Latest / Presented by Speaking Human / #194: Reddit Roulette

Transcript

#194: Reddit Roulette · Presented by Speaking Human

0:00
Speaker 1: Speeding Human.
0:05
Speaker 2: Today. On Speaking Human, we spin the wheel of online
0:09
Speaker 2: chaos to dissect the evolving role of Reddit today and
0:14
Speaker 2: share random threads to get you lost in the reddit
0:18
Speaker 2: rabbit hole.
0:21
Speaker 1: Specking Human.
0:29
Speaker 3: Welcome to Speaking Human, where we simplify the world of
0:32
Speaker 3: marketing for humans. I'm Shad comly and with me is
0:36
Speaker 3: my co host Patrick Jebber.
0:39
Speaker 2: Yes, how's it going, Shad?
0:42
Speaker 3: It's going amazing. I mean, things just couldn't be better.
0:47
Speaker 2: The world is spinning, the sun is shining.
0:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, the world's spinning around like a Roulette wheel. We
0:56
Speaker 3: don't know where the ball is gonna land from day
0:58
Speaker 3: to day. Red black, maybe a green, zero? Who knows.
1:04
Speaker 2: It shouldn't be confused with Russian roulette because it is
1:08
Speaker 2: Reddit roulette we're discussing today.
1:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, which Reddit roulette a little more of a fun,
1:17
Speaker 3: less intense game than Russian Roulette, some would.
1:20
Speaker 2: Say, some might say, so you know, as we do.
1:24
Speaker 2: I have a little trivia for you about Reddit. I
1:27
Speaker 2: thought this would be a good way to start the episode.
1:30
Speaker 2: Are you ready for a little trivia?
1:32
Speaker 3: Reddit? Ready? Reddit red? I'm ready, I'm ready.
1:40
Speaker 2: So Reddit calls itself the front page of the Internet
1:43
Speaker 2: and it has millions of users posting everything from deep
1:46
Speaker 2: thoughts to deranged memes. It actually might live up to
1:51
Speaker 2: its name. But here's a question for you, Shad. Which
1:55
Speaker 2: of the following was not a real Reddit April Fool's
1:59
Speaker 2: Day exper Is it A a collaborative pixel art canvas
2:04
Speaker 2: where users could only place one pixel every few minutes.
2:09
Speaker 2: B A button that users could press but only once,
2:13
Speaker 2: and it reset a timer every time it was pushed.
2:16
Speaker 2: C a feature that turned every Reddit comment into a
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Speaker 2: haiku or D a fake cryptocurrency called reddit Coin that
2:26
Speaker 2: could only be mined by up voting cat photos.
2:30
Speaker 3: So the question is which of these is.
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Speaker 2: Not a real Reddit April Fool's Day experiment.
2:37
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go with the cat photos one. I'm gonna
2:39
Speaker 3: go with D. MM it was between C and D.
2:43
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go with D and I have a feeling
2:45
Speaker 3: just by your response there, I'm wrong.
2:47
Speaker 2: You are correct? Actually, oh you got this one. While
2:52
Speaker 2: Reddit has dabbled in pixel chaos and haiku hijinks, reddit
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Speaker 2: coin doesn't exist yet, but you know, as a lot
3:01
Speaker 2: of Reddit users will tell you, give it time because
3:03
Speaker 2: the cat photo economy is inevitable.
3:06
Speaker 3: I mean, that's what a lot of people say, cat
3:08
Speaker 3: photos more valuable than cash.
3:10
Speaker 2: Right, it does sound like something you would find on Reddit, right,
3:15
Speaker 2: mining cryptocurrency by upvoting cat photos. I mean, it just
3:20
Speaker 2: it sounds legit.
3:22
Speaker 3: To be clear, the turning every comment into high coups,
3:27
Speaker 3: they actually did that, yeah, or that was a joke
3:30
Speaker 3: them saying that they were going to do that.
3:32
Speaker 2: Well, it was a feature, so it's yeah, they were
3:34
Speaker 2: April Fool's Day experiments. So I think they actually did
3:38
Speaker 2: do it, but it wasn't like a widespread thing and
3:41
Speaker 2: didn't do everything.
3:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty crazy though, if they actually you know,
3:45
Speaker 3: you posted something and then all of a sudden it
3:47
Speaker 3: appeared as.
3:48
Speaker 2: A high coup, I think that feels pretty authentic to
3:51
Speaker 2: the Reddit experience, you know.
3:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, it fits. It definitely fits this platform and a
3:57
Speaker 3: lot of things. I think we'll talk about some of
3:59
Speaker 3: the ass efe of it, including the sense of humor
4:02
Speaker 3: you'll find there. So in case you haven't guessed it,
4:05
Speaker 3: by the title of the episode, by what the trivia
4:08
Speaker 3: we've talked about so far, and by basically every part
4:12
Speaker 3: of this experience you've had leading up to this exact moment.
4:17
Speaker 3: On today's episode, we are talking about Reddit. We're diving
4:20
Speaker 3: in a little bit. We're going to tell you a
4:22
Speaker 3: little bit about Reddit, discuss where Reddit sits, it's kind
4:27
Speaker 3: of unique place on the Internet today, and then even
4:31
Speaker 3: give you a little little taste some of the material
4:35
Speaker 3: we're finding on Reddit today, which you know, a lot
4:38
Speaker 3: of diversity.
4:39
Speaker 2: There, there's a ton of diversity on Reddit.
4:42
Speaker 3: But let's, you know, let's start out with a little
4:45
Speaker 3: background on Reddit. Maybe you have no idea. Maybe you've
4:47
Speaker 3: never experienced Reddit. Maybe you have no idea what that
4:51
Speaker 3: even is. You're like, I'm gonna just listen to this
4:53
Speaker 3: to find out because I know nothing of this reddit
4:57
Speaker 3: you speak. Reddit started in two thousand and five, so
5:01
Speaker 3: twenty years ago, created by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.
5:08
Speaker 3: Don't know if I'm saying that right, two college roommates.
5:11
Speaker 3: The idea was simple, a place to share and discuss anything,
5:16
Speaker 3: with users submitting links and voting on them. It quickly
5:19
Speaker 3: grew into a massive community where almost anything could be discussed,
5:23
Speaker 3: from the latest news to niche hobbies. By twenty ten,
5:28
Speaker 3: so five years after they started, Reddit had twelve million users.
5:32
Speaker 3: That was an eighty four percent jump from the numbers
5:35
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine. By twenty eleven, that number
5:38
Speaker 3: would reach twenty million, so you can see how fast
5:41
Speaker 3: kind of reddit grew. Over the years, Reddit has evolved
5:44
Speaker 3: from a basic forum to one of the most visited
5:48
Speaker 3: websites in the world. Major milestones include the launch of
5:51
Speaker 3: subreddits in two thousand and eight, allowing users to create
5:55
Speaker 3: their own communities, and the introduction of up votes and
5:58
Speaker 3: down votes to help surp us the best content. Reddits
6:02
Speaker 3: Asked Me Anything. Ama became a major part of its identity,
6:07
Speaker 3: attracting everyone from celebrities to politicians, among them Barack Obama,
6:12
Speaker 3: Taylor Swift, and Bill Gates. Fast forward to today, Reddit
6:17
Speaker 3: has over five hundred million active users and it's valued
6:22
Speaker 3: at about ten billion dollars. It's a hub for not
6:25
Speaker 3: just discussions, but memes, viral trends, and online activism. What
6:31
Speaker 3: started as a simple idea has turned into an integral
6:34
Speaker 3: part of internet culture, with something for everyone to get
6:39
Speaker 3: lost in.
6:40
Speaker 2: That's a that's a wonderful summary of a platform that
6:45
Speaker 2: to summarize, is very difficult to put it into such
6:51
Speaker 2: a short summary of its lifespan. You know, you could
6:55
Speaker 2: really talk about it for a day straight you know,
7:00
Speaker 2: because there's a lot there.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's evolved a lot in twenty years. I
7:05
Speaker 3: mean really, when it started, and you probably remember this,
7:09
Speaker 3: it was just this kind of simple, hey, let's share
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Speaker 3: links and people can upvote and down vote them. That's
7:16
Speaker 3: what I remember from its earliest days. That's kind of
7:19
Speaker 3: how we even used it in the beginning, you know,
7:21
Speaker 3: I remember being on it and kind of like, hey,
7:23
Speaker 3: let's like share this cool link I found and see
7:25
Speaker 3: if people like it. And it's become so much more
7:28
Speaker 3: than that, and the amount of information just flowing through
7:31
Speaker 3: there has I mean, there's just vast amounts of it now.
7:34
Speaker 3: So it's really gone through these phases and evolved in
7:38
Speaker 3: like quite a few different ways in these past two decades.
7:41
Speaker 3: So let's talk about kind of the state of Reddit now.
7:44
Speaker 3: It is kind of this unique being on the internet.
7:48
Speaker 3: I mean, what what is Reddit? How would you even
7:51
Speaker 3: define it or explain to someone? Is it a social site?
7:54
Speaker 3: Is it a forum? Is it a search engine? What
7:57
Speaker 3: is this thing? You know?
7:58
Speaker 2: It's funny because like I think about it and I
8:01
Speaker 2: feel like it defies a simple label. It's so many
8:06
Speaker 2: things all in one. I mean, it is a forum,
8:09
Speaker 2: it is a social platform. It is a search engine.
8:11
Speaker 2: It's a content machine, you know, just NonStop churning out
8:17
Speaker 2: content or consuming content, you know as people input it
8:22
Speaker 2: into like questions and answers and comments and posts and
8:26
Speaker 2: of votes and all of that. So I think it's
8:29
Speaker 2: all of those things, and it's sort of held together
8:34
Speaker 2: by this like semi chaotic, crowd driven sense of what's
8:40
Speaker 2: relevant right at the time.
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Speaker 3: No, I agree with you. It is kind of this
8:44
Speaker 3: Frankenstein of like all those things together, and I think
8:48
Speaker 3: that's what makes it unique and almost uncopyable.
8:53
Speaker 1: You know.
8:53
Speaker 3: If you're like, I'm going to create another Reddit, I
8:56
Speaker 3: don't think you could. Yeah, it's just kind of become
8:59
Speaker 3: this thing, and it's active users and snowballed into this
9:04
Speaker 3: this kind of like corner of the Internet that exists
9:07
Speaker 3: almost on its own terms in many ways. That being said,
9:10
Speaker 3: I think for me today, Reddit has really become a
9:14
Speaker 3: search engine. That's how I primarily use it. Yeah, Honestly,
9:17
Speaker 3: when I'm looking up a lot of stuff now I'll
9:20
Speaker 3: go to Google and just specifically search for something and
9:24
Speaker 3: add Reddit to that to look what people are saying
9:26
Speaker 3: about that thing on Reddit, versus just getting Google results.
9:30
Speaker 3: I think in a lot of ways, Reddit is what
9:33
Speaker 3: the Internet used to be before the corporations and algorithms
9:37
Speaker 3: and influencers and bots and everything else took over. You know,
9:41
Speaker 3: just real people having actual conversations. Yeah, you know, when
9:45
Speaker 3: you want to find out what do people really think
9:47
Speaker 3: about a shoe and you're like, I'm sifting through these
9:49
Speaker 3: reviews and they all seem fake or sponsored or something
9:53
Speaker 3: like that. It reminds me though, back when the Internet
9:57
Speaker 3: was kind of the wild West, before companies learned how
10:00
Speaker 3: to leverage search engines to their advantage, when you could
10:02
Speaker 3: find like real people talking.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and even today the AI driven search results, all
10:10
Speaker 2: of that feels so disingenuous. And Reddit is a great
10:15
Speaker 2: way if you just want to see what people are
10:16
Speaker 2: saying about it, as opposed to what a search result is,
10:19
Speaker 2: because a search result is very like, I don't know,
10:22
Speaker 2: it's just like arbitrary thing that just sits out there.
10:25
Speaker 2: Whereas if you want like kind of human guttural responses,
10:31
Speaker 2: Reddit is the place to go. It's kind of like
10:33
Speaker 2: when you read an article and then you just scroll
10:37
Speaker 2: down to the comment thread, the ones that have thousands
10:41
Speaker 2: of comments where people are arguing with each other or
10:43
Speaker 2: saying weird stuff. That's Reddit the whole thing. It's just
10:49
Speaker 2: these authentic, weird, crazy things going on and people are
10:53
Speaker 2: just having interactions and reactions to things, and I love it.
10:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's one of the key ways I think
10:59
Speaker 3: it's different, you know, from other sites or apps. Today
11:04
Speaker 3: it feels like text threads you would have with friends
11:06
Speaker 3: or Slack conversations with coworkers just open for thousands of
11:11
Speaker 3: people to chime in. They feel like loose and scrappy
11:14
Speaker 3: and oftentimes random.
11:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, incoherent thoughts. Sometimes you're like what.
11:21
Speaker 3: Or just playing on a joke. And also, and this
11:23
Speaker 3: has been true about Reddit going back almost to the beginning,
11:27
Speaker 3: there is just no room for the self promotional. If
11:31
Speaker 3: you come there with that, they will like downvote you
11:34
Speaker 3: and comment you out or just knock you out.
11:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Reddit's version of murdering you. It is you're
11:42
Speaker 2: just done. You're done. So great though, because it is
11:47
Speaker 2: the chaotic nature of it that makes it feel like
11:51
Speaker 2: somewhere anyone can relate to you. And I have had
11:55
Speaker 2: this discussion a lot in the last I don't know,
11:57
Speaker 2: a few years, maybe that you know, so the Internet
12:01
Speaker 2: is not what it used to be and whether you
12:04
Speaker 2: as listeners think to a oh man, a couple old
12:08
Speaker 2: guys talking about how that things aren't like they used
12:11
Speaker 2: to be.
12:12
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, the good old days.
12:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, the good old days when the Internet was new
12:16
Speaker 2: and fresh and raw. That's this. I think it still
12:20
Speaker 2: exists in this microcosm of Reddit, and it's so great,
12:25
Speaker 2: right because it's the only thing. I mean, that's not
12:28
Speaker 2: the only good thing on the Internet, but it is
12:30
Speaker 2: one of those good things that still exists on the Internet.
12:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you were a race from another planet and
12:37
Speaker 3: you wanted to learn about humanity just from Reddit, you'd
12:40
Speaker 3: probably get a pretty good picture.
12:42
Speaker 2: Yeah it well, yeah, that picture might be insane, insane, Yeah,
12:48
Speaker 2: but you would cover a lot of ground, you would,
12:51
Speaker 2: You would because you have a wide range of personalities
12:55
Speaker 2: on there. For sure, we've used it where we're like
12:58
Speaker 2: just getting kind of like the Paul as I think
13:01
Speaker 2: you've said in the past, you know, on podcasts like
13:04
Speaker 2: the Pulse of What's going On? Like why just google
13:06
Speaker 2: it when you can go to Reddit? And I think
13:08
Speaker 2: that that says a lot about its character as a
13:11
Speaker 2: as a platform.
13:13
Speaker 3: Well said, you know, I think that's a good point
13:15
Speaker 3: to dive into a little bit of Reddit, give our listeners,
13:19
Speaker 3: you know, a little sample of Reddit in a segment
13:23
Speaker 3: we like to call reddit Roulette. Called that because you know,
13:27
Speaker 3: we're each going to kind of share a random, fun
13:30
Speaker 3: or interesting Reddit thread, tell you a little bit about
13:33
Speaker 3: the thread, and then share some sample posts from it.
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Speaker 3: So I'll ask you, Patrick, as we go into this,
13:38
Speaker 3: how did you land on the thread you're sharing? How'd
13:41
Speaker 3: you get there? You know, obviously Reddit, as we mentioned,
13:43
Speaker 3: big place, it's like the Ikea of the Internet. How'd
13:47
Speaker 3: you decide what piece of furniture you're going to show us?
13:50
Speaker 1: You know?
13:50
Speaker 2: It was funny. I was really trying to think of
13:54
Speaker 2: how I was going to approach this, and I kept
13:56
Speaker 2: coming back to like, what's the most interesting or the
14:01
Speaker 2: most popular, because you don't really think of Reddit and
14:04
Speaker 2: think like, oh, you know, this is the most popular
14:06
Speaker 2: post or reddit that's out there. But as I was
14:09
Speaker 2: sort of searching that, I was finding that there are
14:12
Speaker 2: posts that have gotten hundreds of thousands of votes. You know,
14:18
Speaker 2: this is the one thing there is a quantifier, the
14:21
Speaker 2: up votes, and some have lots of up votes. So
14:25
Speaker 2: I ended up going with something that had one of
14:28
Speaker 2: the highest vote count and also up votes on it,
14:33
Speaker 2: and that was sort of like how I got to
14:35
Speaker 2: it was I was thinking about its popularity and like
14:38
Speaker 2: positive popularity. It's a very simple one, but I thought
14:41
Speaker 2: it would be interesting to talk about and figure out
14:44
Speaker 2: why it is that people reacted positively to it, and
14:48
Speaker 2: maybe have that discussion with you.
14:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that makes sense. That's a good way to
14:52
Speaker 3: do it, I think. I immediately like went in there
14:55
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh man, there is so much here.
14:58
Speaker 3: How am I ever going to figure out which, you know,
15:00
Speaker 3: we're sharing one talking about one thread in this world
15:04
Speaker 3: of bizarre and unique subreddits where there are you know, thousands,
15:09
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands, I don't even know how many out there,
15:11
Speaker 3: and I'm finding a bunch that I'm like, some of
15:14
Speaker 3: these are really good, but not necessarily podcast sharable. A
15:18
Speaker 3: great example is one that I stumbled across is real bees,
15:22
Speaker 3: fake top hats, and it's just exactly what the title suggests,
15:27
Speaker 3: pictures of bees. People are posting pictures of bees with
15:30
Speaker 3: top hats super imposed on them. Obviously not something great
15:35
Speaker 3: to share on a podcast, because what am I going
15:37
Speaker 3: to do? Just describe pictures of bees with top hats on.
15:41
Speaker 3: So that's kind of where I'm like, what's the best
15:43
Speaker 3: one that'll be good to kind of share an audio format.
15:47
Speaker 3: So the one I chose, the thread I chose to share,
15:50
Speaker 3: came from an ask reddit and this was the thread
15:53
Speaker 3: that was started a couple of years ago. It's got
15:55
Speaker 3: about nine thousand up boats and you know, hundreds of
15:58
Speaker 3: comments on it. But it's real, just a simple question
16:02
Speaker 3: posed to the reddit community that got some pretty interesting responses.
16:05
Speaker 3: And that question was what's the weirdest thing someone casually
16:10
Speaker 3: told you as if it were totally normal.
16:13
Speaker 2: Okay, And here.
16:14
Speaker 3: Are a few of the responses this received. A friend
16:18
Speaker 3: of mine was explaining to me why he had to
16:20
Speaker 3: repeat kindergarten. When I was five, I was at a
16:23
Speaker 3: family barbecue and I couldn't find my dad. I looked
16:26
Speaker 3: all over, and finally I found him in the garage.
16:29
Speaker 3: He was tied to a chair and two of his
16:31
Speaker 3: cousins were beating the shit out of him. A couple
16:34
Speaker 3: of days later, my dad was driving me to school
16:37
Speaker 3: and he saw one of the cousins walking down the street.
16:40
Speaker 3: He pulled over, jumped out of the car, and shot
16:42
Speaker 3: his cousin in the head. I missed too many days
16:45
Speaker 3: of kindergarten because of the murder trials, so I had
16:47
Speaker 3: to repeat it.
16:48
Speaker 2: That is uh, I almost like like my jaw dropped,
16:54
Speaker 2: like shot him in the head. I mean the beating
16:57
Speaker 2: the crap out of it is like you're like, okay,
16:59
Speaker 2: that that's getting off the hook a little bit, and
17:02
Speaker 2: then shot in the head.
17:03
Speaker 3: How about this one? I was on a date and
17:06
Speaker 3: a girl casually started telling me about her prison pen pal.
17:09
Speaker 3: Wouldn't it be funny if he murdered me when he
17:11
Speaker 3: gets out.
17:17
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that'd be funny. That'd be so funny.
17:21
Speaker 3: How about this one? Years ago? I worked in a
17:24
Speaker 3: record store. A customer comes in asking if we have
17:27
Speaker 3: sheet music. I told him we have a small section,
17:29
Speaker 3: and he said he was looking for sheet music of
17:31
Speaker 3: gospel music for harmonica. I told him we only had
17:35
Speaker 3: sheet music for a guitar and piano. He got really
17:38
Speaker 3: angry and went on some tirade that ended with him
17:41
Speaker 3: telling me I was bigoted against harmonica players.
17:47
Speaker 2: And that's the whole post. This is the beauty, right,
17:50
Speaker 2: this is the beauty of Reddit.
17:52
Speaker 3: Let me give you a couple more. While talking with
17:55
Speaker 3: my mom in the line at a casino about my
17:57
Speaker 3: brother's recent death. A random woman walked up to us crying.
18:01
Speaker 3: She told us through tears that she knew exactly what
18:04
Speaker 3: we were going through because her goldfish passed away three
18:07
Speaker 3: years ago. She then proceeded to show us her engraved
18:10
Speaker 3: locket with a pick of said goldfish and date of death.
18:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly like what we just went through.
18:16
Speaker 3: I mean, it's pretty similar three years ago too. All Right,
18:20
Speaker 3: I got a few more, but I'll wrap it up
18:22
Speaker 3: here by giving you this last one. This one might
18:23
Speaker 3: be my favorite. A guy once told me he loved
18:26
Speaker 3: how he loved A guy once told me how he
18:29
Speaker 3: loved the feeling of wearing casts. So he'd put casts
18:32
Speaker 3: on himself for days or weeks on end, even if
18:35
Speaker 3: he meant he couldn't drive and would be stuck at
18:38
Speaker 3: home the entire time. He'd use vacation time just to
18:41
Speaker 3: wear full leg and arm casts. Now that's unique. Yeah,
18:46
Speaker 3: could be a listener.
18:47
Speaker 2: I oddly understand and relate to that for some reason.
18:51
Speaker 2: I don't know why, Like I don't enjoy wearing casts,
18:55
Speaker 2: but I could see that that would be somebody you
18:58
Speaker 2: know who would love that feet everybody has like a
19:01
Speaker 2: weird thing, you know, Like, for example, my wife thinks
19:05
Speaker 2: it's weird that I love the smell of books like paper.
19:08
Speaker 2: Like if I open up the book, I have to
19:10
Speaker 2: smell the paper. She's like, that is so weird that
19:14
Speaker 2: you love that. I'm like, I it's something about the paper. So,
19:17
Speaker 2: you know, like someone who loves to wear a cast
19:20
Speaker 2: I sort of get that person like it. That is
19:23
Speaker 2: weird to me, But it's not any different than the
19:26
Speaker 2: weirdness of me liking the smell of paper. That's a
19:29
Speaker 2: great That's a great thread. We should definitely post a
19:32
Speaker 2: link to that thread.
19:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can definitely do that. And the you know,
19:36
Speaker 3: the ask reddit just filed.
19:38
Speaker 2: With these Reddit in and of itself is this. This
19:42
Speaker 2: is a prime example of what makes it great.
19:45
Speaker 3: So what do you got for your roulette?
19:47
Speaker 2: This is This is a pretty simple one, and I
19:49
Speaker 2: think people will get the visual of this pretty quickly.
19:52
Speaker 2: But in twenty twenty, okay, so imagine back five years
19:55
Speaker 2: ago what we were all doing in twenty twenty. Rick
19:58
Speaker 2: Astley himself, yes, the Rick Asley of Never Gonna Give
20:03
Speaker 2: You Up fame, posted a photo of himself from nineteen
20:08
Speaker 2: eighty nine on Reddit under the username really Rick Asley.
20:13
Speaker 2: The post was made in the subreddit Picks, with a
20:17
Speaker 2: simple caption that says me, in nineteen eighty nine, I
20:21
Speaker 2: think I was singing. It wasn't just any posts, though.
20:25
Speaker 2: It became a viral Reddit treasure, racking up four hundred
20:29
Speaker 2: and thirty eight thousand up votes. On top of that,
20:33
Speaker 2: it held nearly perfect ninety nine percent up vote ratio
20:39
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent. What made it magical was the unexpected sincerity.
20:45
Speaker 2: People were bracing for a Rick roll, but instead they
20:48
Speaker 2: got actual Rick Asley because it was him casually joining
20:53
Speaker 2: the platform and embracing the meme legacy. So that's what's
20:58
Speaker 2: kept this thing in the midst of like the best
21:03
Speaker 2: up voted reddits or Reddit posts of all time. And
21:07
Speaker 2: I think why it matters and why it's so reddit
21:10
Speaker 2: is that it shows Reddit's power to revive and recontextualize
21:14
Speaker 2: pop culture because this is the thing like Rick Astley, right,
21:17
Speaker 2: you know, it's this rare example of celebrities just showing
21:21
Speaker 2: up and being authentic. They're not trying to spin anything,
21:24
Speaker 2: they're not trying to not trying to sell anything, trying
21:28
Speaker 2: to sell or promote. Yeah, and he was turned into
21:30
Speaker 2: a meme. He turned around and joined the joke, and
21:34
Speaker 2: it was just him on a bike.
21:36
Speaker 3: Rick Astley on Reddit. Probably the first time he's been
21:39
Speaker 3: mentioned on the show. But he deserves, you know, more attention,
21:43
Speaker 3: more mentions.
21:44
Speaker 2: We should get him to chime in, give us a
21:47
Speaker 2: little comment or at least upvote us on Reddit. I
21:51
Speaker 2: feel like listeners right now. You think we're being paid
21:54
Speaker 2: by Reddit to do this episode, but it's not true.
21:58
Speaker 2: We literally just brain from this topic.
22:01
Speaker 3: I actually thought it was weird. We hadn't talked about Reddit,
22:04
Speaker 3: you know, talk about something we hadn't talked about yet
22:06
Speaker 3: in thirteen years. We hadn't really devoted a show to Reddit, right.
22:11
Speaker 2: But we're not being paid. It's not a promo.
22:13
Speaker 3: I don't think Reddit's you know, grabbing influencers or podcasters.
22:17
Speaker 3: I don't think that's how Reddit rolls. And if they did,
22:19
Speaker 3: I don't think they'd come for us.
22:21
Speaker 2: They might were the target audience, were like just the
22:24
Speaker 2: average everyday guys. So I'll give you a little marketing
22:29
Speaker 2: takeaway today about Reddit. Reddit isn't just a forum. It's
22:34
Speaker 2: a focus group. It's a content generator. It's a trend
22:38
Speaker 2: incubator and search engine all rolled into one it's a
22:43
Speaker 2: place to listen, not just speak. If you're not lurking
22:47
Speaker 2: on Reddit, you're missing the unfiltered thoughts of the Internet's
22:50
Speaker 2: most passionate and brutally honest users. In other words, before
22:56
Speaker 2: you launch your next campaign, if you're talking about doing
22:59
Speaker 2: a marketing care or anything, maybe see what Reddit has
23:03
Speaker 2: to say about it first. That's my takeaway.
23:06
Speaker 3: That is a great takeaway. Reddit great place to lurk
23:09
Speaker 3: and listen, do some consumer research. You can learn a
23:13
Speaker 3: lot about people's opinions on almost anything, any product, you know,
23:18
Speaker 3: any topic. As I was saying earlier, in many cases,
23:22
Speaker 3: I find it to be a better search engine than Google.
23:24
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and that's one of the reasons why I
23:26
Speaker 2: say that is because you know, we've talked about it.
23:30
Speaker 2: You might do a Google search, but you want to
23:31
Speaker 2: also search Reddit see what they're saying. I think that's
23:34
Speaker 2: a it's a good bit of knowledge, a little nugget
23:37
Speaker 2: of human wisdom. If you will, oh, I will. Well,
23:41
Speaker 2: we hope you really enjoyed everything about Reddit today. But
23:46
Speaker 2: that's it for this episode. You can find current and
23:49
Speaker 2: past episodes of the podcast on Speaking Human dot com.
23:54
Speaker 3: We'll be back in two weeks. With another episode of
23:57
Speaker 3: speaking human. Catch it, then
23:59
Speaker 1: Youmans speaking human