort of run all the public facing sort of marketing pr whatever social media stuff and uh yeah it's been that, that's a whole nother, I mean, Hitmonk's as big as Reddit is now. And if you need any flight or hotel bookings, you should use it. You know, you talk about growing up

and working the pizza job and things like that and kind of have a perspective, but. A little bit. A little bit of perspective, I get it. What, I mean, are you the type of person, did you always have that natural entrepreneurial confidence that led to, I'm gonna create a business, I'm gonna, like that epiphany at Waffle House,

was that out of the blue? Are you the kid that ran the lemonade stand? Or was it Reddit that then gave you confidence to start all the other things that I know you've started before coming back to Reddit? I was doing, I was, okay, all my friends, we, they're my best friends. These are guys I've known since kindergarten. I was an only child. So they're basically like my brothers. I was definitely the one who was the entrepreneurial one in the sense that like when we were going have a LAN party, and that's all.

I literally never went to a party that wasn't a LAN party until college. I would be the one sort of organizing getting done. And I never ran the lemonade stand, but I was- But the LAN party was your idea too. Yes. Yeah. It's like, let's do this, and I'm going to make it happen. Yes. That's do this and i'm gonna make it happen yes that's the personality profile of that yes and and i was you know so and i'd be the one who'd manage our

quake 2 clan um for competitive gaming although it's so much man competitive gaming so much better now than it was back then but anyway but you've always been crazy enough to believe that you should actually do the ideas you have yeah and and i. And I had a dad who, so this was awkward when we launched Hitmonk. My dad's a travel agent, still, still a travel agent in 2015. And he started an agency on his own in Western Maryland, probably, I'm sorry, dad, 15 years ago? It was a minute ago. And so I saw that, oh, even longer, maybe 20. But like, I saw that he was, he was starting that while I was in high school. And so I like, it demystified starting a company. It was a very different company, right? He's, I mean,

on the phones all day booking flights and stuff, but like, I could see that model and I could see it work. And, um, and he managed to survive the.com like explosion of online travel, which is to his credit like he found a niche the secret is old people that is that is how you keep a travel agency in business in 2015 people who don't want to use the internet to book a trip but uh so he kind of laid an example for yeah for sure and and i'll tell you the other thing too so um my so my mom immigrated from Germany when she was like 24, 25. So while she was basically – the other thing I had in perspective was like at the same time I was starting a company, she was basically changing her entire life. Now, Germany is obviously a country that's very much a first world country. But it's a very different culture, very different language.

And all of her relationships and connections pretty much ended when she left. And so she basically said, I'm going to New York. I want to be with this dude, my dad. And this is what I want my new life to be. And like she never I mean, she got a GED. Like her whole life in Germany was basically irrelevant in America. Like her whole life in Germany was basically irrelevant in America. And so seeing that too really made me think, well, like if this is the hardest thing I'm going to do, like this isn't so bad.

And it really, I don't know, it helped me see, it helped me demystify entrepreneurship. And at the same time, just kind of like put in place just how not courageous it was. I mean, yes, it's risky. But like at the end of the day, there are, especially when you're a 22-year-old with no obligations, like coming out of school, there are much, much more dangerous and like risky things that I could be doing. Right. Well, and since that initial, you know, you kind of started in a place where there was an early failure with. One day. It's going to be a thing since then. What hasn't worked?

I mean, there've been a lot of little projects like, okay, here's a good example. So we are Reddit finally bought alien blue on iOS. So if you read Reddit on your Apple device, you should download alien blue. But before that we had, I launched an app called I read it because I wanted people, the hope was that people would say like, originally it was just, they would say like,

I read it on Reddit. And I think that happens. I don't know. But then when the iPhone comes out and everyone's like apps, apps, apps, I'm like'm like great redemption we can finally do some cool on a smartphone let's build an app and we ended up this was a good lesson in not outsourcing developer work um but we ended up spinning up this i reddit app which i thought was such a clever name it wasn't and uh and it was just not it was not a not a good look um there are plenty of projects there's plenty of products like we had to essentially shutter it. I think it's still in the app store, but like there are so many missteps. And the great thing is, is usually no one's paying attention to it because that's why it was a misstep was that no one used it or no one liked it. And then alien blue was doing the same idea. It's just a much better execution of a way to browse Reddit in an app. That was it.

And he's a random – he was a developer in Australia, a single developer, just making this app out of passion and did an amazing job with it. But it sounds like your experience is both the failures and the success. You rolled those up into a book and into empowering other people to demystify entrepreneurship for them, right? Yeah. I know. And without their permission, you talk about gatekeepers and how, well, you can do something without their permission, right?

Yeah. And the fact that like, and I don't want, entrepreneurship just sounds like a fancy special word. Like I think we do a really great job, especially in this country, celebrating entrepreneurship, which is awesome. I think that's great. But it's tends to put the people who do it on these pedestals where people are like, ah, okay, this person was able to do it because they are different in these ways and the other. And I like, that's not for me and i want especially in this age where like so many industries are being reinvented by people who have no re like like who like what what radio station did you guys campaign in order to get a

show created right like what like there are there are so many ways to be entrepreneurial now and it's it's not just people who want to build the next Reddit or the next SoundCloud. It's people who want to use those platforms to be great and hack it. Right. I mean, I can certainly relate. We talk about gatekeepers a lot within the entertainment industry, having done the television show thing a couple of times. finding our voice and our audience directly through YouTube, the gatekeeper was removed

for everyone to create whatever they wanted to create on YouTube. When we were growing up, you were either successful as an artist or you were a starving artist. It was binary. It was one or the other. And now, as better and better platforms come,

as smarter and smarter ways to monetize those relationships happen in a way that fans love and artists love. Like there are going to be people coming up who just have a different view on creativity who will think like there's actually another way. Like it's not just I have to be Jay-Z or I'm a starving artist but like I can actually make a living making stuff that I really care about that is really interesting for an audience of people who really love what I do. And by cutting out the middleman and because the cost of distributing it is basically zero thanks to the internet. Like I can actually find a way to make a living doing this stuff. And a lot of these business models are being created right now. But I am such a believer. I'm such a believer in it.

And I guess this is one of the reasons you're a huge advocate of net neutrality yeah man and you've been fighting that fight for years are you how do you feel about that right now what do you think about the latest steps from the fcc dude like a year ago i was putting up ads in dc uh bus stops um about net neutrality and having and contacting the fcc um and i remember the atmosphere back then was, forget it, wheelers, like former lobbyists for the telcos, like you're hosed. Cable companies spend more money than anyone else,

almost anyone else, I think, in DC lobbying. Right, because the writing on the wall, just to bring everyone up to speed, was, it ain't going to happen.

Yeah. Comcast and Verizon are going to have their way, and forget it, you're going to pay to play. You're not just going to be able to put any, it's not going to be a level playing field. If you, anyone, wants to put something on the internet, it's going to be downvoted by people with power and money, so to speak.

Yeah, and the people who have the power and money will be able to prioritize their stuff. And it would feel like television. It would feel like the gates... A tiered internet. The gates are being... Installed. Erected.

Yeah, and it flows... It's not even limited to just content creators because they would all be affected, but it's even the next platform. So the thing that caught a lot of people's attention was Verizon... Oh, was it Comcast? lot of people's attention was Verizon. Oh, was it Comcast? It's either Comcast or Verizon.

Basically called up Netflix and was like, hey, Netflix, it looks like your service to our customers is really, really right now. Don't know. Don't know why that is. I bet if you paid us more money, we could fix that for you. Like straight up like mafia style extortion. you paid us more money we could fix that for you like straight up like mafia style extortion and and as soon as as soon as netflix paid up the service rates went back up and everything was great now they did pay they did pay and and this set a really dangerous precedent because in this world where a netflix or anyone with money or power can can buy that kind of higher quality

and access and And because the cable companies have that leverage to be able to pull that switch and decide. When the cable companies decide who the winners and losers are, we're hosed. Because it doesn't just affect the content creators. It also affects the next Netflix. I do a lot of investing these days. I want to invest in the next Netflix. I'm a Netflix shareholder, but I still want to invest in that girl who's in her dorm room right now and is going to build the next Netflix killer because that's how innovation works. In a world where Netflix has that kind of power, where we don't have net neutrality – or sorry, where Verizon and Comcast have that kind of power and where we don't have net neutrality, you actually get innovation like the next Netflix that gets killed before it even gets started because they don't have a level shot, because they don't have the deal that Comcast makes with the incumbent. And they lose not because they're worse, but just because the cable company chose who the winner was. Where are we right now?

If you're monitoring the front lines. So we're doing very well. If you're the mayor of the internet, as Forbes said. Yeah, we're doing very well if you're the mayor of the internet as forbes said yeah i we're we're doing very very well um i'm not celebrating right now because we still you know any decision by the fcc still can be meddled with by congress um and fortunately congress has been i think one of the least productive ever at least i mean that's. I mean, that's not a fortunate thing. But regarding this issue, it is because at least it doesn't seem like legislation will pass anytime soon that could undo net neutrality coming from the FCC.

But we'll have to wait and see. And what's nice, and I think this is the thing we saw during SOPA and PIPA, we saw again here during net neutrality, was so many websites came together. So many websites came together. And many websites came together and so many content creators came together and they all went to their respective audiences and communities and said, this is important. Make a call. I mean, signing petitions, great. Sending an email is great, but like make a call. It's old school, but it really makes a difference. And they delivered. I mean, whether it was signing petitions, the FCC, where we had,

I think it was a record number of petitions fighting for Title II, which is the sort of wonky way of saying that neutrality in broadband, and a record number of phone calls to the offices of senators and representatives just to say, like, this is an issue I care about. And it really only takes a minute or two, and it actually makes a hell of a difference. Yeah, we went dark on good mythical morning one day as part of that so we you know that was our thank you a little part of that no but that that stuff matters because what there are a lot of people who are used to the top-down world who are really intimidated and scared by this because when there were three major news networks like you knew who was dictating what was the news of the day. In a world where there are so many disparate influencers and so many disparate places to get that news, it means there's all these different communities. And each one of them has a way of,

just like any community, a way of being talked to, a way of being motivated. And that's great because it means that like you all know how to talk to your people in the right way, how to get them excited, how to get them energized. And like, I don't know how to do that. And then they have their own voice to talk back or to become a voice in their own right. And, you know, so it's power to the people. It is certainly a very beautiful thing that, again, is embodied in Reddit. As I've thought about it, and Rhett and I have talked about it, a question we've had is, what does your experience with Reddit reveal about humanity? I mean-

Are people good? Are people bad? It is, I think all of social media at the end of the day is a – I mean all of this stuff is a reflection of people, right? The good stuff, the bad stuff. I think the hope is – and the thing that we see daily, I mean multiple times a day, are people who don't know each other, who don't even usually have their real name associated with an account. They're just, you know, I don't know, Glacier24, right? Some alias. Being amazingly thoughtful and just good for no reason other than just because. And I certainly feel like in a world where traditionally it has been whether you have power because you're a major corporation and you want to sell me more deodorant or whether you're a politician who wants to be reelected, you want to make us fear. You want to make us worried that that dude won't go on a date with me because I smell bad and so I got to get this deodorant or I'm going to be in trouble. So I need this person to protect me. And so I should vote for them. And it's, it happens now so often that we see these things where just disparate people,

all of the world who don't actually know each other are coming together just to be decent, just to be kind, whether it's seeing hundreds of thousands of people participate in a Secret Santa gift exchange every year with total strangers, just sending gifts. The best gifts of the year often for these people are gifts that they're sending to total strangers. Why are they doing this? And they're not porn.

The gift is not porn. Yeah. Sometimes it is. But Reddit also has to decide, okay, we're not gonna allow child porn on our website. Right, so how do you- You have to step in at a certain point because people- How do you draw that line? Oh, well that one's very easy.

That one's easy but then like with- But what does it say about humanity is my point is that you had, yes, that's an easy line to draw but you had to draw it. You know, you've got the best of people and the worst of people coming out whenever you give people free reign should everyone really be given free reign um well i don't know the

alternative right i mean we can the i it we notwithstanding like actually getting into people's heads and reading their thoughts like the ultimate the ultimate solution is just going to be trying to encourage the better behavior and there's you know like i said even when they try to do something good like i mean the boston bombing thing that happened people trying to do the right thing and then it it wasn't yeah right so it's not even bad people being bad it's good people accidentally being bad. Yeah. And that was a that was a difficult situation, too, because the thread that misidentified. So there was a particular comment thread that misidentified this innocent young man as being a potential suspect in the Boston bombing.

That was one of millions on the site that no one was looking at. is one of millions on the site that no one was looking at. And unfortunately, a couple of journalists tweeted out, Reddit had, like journalists tweeted, like Reddit may be onto something. I think they discovered who the Boston bomber was. And that's not to absolve that Redditor of posting that comment, but we're in this dangerous ecosystem where there's so much pressure now on being fast because the internet's producing content 24-7 that it's going to be more important than ever that we are right. And I don't know how that looks. The rate at which we're going to have information coming out

is only going to increase. Everyone with a smartphone is now a reporter. They're not a journalist, but they are a reporter. And in a world where there's going to be more and more information spreading, it's going to be more and more important, I think, for journalists to do that great job of sifting the signal from the noise. Yeah. And I think that you have to solve these things or at least take a stance in, you know, with the infrastructure of how Reddit works. Well, with a gentle hand.

I mean, if you think about it, if you think about like the Wikipedia principle, I know so many people who, anytime you say that you got some information from Wikipedia, they're like, well, that's not reliable. But it's the whole thing that like, what you're giving and taking, if you have a few people in charge of information,

just because they have some sort of credentials, you still, they go unchecked versus having a democratized process of people presenting information that's self-correcting. And I think that our generation is definitely more prone to trust what's self-regulated. The collective, the hive. Yeah, and this is going to be a constant struggle and it makes sense given how much we have been misled by authorities i

mean if you look right whether it's uh whether it's wars overseas whether it's don't worry everyone needs to have a mortgage don't worry everyone needs to have student loan debt don't worry we've got the economy covered everything's safe like i i think in the last 20 years you have a generation that's really looked around skeptically at a lot of the i mean even brian williams can't even keep a story straight about something that like it it doesn't mean that crowdsourcing is the panacea. But I think what is interesting is that so many people are looking to, like, they're looking to these technologies and to this sort of aggregated wisdom,

or not wisdom, but this aggregated insight into what is interesting and what is relevant and then hoping that things get vetted essentially in real time. And it being worth the risk. I mean, there's gonna be risk involved in however we receive information and spread information,

but seems like it's gonna be, the risk is lower when there's more people involved. Well, and I'm not just interested in the solutions in the future, but going back to the whole question about humanity, I think that it, separate from everything we just said, it's Reddit provides a window into, call it what you will, call it the human soul or consciousness.

That's 200 million people, yeah. So personally, again, you know, I think where you were going to a place of, it became, Reddit became a source of hope in humanity for you. But I think people who kind of graze Reddit, be like, oh, that's a scary place. You know, I'm an outsider.

Or there's some, you know, the internet is scary when people just can kind of express themselves. So, I mean, where do you land? What's your view of that? The consciousness, the... My view of humanity. Well, I mean, this is... I don't know.

I think, I mean, I'm a pretty active consumer of most social media. And there are days when I just need to shut off Twitter. There are days when I need to shut off even Instagram and I'm just like, stop. There are days when I need to close Reddit, right? There are days when I need to unplug from it all because it really is a reflection of anyone who's got an internet connection. And I think it is because it is that glimpse into people. And like I said, this is about 200 million people, right? This is like, if this were a country, I mean, this is two-thirds the size of the United States.

I couldn't even generalize the state of North Carolina, let alone generalizing 200 million people. But I think what people are now searching for more than ever is authenticity. I think we've had, whether it's because of like, you know, whether it's because of overaggressive PR firms, whether it's because of, uh, you know, people who come off as these infallible tastemakers and deciders who are telling us what's right in this weird paternalistic way. I think they want authenticity and they'll understand, like we understand that bad things happen in this world, right? There, there are not nice, they're not good people. But the vast majority of us are actually reasonable, decent people. I mean, I've seen this literally all over

the world. Like at the end of the day, when you're breaking bread with someone, no matter where they are, no matter what their faith, no matter what their whatever, like they just want to see that their family is well and that hopefully their kids do a little better than they do. And I think if we didn't have, I mean, as long as we have humans, we're going to have that range. But I really do see across social media more reasons to be hopeful than not. And, you know, you bring up authenticity. It's the value of whether you're good or bad, the overarching value of realness, of being real, is a valuable commodity.

If there's bad in you and good in everyone, yeah, if there's bad and good in everyone, then I'd much rather see it for what it is than cover it up for what it's not. I think that is, it's an interesting value to kind of add to the mix when you're talking about, you know, good and evil or good and bad or pure motives or tainted motives. You know, it's just slathering on that authenticity

or maybe pulling back the cover to reveal the realness. Especially when somebody calls something, tries to make something bad seem good. We're really sensitive to that. You know, we have a keen, this generation has a keen sense of that kind of thing, which is what you're getting at. Yeah, and I see it, I mean, even in the way celebrities,

I mean, like, why was it such a big deal in the mainstream media that Lorde posted a photo of herself with, like, pimple cream on? Because I think for one world, that's really, like, what? What's going, why would a famous person be showing something like that but for all of our fans that was the relationship they have yeah and and i mean that's one sort of silly glimpse into it but i think social media represents people you know warts and all and and for like i said, I have many more reasons to believe in people than I do don't because of it. The hope for me is that we can keep pushing.

We can keep showing people more of the stuff that's happening every day that is just decent and reasonable and good. And they will actually see more of that. It's hard, right, on the nightly news, right? That's just, I mean, it's murder reports. of that. It's hard, right? On the nightly news, right? That's just, I mean, it's murder reports. It's hard through so many media channels to see that kind of glimpse. And I think it means more, right? If you had a place where only like, where, and this is not to justify imperfect behavior, but like I said, we're, I don't think any of us is, is a hundred percent pure and good. behavior. But like I said, we're, I don't think any of us is, is a hundred percent pure and good.

And, and I think few people would believe that. Um, but for a while we've had a lot of like the way stuff has been communicated to us has been with this misperception that like this person is an authority. This person is a hundred percent, right? This person is perfect. Cause you're seeing the polished, you're seeing the Brian Williams version on the nightly news being that person telling you, here's what's important. Um important because we're now saying all right well let's all figure out what's important what's the news of the day together we know that comes with just all of the the scope of it and the fact that more often than not good stuff happens is even more interesting and I think meaningful because we know that that's not like that that that is happening in spite of the fact that humans are not perfect, always good people. Okay.

But let's ask the most important question of the day. Okay. Which is for a content creator, like a YouTuber, how do you use Reddit to get more views? Oh, this is where, this is where we have... Just keep it simple. This is where we have that breakdown. This is so... It's hard because it's not as obvious as like just...

It's not as obvious as like get a bunch of followers or whatnot. It really is make great stuff, which I hope everyone aspires to do. And then when it bubbles up on reddit get engaged so you know if if you're and you can run periodic searches there's a you're saying don't come up with a username that's not you and post your own work astroturf yes exactly oh okay we'll yeah uh and and it is here's the thing, right? So your video could be submitted to any number of like 8,000 plus communities. And each one of those communities is different and distinct.

And so if it gets submitted to like the videos community, that's a pretty general large community. But maybe it's music or maybe it's like there's a Balkan folk music community that I recently discovered. But each one of them is going to have a different discussion about it because they are – like it's like imagine like a digital community center. And it's just a matter of like imagining you're walking into that and just saying like, hey, what's up? I made this thing. Like I'm glad you liked the choice of instrument or whatever. or whatever like it is in that way it is actually a much a much closer parallel to real human life than i think a lot of the other platforms because like i mean like we go on twitter and we're essentially just shouting and and hopefully there's some followers who might catch what we're

saying um but you would never walk into a room just be like hey check out my thing i'm out of here hey yeah and i'm leaving it here it is i'm out and like and like the the message board model we didn't invent the message board but that model lends itself much more to basically just engaging like a human so that's the advice is just be human and then find ways or make great stuff and then and then join conversations when they're happening okay so you're of no help but i'll let you sign the table anyway yay uh yeah this has been really cool. Thanks for hanging out with us. Well, there it was, an Ear Biscuit with Alexis Ohanian. Tweet at him and let him know what you thought of our conversation. Alexis Ohanian is his Twitter handle.

Use hashtag EarBiscuit so we can be included in that conversation, guys. Appreciate the feedback there. Also, give us a review on iTunes or leave a comment. Well, a good review. I mean, if you're gonna say something bad, don't say anything at all. No, I mean, any review is helpful to us.

Yeah, say what you feel, guys. Speak from the heart. On iTunes or comment on SoundCloud. Now, he introduced me not to a concept that I didn't know about, but to a term for a concept that I didn't know about, and that is astroturfing. That's when you basically pimp yourself,

your own post out on Reddit. Right, because it's planning something fake. Yes. I guess that's what AstroTurf is. Yes, thanks for explaining that. I'm not kidding. Oh, you didn't know why? I didn't realize it until you just said that.

Oh. But that's exactly what it is. You just thought it was a cool term. Well, I had never heard the term either, but I sat there and thought about it for a second. But I've AstroTurfed quite a lot, and I'm here to confess that. Back in the day. I mean, we don't do it now. Not any time recently, but second. But I've AstroTurfed quite a lot. I'm here to confess that. Back in the day.

I mean, we don't do it now. Not any time recently, but okay. So we've been doing this internet thing for a long time. We got started in 06. So in 06, I would say in 06 and 07, maybe a little bit in 08, but really strong in 07, probably peaked in 07. I did whatever AstroTurfing is on YouTube.

I created a number of fake names, fake profiles to come in and thumbs up, not thumbs up, but what did you even do back then? To comment, I guess. Comment. You commented on our videos to somebody else. Oh, no, because it was back in the day where there were so few comments that one comment could really make a difference,

you know, it could really sway the conversation and like if people were reacting badly to something. Right, it's kind of like what top comments do today, but you're saying you also did that on Reddit more recently? Yeah, no, not more recently. I would say 08 would be the most recent that I would have done that.

Hey, check out this video that I didn't make. Cough. And I would never say that I didn't make it. I would just say, you know, it would be our video. And I had like a Reddit profile that wasn't my name. I mean, I'm a little ashamed of it, especially now that I've talked to Alexis. Are you prepared? But I was desperate, man.

To tell us what the names were? I have no idea. No, and I couldn't, I would be prepared, but it would be something like Doug McDermott or something like that. I mean, I just, a lot of times I would put in my aliases, I'll put a Mick in front of the last name. I don't know why we criminals do that.

So when you read those comments, you remember that it was you. Yeah. Because you don't wanna fall for it yourself. Well, you know. Wow, that guy's really nice. He's really, he's a super fan. But have you ever those comments, you remember that it was you. Because you don't want to fall for it yourself. Well, you know. Wow, that guy's really nice. He's really, he's a super fan. But have you ever noticed that,

that that's what criminals do with their aliases? So if my name is Rhett McLaughlin, then like my criminal name is like Reggie Mc, you know, McClain, you know, it's like. Because they don't want to forget. Yeah, you don't want to get too off of what your real name is. So a lot of my aliases had the Mick in them.

And listen, but you should be thanking me. You got to keep the initials the same so if somebody calls you up by your initials- What are your initials? R-M-Mick. Oh yeah, that's me, Reggie McClain. But see, here's the thing, you should be thanking me for this

because we may not be sitting here at this round table of dim lighting right now if I hadn't cheated a little bit. Thank you, Rhett. I'm just kidding. It probably wasn't effective and I'm a little ashamed of it. I apologize for astroturfing. It will never happen again.

If you're doing it right now, you should immediately stop. Thank you for listening to this Ear Biscuit and forgiving Rhett along with me for astroturfing. Talk at you next week. Okay.