Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Let there be snark.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans in disarray!

Peak wingnut was a lie.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Come on, man.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Reddit and Weep

Open Thread: Reddit and Weep

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When it comes to writing our little lives, the Trickster God is a lazy, cliche-dependent novelist. The douchecanoe responsible for sluicing “The Fappening” upon our attention turns out to be just what anybody would have predicted — an unemployable oddball who is severely butthurt that (even) the Washington Post successfully tracked him down. Is there no privacy in this cold new world?!?…

And, of course, now comes another “reveal”, per Jessica Roy at NYMag:

Official internet garbage heap and misogynist watering hole Reddit made enough money off of those stolen nude celebrity photos to keep their expensive server racks running for almost a month, reports Wired.

The moderator of r/thefappening, the subreddit that published the photos until administrators banned it over the weekend, broke down just how much revenue his evil empire generated for Reddit. Thirty-three-year-old John Menese said users of r/thefappening bought enough $3.99 Reddit Gold subscriptions (like a premium account) to fund server costs for at least 27 days…

Roy was also responsible for the earlier “Should We Ban That Subreddit? A Flowchart Look Inside the Mind of Reddit Admins“, so… not a fan, I’m thinking. She linked there to Reddit administrator Yishan Wong’s extremely libertechnerd defense, “Every Man Is Responsible for His Own Soul“:

… [W]e are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies in response to this specific event.

The reason is because we consider ourselves not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community. The role and responsibility of a government differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers…

Uh, no. Reddit is no kind of government, and it’s not a community so much as a whole bunch of communities using the same private corporation’s servers for their own ends, while being used by said private corporation as advertising clickfodder. Much like very large swathes of the internet, only with even less adult supervision!

I prefer the analogy that “the Internet” is a very large, mostly dysfunctional clan — brother against brother, brothers against cousins, cousins against the outside world. And Reddit is the snot-nosed, sticky-fingered, hyperactive Little Brother who gets access to more mature goodies than it can safely handle, because the older kids don’t want it ratting them out. (It also gets kicked around on the regular, sometimes just because those kids need an outlet, not that it doesn’t work at earning those beatdowns… )

Reader Interactions

66Comments

  1. 1.

    lamh36

    Just came across my twitter TL…

    So basically, some low-level exec is gonna take the charge saying they “intercepted” the video before it got to Goodell and top NFL brass

    @RapSheet 7m
    [email protected] Commissioner Roger Goodell announces ex-FBI director Robert Mueller III will conduct an independent investigation into Rice situation

    @Rachel__Nichols 5m
    Director Mueller’s investigation will be overseen by NFL owners John Mara (Giants) & Art Rooney (Steelers). Final report will be made public

  3. 3.

    Mike in NC

    Read today that Facebook is one of the richest companies in the world. Worth many billions. Bigger than Disney and several others.

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    Damn, AL, your whole thing seemed damned Irish, can you please translate it into WASP for the Hibernian impaired? That sarcasm aside, the Reddit folks don’t really understand what a government does. they may have established a “community;” we have one here. We don’t have a government. There is a difference – libertarians tend to discount both, so the fuck-up isn’t surprising.

  5. 5.

    piratedan

    I’m sure that we can trust Mara, after all, he was the guy who came up with the collusion strategy a couple of years back to bring the NFLPA back into the fold and then found a way to make it legal for them to flout both the labor laws and penalize the owners that chose to challenge them. Totally stand up dude.

  6. 6.

    lamh36

    @EdgeofSports 8m
    Mueller’s “investigation will be overseen by New York Giants owner John Mara and Pittsurgh Steelers owner Art Rooney.” Both Goodell cronies

    @Russellmania980 9m
    How is this an independent investigation when the @NFL is hiring Mueller AND two of Goodell’s cronies John Mara & Art Rooney running it?#NFL

  7. 7.

    Mike in dc

    @lamh36: Predictable. Have a lower level guy fall on his sword to save Goodell. Presumably he is getting a nice golden parachute on the flip side.

  8. 8.

    srv

    You people just don’t get Social Networks & Media.

    Freddie de Bore tried to help bridge the gap between the youts and the olds here, but he was run off the lawn.

    I haz a sad though, this was a perfect opportunity for you to drag the Snowman back onto the front page and you punted.

    What happened to the days when John demanded one of you to “WIN THE MORNING!” I can only hope Obama’s War leads to a new era, perhaps one where Angry Sober John takes on his own dudebros like GG.

    We need a war that gives our little lives meaning.

  12. 12.

    srv

    Shot across the bow! Who will fight the dudebro navy?

    Glenn GreenwaldVerified account ‏@ggreenwald

    Obama is the 4th consecutive US president to announce bombing of Iraq

  13. 13.

    srv

    HuffPost MediaVerified account ‏@HuffPostMedia

    Newt Gingrich liked Obama’s speech a lot.

    Assault from rear! Oh, the humanity!

  14. 14.

    lamh36

    Ok, now for a bit of the superficial. Let’s see how many people even know what I am talking about…lol.

    So, have any of ya’ll heard of this new show on LOGO TV called “Secret Guide to Fabulous”. Essentially it’s Queer Eye for the 2010s I guess.

    Meh…I just can’t get behind the show though. I mean aside from the Sean T dude from that “Hip Hop Abs” DVD, all it’s done was just make me miss the guys from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy!

  17. 17.

    max

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Damn, AL, your whole thing seemed damned Irish, can you please translate it into WASP for the Hibernian impaired?

    Reddit dude started a forum called TheFappening and posted all the nude celebrity pics. Gloated over it, apparently. The WaPo wrote a profile of the um, anonymouse that indicated he posted to asexuality and Aspergers boards and that also he posted a lot in the Reddit cocaine forum. Turns out he’s 33 and kinda broke, presumably because he has a coke habit. AL is disgusted by the spreading of the nudies and loathes this jet-engined young fellow.

    Then she goes on to bash Reddit for being a bunch of clueless assholes that call themselves a government.

    I feel like I’m doing sign language translation, sorry that’s not what you were after.

    Full disclosure: I might be an oddball, but I don’t do coke, read or post to Reddit, and have easily avoided seeing the celeb nudies. So I can say personally the guy doesn’t sound like an oddball or an eccentric to me, but an assholey dweeb, kinda like the PUA shooter in California.

    max
    [‘Your mileage may vary.’]

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @srv: @srv: Please do try to work commenters in to a froth. Your trolling is well done, but it is still trolling. Have you considered fishing? It requires both mental and physical subtlety.

  19. 19.

    Starfish

    @max: Wow. Thanks for explaining that. I didn’t understand what she was saying at all. It sounded like “I am old, and I am condescending about subcultures that I do not participate in.”

  20. 20.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @max: I was just commenting on the clan on clan , brother on brother, element in her post. Nothing else.

  22. 22.

    srv

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I can do physical, and I can do mental, but I can’t do them together.

    Look, there’s a war on. You’re either with us or against us. Are you just going to join the masses of Obama haters and leave your President hanging?

    Serious trolling is serious. Obama needs your support. Is BJ just going to roll over? It is time to dispatch the BJ Troll Force to the intertubes and fight the great fight.

  24. 24.

    lamh36

    I’m watching episodes of the Golden Girls on Hallmark Channel. God I love this show now and I loved it then.

    Watching the episode where Dorothy and Sophia were dressed like Sonny & Cher.

    It’s funny how many social issues this show showcased with both heart and laughter. Man…love it.

    RIP Rue, Bea and Estelle, and much love to the ageless Betty White!

  26. 26.

    srv

    You people know what’s really frightening?

    When a Yahoo News comment section sounds like a bastion of pacifists and McCain bashers.

    Obama and the Very Serious People are way out on a limb here.

  27. 27.

    KG

    @lamh36: I really hope that they can’t find someone to fall on their sword and everyone of them says “we tried to give it to Goddell and he refused to watch it”

  29. 29.

    lamh36

    And on this note I’m going to fuckin’ bed.

    Sad to say, but from the video, at least one of these guys appears to be white? Which means maybe people will believe them?

    Damnit.

    New Michael Brown shooting witnesses describe scene

    (CNN) — Two men, shocked at what they saw, describe an unarmed teenager with his hands up in the air as he’s gunned down by a police officer.

    They were contractors doing construction work in Ferguson, Missouri, on the day Michael Brown was killed.
    And the men, who asked not to be identified after CNN contacted them, said they were about 50 feet away from Officer Darren Wilson when he opened fire.

    An exclusive cell phone video captures their reactions during the moments just after the shooting.

    “He had his f**n hands up,” one of the men says in the video.

    “The cop didn’t say get on the ground. He just kept shooting,” the man said.

    That same witness described the gruesome scene, saying he saw Brown’s “brains come out of his head,” again stating, “his hands were up.”

    The video shows the man raising his arms in the air — just as, he says, Brown was doing when he was shot.

    The other contractor told CNN he saw Brown running away from a police car.

    Brown “put his hands up,” the construction worker said, and “the officer was chasing him.”

    The contractor says he saw Wilson fire a shot at Brown while his back was turned.

    The men said they didn’t seen how the confrontation started.

  30. 30.

    hilts

    Stephen A. Smith has gone off his meds again:

    “I’m sorry, I think this woman is off her rocker,” Smith said, referring to NOW President Terry O’Neill. “I think she’s lost her mind. That’s right, I said it.” “This is the most ridiculous nonsense I’ve ever heard in my life,” Smith said. “Roger Goodell deserves to lose his job? Why are you acting like he’s Ray Rice? Roger Goodell didn’t hit Janay Palmer Rice. He hasn’t hit any women. And by the way, the last time I checked, Skip, why are we talking about the NFL as if it’s some cesspool for domestic violence? There’s a few cases. It’s being dealt with…What the hell is this? That’s crazy!”

    h/t http://www.mediaite.com/tv/espns-stephen-a-smith-loses-it-over-nows-call-for-goodell-resignation

  31. 31.

    srv

    Christine O’Donnell ‏@ChristineOD

    Saying US strategy for Syria will be like the strategy in Yemen & Somalia is like saying my weight loss plan will be like Chris Christie’s.

    Kennedy ‏@KennedyNation 45m

    I believe Michigan Congressman Kerry Bentivolio just suggested Sasha and Malia Obama go fight ISIS! #INDfbn

  33. 33.

    srv

    kos speaketh:

    Everything I wrote here still stands.

    We’ve spent billions arming our Middle East allies to the teeth. They are the ones directly threatened by Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL. Not us.

    So why is it us that have to do the fighting? It’s their backyard, but they can watch comfortably as the United States bleeds trillions more to bail them out? Nice gig, if you can get it.

    Let those directly threatened by Islamic State put their skin in the game.

    Who will bear the white man’s burden? Onward, Christian Soldiers!

  34. 34.

    Cerulean Spork

    if reddit is a government then most of its subreddits wld fall into the vicinity of The Shades . . . .

  37. 37.

    cckids

    This would fit better in the thread below, but it seems to be dead. Just in case the Faux News viewers aren’t freaked out enough by ISIS/IL, O’KEEFE RETURNS!!!

    What do you suppose “fake Ebola” looks like??

    Such a tool.

  38. 38.

    A Humble Lurker

    @srv:

    Christine O’Donnell ‏@ChristineOD

    Saying US strategy for Syria will be like the strategy in Yemen & Somalia is like saying my weight loss plan will be like Chris Christie’s.

    Yes, let’s listen to the cauldron stirrer.

  39. 39.

    Chris T.

    I asked this in another thread (courtesy of google suggesting “take a messiah” => “take two and call me in the morning”) but now I’m curious enough to try it here: what is the proper plural form of “messiah”, given that the word comes in via Hebrew?

  40. 40.

    steve from Antioch

    Reddit has something like 100 million unique monthly visitors so any claims about what it “is” are probably a bit of an overgeneralization.

    Indeed, I saw scores – maybe hundreds – of posts on Reddit raising the same “if we don’t like NSA invasions of privacy, why is this any better” argument made in the linked “article.”

  41. 41.

    mclaren

    “The fappening”? “Nude celebrity pix”?

    Must be cloistered, ’cause I’ve never heard of any of this.

    Oh, well, back to reading Joris-Karl Huysmans’ The Damned…

  43. 43.

    Major Major Major Major

    The Internet is supposed to be a crazy libertarian wild-west paradise where nobody makes any rules and everybody agrees to voluntary standards to make sure that stuff actually works.

    In reality, it’s a bunch of telco’s telling you to go pound sand.

  45. 45.

    srv

    Sen. Ted Cruz was booed offstage at a conference for Middle Eastern Christians Wednesday night after saying that “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.”

    Cruz, the keynote speaker at the sold-out D.C. dinner gala for the recently-founded non-profit In Defense of Christians, began by saying that “tonight, we are all united in defense of Christians. Tonight, we are all united in defense of Jews. Tonight, we are all united in defense of people of good faith, who are standing together against those who would persecute and murder those who dare disagree with their religious teachings.”

  46. 46.

    bjacques

    Ooohhh…a “government of a new type of community?”

    That sounds like an open invitation to hack that “community” along the lines of “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” or “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.” Reduce the “community” to a permanent jihad of all against all (like the last days of F*ckedCompany)), ending with the CEO setting himself on fire (or redditors burning him in a Wicker Man–I’m not choosy). A serious memetic attack.

    Kennedy is still alive?

  49. 49.

    Mike J

    @Southern Goth:

    I only read reddit for the programming subreddits/articles.

    I read the minecraft forums. All in a tizzy over the rumored purchase of Mojang by Microsoft for $2,000,000,000. I can’t say I’d blame notch for taking the money, but it’s a pity what they’ll do to the game.

  50. 50.

    Elias

    Regarding IS, everyone says we should drop Chuck Todd on ’em.

    If we sent Chris Christie up to the Space Station he’d never refuse. The first governor in space. Give him a push out the door over the Iraq/Syria border. The explosion would rival Tunguska. IS would be done, courtesy of the ISS.

  51. 51.

    Cain

    @srv:

    Sen. Ted Cruz was booed offstage at a conference for Middle Eastern Christians Wednesday night after saying that “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.”

    Sounds kinda fucked up. They are all about The Hate. Of course, the fuck would be boo’ed off stage.

  52. 52.

    Cain

    @max:

    I like reddit, and I find things like /r/pollitics to be very liberal. It is great that there are so many people who agree with my point of view.

  53. 53.

    srv

    @Cain: You’re welcome, it took years of trolling Truthers to make it slightly less inane.

    You’d think the Anne Laurie’s of the Left would want to build bridges to all those aimless, unemployed and impressionable youts being tugged by the dark side of Civil Glibertarianism. It’s a veritable trove of De-Chomskyfied ISIS haters of late, ready to March with Obama and find a common cause to Courtesy Droning…

  55. 55.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    “Why is my being on an asexuality website or an Aspergers board relevant to my work on /r/TheFappening?”

    ROFL Ye gods, talk about living down to expectations.

  56. 56.

    BruceFromOhio

    The role and responsibility of a government sysadmin who happens to have hit the lottery for a tidy payout differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers the right to be a lazy, self-righteous blowhard and still cash the checks…

    At least, that how it sounded when I read it out loud.

  57. 57.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    I drop by Reddit once in a while if I want to waste some time though I do know there are useful subreditts I don’t generally care. What I have seen is about what you would expect from an online place with millions of visitors. To try to classify it as any one thing would be useless. Generally speaking the community is liberal but there is a wicked subculture of Paultard glibetarians, they work like the flying monkeys, I once pointed out little Ayn’s issues & about 2 dozen descended on the thread to call me a doodie-head.

    FWIW, and in no way a defense of /r/thefappening/ the people in charge did realize it was a mistake & attempted to give the money raised to some cancer research or (I was not paying attention so I don’t know which one) and they refused it. There are a lot of ‘man-children’ there

  58. 58.

    Aimai

    @Starfish: if you werent paying attention to a hugely important story in the ongoing war between the mra/reddit/misogynists and all women everywhere i suppose you could think the post was obscure. I doubt if the rest of us found it confusing.

  61. 61.

    Schlemazel [was Schlemizel till NotMax taught me proper yiddish!]

    @Aimai: Ah, I see. As I said I was not really paying attention as I don’t really care about reditt. Thats different

  62. 62.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Bob In Portland: I guess they can’t read either.

    Hint: It was a Preliminary Report. The final report will take around a year. The investigation isn’t done yet.

    (sigh)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  63. 63.

    Lee

    Reddit is exactly what you make it (just like the internet in general) which is why its tag line is ‘The front page of the internet’.

    Apparently Anne’s tastes run toward the snot nosed hyper-actve little kid. Personally I tend more toward /askhistorians, /askscience,/asksocialscience,/economics, /aww & /nononoyes.

    But everyone has different tastes.

  64. 64.

    Matt

    I prefer the analogy that “the Internet” is a very large, mostly dysfunctional clan — brother against brother, brothers against cousins, cousins against the outside world.

    Make no mistake – Reddit isn’t a techno-libertarian dream that’s devolved into warlordism. Warlordism IS the dream…

  65. 65.

    Billy K.

    So much ignorance about Reddit. Honestly, Anne Laurie, you should read up a bit before posting something like this. I’ve come to expect better from you.

    BTW, Reddit is owned by Conde-Nast, so if anyone feels the need to spew some uninformed techno-bile, that would be the general direction.

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