Over April Fool's weekend, Reddit introduced r/place, a blank canvas where users could add pixels of any color. It quickly emerged into an astonishing piece of collaborative digital art with several hard-fought battles to keep and erase certain elements. Read the rest
Song: Bag Raiders, 'Shooting Stars.' One Hour Version is here, and below. It's making me happy. Read the rest
R U A Dick is a single-serving website that performs sentiment analysis on your (or anyone's) Reddit account history. I was deemed "slightly positive." Here is my most positive sentence on Reddit.
And here is my most negative one.
The script can also be run on Subreddits and the creator maintains a leaderboard of the nicest ones. I Took A Picture has the highest total score; other notably positive subs include Cosplay, Penmanship and Tattoos. [via Reddit.]
Read the restEvery Monday I extract the top comments from the top posts of some of the most popular subreddits through the Reddit API. Each comment gets parsed into sentences and analyzed using the NLTK Sentiment Analyzer Vader Module which scores them based on how positive, negative, and neutral they are. Subreddits are ranked from most positive to least positive in the table below.
Uploaded by redditor Ins1der, who attributes it to Instagram user Cblimagery, an Indiana resident. Read the rest
Just look at it. (Thanks, Sandro) Read the rest
Palmer Luckey is the founder of virtual reality tech firm Oculus, which was bought by Facebook for $2 billion. With a portion of his huge pile of Oculus cash, Luckey is funding a pro-Donald Trump “shitposting” tactical team that churns out racist, sexist, hatey anti-Hillary Clinton memes and works to make them go viral. Read the rest
If this was a special effect, we'd call it fakey looking, but apparently it's real lightning, captured in Tampa and posted to Reddit by UnobtrusiveElephant. Read the rest
Yes, they made the "Asian" porn yellow -- apparently this is a pretty common sight in Georgia gas-stations, though the proliferation of network connections in big rigs will surely cut into that market (and create some serious potential for mischief). Read the rest
Via Reddit, a photo of Pine Ridge High School, Deltona, Florida's interpretive road art. Read the rest
Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, has announced plans to do an AMA on Reddit. Unlike most "ask me anything" events, however, this one is unofficial and unmoderated by Reddit's usual team on the r/IAMA subreddit. Instead, it will occur in a fan group, r/The_Donald, notorious for its users' fractious behavior and general abundance of seething meme-fueled pretend-laughter. Read the rest
Sinister conspiracy theories about LSD, the government and MKUltra are not uncommon on the internet. But one anonymous Redditor's comments, easily ignored as odd paranoid tangents on the threads they appear on, add up to a "compelling science-fiction horror story" in aggregate — especially all that stuff about flesh interfacing. Reddit is a fascinating platform for such eerie, slow-building metafiction, writes Leigh Alexander.
The seemingly random thread names start to form a pattern: the reader gets the distinct pleasure of wondering why the author chose to post each component in each place. Eerie fragments of fiction hide among commonplace online discussion. Sometimes readers reply and engage, and sometimes are none the wiser. The enthusiastic cult fandom quickly built a Wiki to study and catalogue the mysterious tale, create a timeline of known events, and to note in a sort of literary formalist way what tropes the author is employing. The story also has its own dedicated discussion thread where volunteers have even developed audiobook editions.
The internet has always loved a good mystery, and Wikis, message boards and image boards have a history of playing host to fascinating and often scary folktales that leverage the format and utility of these digital spaces in creative ways.
"We can only hope," she adds, "that it's not a viral marketing stunt." Read the rest
In early 2015, Reddit published a transparency report that contained heading for National Security Requests, noting, "As of January 29, 2015, reddit has never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information." Read the rest
@xeni pic.twitter.com/Ckm9KcQ5Py
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) March 6, 2016
“Got a terrific view of his exquisite hairpiece in person that seemed to have a mind of its own as it was breathing and taking on different forms throughout the whole speech.”
It may be fact, it may be fiction. We do not know. But this first-hand account of an unfortunate fellow who fell under the delusion that it would be a good idea to attend a campaign rally for GOP presidential candidate and noted racist shitbag Donald Trump while tripping balls--it's a very good acid trip story.
Ivealreadyreddit, who's working in Thailand, posted this picture of a tropical centipede cradling her newly hatched babies. Dawwww. Read the rest
The quickness of the hand deceives the eye. Read the rest
Reddit has published a hardcover compendium of the editor's favorite AMAs from r/IAmA. The 400 page tome, Ask Me Anything, includes AMAs with Louis C.K., Chris Rock, Martha Stewart, the Waffle House Grill Masters, Spike Lee, Bill Gates, Bette Midler, and many more. The book contains original portraits by u/youngluck and introductions from the r/IAmA Mods. Of course, the AMAs are available for free online but this is a tangible object, limited edition, etc. $35.
"Ask Me Anything (A collection of Reddit's best from r/IAmA Volume 1)" (Amazon)
Six years ago, I wrote a column comparing IT managers' prohibitions on using your own devices and applications to abstinence-only sex ed: a high-handed approach that leaves its audience ignorant and resentful, and dedicated to undermining you behind your back. Read the rest
