Endless Thread - How Reddit's Coronavirus Community Became A Global Lifeline

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

Redditors share how they're coping with the coronavirus pandemic. We also take an in-depth look at r/coronavirus, which has fast become one of the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and reliable sources of information for this constantly developing global story.

Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Amory. Ben. It's been a strange week. It's been a strange month. I know. And each week kind of feels like a month, and each month feels like a year, and each day feels like a week. How are you doing?

You know, I can't complain. I have a job for now. I have food. And I have a really good partner to be hunkered down with. But I just feel like, and I'm sure a lot of people feel this way, I just have not found my rhythm. I don't know when I'm supposed to be exercising or eating or going for a walk or meditating, which is a new thing that I do now.

but I'll find it. What about you? I'm doing mostly just eating while meditating, so that's how I get it done. No, I'm in the same boat. I mean, things are a little challenging. I don't have child care and I have two children. But I'm, you know, I'm finding myself incredibly thankful for the things I do have, starting with A number one, my health at the moment.

So I feel good. I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons via video chat. So, yeah, I'm thankful right now, and I'm worried about people in the world, but I'm thankful for my own life at the moment. Yeah. So just to get people kind of caught up on the Endless Thread world, we were on a break, and we were working very hard on a special series that we were going to bring you at the beginning of our new season of Endless Thread. It was going great. It is. It will be great. But then a global pandemic happened.

And we thought maybe we should talk about that since we are journalists. And since that's like the biggest story since forever. Yes, we definitely should. Also, we really wanted to hear from listeners to see how you guys were doing. And we heard from a lot of you, like Jess. Hey, endless thread. Alkaline 13 here. My real name is Jess.

And I live in Michigan. So I have a five-year-old and he has been off of school for a week now. I'm normally, I own an Etsy shop and I usually do gig delivery driving while he's at school. And I am no longer doing any gig jobs because he's at home with me. Just says she and her son get up in the morning, eat breakfast, and do some homeschooling, read some books. then entertainment. And our game yesterday was that I filled up our living room and hallway area with all of our Tupperware dishes. And then we tossed a bunch of ping pong balls into the air.

And whoever got the highest score was whoever could hit the most Tupperware dishes. Jess says as a gig economy worker who drives grocery deliveries for a ride hailing service with an Etsy store on the side and a kid who is now at home all day, the economic impact on her life and her family has been real and immediate. So my Etsy shop sales have been pretty much next to nothing for the last three or four weeks. And then, yeah, I could work my gig job.

Like my husband works at a grocery store, and so he's gone until six or seven every day. I could work for a couple hours at night after he gets home, but it's just stressful. you know but it's like i i have to have money to pay my bills and uh working a gig job it's not like you can take time off and still get paid so you know you do what you have to do i guess but for now we are at home and um we're about to probably play some monopoly here and read some books so uh that's what it looks like in michigan

Okay, let's go from Michigan to the south of France. Hi, my Reddit name is Possum Girl. My real name is Randy Luffysien. I live in a small village in the south of France called Chalabre. It's in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. We've been on lockdown here since Tuesday, and mostly it's going quite well. It's going quite well, but the lockdown where Randy is, is definitely on a different level than it is in most places in the U.S. right now.

We need to have a form that we fill out with why we're going out when we go out. We can go out to buy vital food products, obviously. We can go out to buy medicine. We can walk our dogs. We can do exercise as long as we stay within two kilometers of our home. We can go out to aid either a family member or a vulnerable person like an elderly neighbor, which we do fairly frequently. And you have to have a paper for each person that goes out.

So if you're living as a couple and you both go out to walk the dog, you need to each have a paper signed explaining why you're going out. Randy and her husband are both writers, and they work from home. So they're lucky to be able to keep working despite the lockdown. And the biggest challenge at the moment is getting groceries and remembering your paperwork when you go out so you don't get fined. A lot of our listeners told us that now that they're home and relegated to using the

internet a lot, well, their Reddit use has exploded. I spend a lot of time on Reddit during normal circumstances and I'd say it's doubled. My Reddit usage has skyrocketed. And a strong piece of evidence for that is that the coronavirus subreddit in less than two months has gone from a thousand subscribers to fast approaching 2 million. Handling the deluge of activity requires a lot of moderators, 64 of them. Though given the group's trajectory, there will probably be more by the time you're listening to this. We have some that are PhD candidates. We've got a few that are professors. programmers, nurses, we've got a few medical doctors committed to keeping the sub a really high-quality

destination for information. We wanted to learn more about the rise of the coronavirus subreddit and the impact it's having on a global event that will change the course of history. So we called up three of those 64 so-called mods to talk about their so-called sub. I am Rick Barber. I'm normally a second year PhD student doing research in computer science on the conflicts that arise between platforms and their users. And I'm in Champaign, Illinois. My name's Emerson Ailey Boggs.

I'm a PhD student in infectious disease and I do HIV caps in biology. My name is Patrick Doherty. I just finished my master's degree from the University of Notre Dame. after leaving my PhD program. And while getting my PhD, I was studying HIV and tuberculosis co-infections. Can you give us a sort of tour of the subreddit? Like what kinds of resources people find there? What are the types of conversations and posts that go up in there?

Yeah, so the subreddit usually we'll have one to two things stickied at the top. Sticky post just means it's at the top for everyone who does. directly visits the subreddit. You know, should I cancel a travel plan? Used to be a big one. But now it's more like, you know, what kind of fun activities can I do while I'm sheltering in place? Our second spot is often an AMA and asked me anything with any number of interesting guests

that we've been lucky enough to have. Last week we had Bill Gates. Today we had a critical care physician in the UK. Sometimes we also put other things in that second slot. Like, for instance, here we've got an initiative for opening up some of the science around COVID-19 and researching it from the scientific journal publishers. This is something that we have to amplify a little bit from the start. It's interesting that you mentioned the piece of sort of bringing down the paywall for a lot of academic research. I wonder if the subreddit and its growth has been a factor in making that happen.

Do you believe it has? We definitely think it made a difference prior. So the one that we have sticky right now is actually the successful result. So this little action wound up getting 35,000 papers released. And so what we have stickyed right now is a collection of those papers. But this user originally posted on coronavirus just to get some. support for that effort. So I and this user both believe that coronavirus was instrumental to getting those papers released. Wow. I mean, you can imagine that Aaron Schwartz probably would be smiling

down on that. That's really cool. Yes, we definitely think we did him proud. What kinds of posts are not allowed on the coronavirus subreddit? In general, we don't allow sensationalized headlines or misinformation. The whole goal of the subreddit is to allow a place where people can go and get factual accurate information on the outbreak across the world and not really be influenced by things that aren't necessarily true. What makes the subreddit such a good resource for people, do you think? I mean, I think that, you know, especially in our daily discussion thread, there are a lot of people in that thread having conversations about the anxieties that they have. and sharing those anxieties with one another or, you know,

frustrations that they might have about a relative who, you know, isn't taking it seriously, you know, maybe an older relative who doesn't want to stay home and they're sharing tricks with each other about, hey, here's how I convinced, you know, my grandma to stay home. Or, you know, here's a piece of information I showed someone to convince them to stay home. And then, you know, like I said, they're also comforting one another to an extent. The mods get a front row seat to the conversations happening on the sub between regular users. They also get to see people mobilizing to try and help out. And sometimes they're a conduit for those efforts.

Rick had a coder friend reach out and say, Hey, I can write code, but I'm not sure how to help. What needs to be done? And that's why we started the COVID Projects subreddit. And I've seen there everything from people sharing. sharing sewing patterns and people, you know, people trying to sew masks at home for donation to, you know, people 3D printing, offering their 3D printing resources to, to programmers trying to set up various websites that can help out with things. So to me, you know, as an engineer,

what's been most inspiring to me is just seeing that, you know, that kind of spirit that I think we associate with, you know, something like World War II, where everyone, is trying to figure out how they can help and pitch in and using online community to actually facilitate that so that we can all do what we can from home. Richard mentioned 3D printing, and specifically people have been releasing files to 3D print ventilator valves.

So they've actually, the contribution from home is a material one that actually makes its way to clinical settings, and I think that's really interesting. But another one that we've been able to do a lot of good with is distributed computing. So there is a lab that does protein folding, and it's a pretty computationally intense process. So what they've done is they've basically found a way to spread out the workload where you can use your computers like background processing.

And we have gotten just thousands of people on that. Quick note here. This kind of crowdsourced computing project is becoming more common now. Basically, the idea is a bunch of people all contribute the computing power of their personal computers to a really big effort to go through data. Maybe you've heard about it for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence project, SETI, or a project to map the brain. Well, just this week, it was announced that IBM would be partnering with the White House to lend its supercomputer powers to help researchers work on.

finding an effective vaccine for the virus. Distributed computing is when citizens lend their personal computer processors to that kind of a cause. And in this case, Redditors are lending their computing power to a lab that does protein folding. Can you describe, for the complete idiot like myself, what protein folding is and why it matters? No, this is my favorite. I love talking about this stuff. So the virus isn't a protein. the virus is entirely composed of proteins. A virus is literally a bag of proteins with some genetic material in there.

So specifically the ones that people are paying attention to with the coronavirus are called spike proteins. And they're the ones that are actually sticking out from the external surface. Oh yeah, we've all seen that, we've all seen that image that looks sort of like the death star, but with little red pins sticking out of it. So those are the proteins that are recognized by the host immune system. Because the spike protein is what elicits the immune response, it's a huge import in vaccine development. Okay, so let me describe that back to you in the most idiotic way possible,

and you tell me if you think that it's maybe correct. the spiky ball image that we have all seen of the virus, folding proteins allows people to find the matching puzzle piece to that so that we can kill it with a vaccine. While the coronavirus subreddit is helping develop masks, ventilators, and helping labs develop a novel coronavirus vaccine, There's also another way the group has made a major impact. The pandemic has escalated so quickly that traditional methods of reporting have fallen by the wayside in some cases.

Newsrooms, like our own here at WBWR, are doing their best to keep up. But sometimes even daily updates aren't enough. And this is where Emerson says the subreddit comes into play. So one of the advantages we have is that we have users all over the globe. So we're able to get those updates in real time. This started off as kind of a dorky pet project for me, and I kind of just wanted to see what it would be like, but it is something that other virologists are using now.

When we come back, Rick, Emerson, and Patrick talk about the impact the pandemic is having on their own lives. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or... Politics. Country music. Hockey.

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Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. We're back with more of our conversation with Reddit moderators, Patrick Emerson, and Rick. How is the pandemic impacting you personally? Yeah. I myself have a lung disease and no small amount of anxiety in the background. And so as far as being a moderator itself, that has certainly drawn a lot of my productive attention. So in other words, other work has become a bit of a lower priority.

On the family side, you know, I have talked to my grandmother and my mom and dad on the phone. more in the last month than I ever have in a given month. And yeah, you know, spending a lot more quality time with loved ones. For me, it's helped me communicate to my family that I do know what I'm talking about. You know, my parents were down in Florida on vacation when this all went, you know, haywire. And I was able to convince them to come home and kind of use my expertise that they see from the subreddit to to trust my opinion better and take care of themselves, which is very helpful for me and my sanity. But yeah, it's been, it's been special for me because I feel like I'm making a difference in

people's ability to understand and protect themselves from this outbreak. Emerson, same question to you. How is this impacting you personally? I go to Pitt and they have moved to distance learning. So I actually used Zoom this morning to give a seminar, and my neighborhood is empty. There is just absolutely no one here. There's parking on the street. It's usually never available. It's quiet, whereas it's usually like a party college neighborhood.

And beyond that, I'm getting my shelter in place orders later today because Pennsylvania is acting really severely, and I very much support that. But right now, my girlfriend is rushing over here so we can quarantine together when they officially announce it tonight. Very smart. It's good to have a buddy in all of this. She has a bunch of fiddler crabs, and we're going to try to figure out where to put them in my one-bedroom, Northeast apartment. Nice. Rick, Emerson, Patrick, thank you very much for talking with us. Of course.

Yeah, thanks a lot for having us. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so we have a question. A couple of questions, actually. First off, how are you doing? What is your experience during this global pandemic? What are your challenges, your moments of joy? Are you, like me, baking and eating a dangerous amount of bread? Or like me, going for long walks in the woods and thinking about never leaving so you don't have to hear the news or look at a screen ever again. Yeah. How do you escape from the news? Is that usually up? and we are now ruining it for you. How much more coronavirus stuff do you want in your feed or from us? Let us know your thoughts and your experiences as we all try to get through this alone together.

You can call and leave a voicemail at 857-244-0338, or you can record a voice memo with your phone and email it to endless thread at wbUR.org. By the way, all of the listeners you heard from today are also Redditors. We posted a question on Reddit asking for their input. So if you want to check out our subreddit, which we have now, an official subreddit, you can go to endlessthread.reddit.com. Check it out. And we'll be back in your feed soon while we work on some bits and bobs and prepare our upcoming special series.

In the meantime, please wash your hands, stay safe, practice self-care, and also caring for others by keeping your distance when you can, take care of yourselves and each other. But first, we've got one last story for you. It's a good one to go out on. Among the things that social distancing has made impossible is coming together to make music. One Redditor posted a video that we could probably all use right now,

and she sent us a voice memo telling us more about it. Hi, my name is Zhajahin. I'm from Huntsville, Alabama, and go to Duke University, where I sing with the Duke Corral. Every spring break, the choir goes on tour. It's usually like this great, big, fun, like concert every night kind of thing. But with coronavirus becoming a huge issue, it was pretty apparent that we would have to stop singing pretty soon together. And I think because of that, a lot of us wanted to make music anytime we could.

And so one of the options is the bus, because we were all stuck together in one place. This piece is The Silver Swan by Michael Buswitz Quarm. It's based on a legend, a Greek legend, about how swans don't sing. until they're about to die. What was really cool about it was that my peers on the bus allowed me to conduct the peace with them. And it was an amazing experience to, like, be so close to the people I sing with.

And, I mean, this was one of the first times we would sing this song on our tour and also one of the last. And so it was just so poignant and a thing to remember. And thank God, Yi Chen, he got a video recording of it all and the week after tour after everybody had gone home and we were all alone again I spent that time watching it over and over again and it's a great memory and I'm so happy to share it with all of you