[Music] 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 deal I – I’m gonna take a stand and it’s dimmed so you say – 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 reading 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 and to be self-starters and to do the things they really want to 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 a Forbes says it well they didn’t they say must be true in this biscuit we talked with Lexus about the role of Waffle House in the formation of Reddit the origin of a Mas ask me anything 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 we had a great time talking to Alexis and I hope you’ll 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 $1.99 sound 199 dollars one dollar and 1900 that sounds really good link 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 calm yes I do cuz only were just I was thinking that how’d you know I also was thinking could you see us s no I had I had to pee right now but I’m going to hold it calm calm were you thinking – dot-com part because for a dollar ninety-nine he can be yours only with our coupon code well I did not anymore I just took that one no you did while you were talking I just registered it visit godaddy.com and enter code GMM at checkout for a new comm for only $1.99 I know it’s a little interesting we’re using GMM code on ear biscuits but guys it’s always a good mythical morning and we do both shows so you know don’t get too confused about this some limitations apply see website for details now on with the biscuit be read that you you were planning on becoming an immigration lawyer yes but had an epiphany in a Waffle House tell us about that Waffle House you all will appreciate this I you know what so I went to school in Virginia Charlottesville UVA and there’s a waffle house in route 29 where none of them out here man we really missed it this is why I know y’all appreciate it this is I did a college tour for my book and I visited 81 or 82 universities talking about my story and entrepreneurship we’re trying to get people to do amazing technology and part of 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 everyone’s there 7 within a mile radius yes it meets intently that’s why I know way too much waffles that’s why it’s yellow and black is cuz the guy who founded it was a Georgia Tech alum I don’t know if this is really his people’s opinion so there might be some Bulldogs out there who are like never going to Waffle House you know there are parts of the country where no one has ever been to or even heard of Waffle House and at that point slightly flat and I have just dislike delete yeah what is the furthest west what is the furthest west that they go I mean it Romo probably yeah that’s right yeah I mean they’re mmm yeah it can’t be further than yesterday yeah that’s fact not much passes yeah we can change that though that’s where a lot of good things stop you know West Texas you like your hash browns oh man scattered and smothered so cheese and not in not in America dope I like the crack the crunch man I’m a simple man I like I’m scattered smothered and what’s onions covered capped not capped you totally made that up how do you eat a cheese mushrooms oh I don’t like it at I do capped smothered covered what do you put when you when you put jalapenos in there spiced I don’t know everything that they offer oh we got it we got a brunch oh yeah whatever I’m a simple man I don’t I try not to I I just don’t wanna ruin it but you had an epiphany there oh yeah right cuz I was gonna be a lawyer and and I walked out of an LSAT prep class on a Saturday morning with my buddy Jack and we just went to waffles cuz we were hungry we decided 3:00 a.m. we were totally drunk no we were that’s the probably recovering okay but it was it was very early on a Saturday and it was in one of these SAT things like Kaplan does where they put you in a room it’s like a mock oh sorry LSAT it’s like a mock LSAT where you’re in there for like however many hours and and I just I don’t know an hour in we looked at each other we’re just like do we really want to be here and and we were both hungry and so we just got waffles instead and soused we left and it was 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 taking 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 gotta 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 gonna cost as much as it’s gonna 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 gonna have to figure out something else to do with my life unfortunately 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 have it covered right from the start it was a general feeling at that point that I I got to do something that I want yes but it wasn’t like oh and hey and here’s the I here’s the plan and it’s on the napkin I did not I did not draw this on a waffle Hopkin but your your first idea was food-related right was yes sheets sheets gas station other institution that a lot of folks depending on where you grow up have no idea it is a big luxurious gas station like a Wawa it’s like when you drive in the sheets it’s like you’re in Vegas yeah like I’m not afraid I’m afraid of sheets really you can’t press the freaking screen while the gas is pumping and get a cheeseburger by the time it’s done yeah yeah but when I’m pumping gas in that those fumes they’re like going up my nose I immediately crave a hotdog mm-hmm and I want to touch a screen and order it yeah because you’re normal right yeah that’s you invented sheets is that what Steve Hoffman and I invented cheese we we were that was the that was the place like you’d look forward to stopping when you were driving and he 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 in 2004 like to know that you could just like walk in touch the screen place your order and then go like mess with Lanham buy some peanut M&Ms or something it’s one of those moments where you you’re like I am in the future yeah I love those moments when you’re at Sheetz and you’re touching the screen you realize you’re in the future and 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 and he’s telling you this and we were having I would probably 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 gotta happen on a flip phone yeah and so this is like how do we so basically using SMS like is there 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 that was like 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 yeah 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 cuz I did you lay the groundwork for this or what was the 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 like you could just you could find a wealth of resources for like how to start a company maybe you guys just trust me like there weren’t there just weren’t nearly as many back then and so we went that like I remember asking my commercial law professor like how do we start a company and he was like well we go down and talk to this lawyer I’m a professor I don’t know but I mean in theory he just go talk to this lawyer so we found a lawyer in town who incorporated us as a LLC and Virginia’s lawyers are really good at introducing you to other lawyers I wonder if he got a kickback profess you know but you know so we got the little certificate of incorporation I went and you know opened a bank account of 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 it was very proud of this let me know what you guys think it’s called my mobile menu or or mmm oh not bad yes good very 2004 no I like it I’m happy I’m happy it eventually got shut down so you we’d worked on this for a year and I talked to everybody there not a lot of restaurants and trial tool but I talked to all of them and I was like how do we get you signed up like let’s the way we were gonna hack it was gonna involve fax machines because at this point faxes we’re the way people were doing online um but read quotes ordering it’s like you’d see your computer and like it was delivery comm campus food you’d go online place the order and then it would spit out of inside of the restaurant right so not the most high-tech solution but we thought all right we can hacky 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 it 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 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 I like that we came all the way up from Virginia and I was like yeah we came 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 mm-hm and about a month later he announced Y Combinator which was this pretty radical idea where they would give a little bit of funding was about $6,000 per founder to like 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 equity and then 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 roomful of rich people and hopefully they raise some checks and you know this announcement comes up and Steve and I look at each other we’re now probably two months away from graduating at UVA and and to be clear we’re not like the cool drop out story like we we did get our degrees 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 this so we get back on the train we go up for interviews because we had to meet the rest of his partners and we pitched and it was the pitch of our lifetime dude we it was amazing everyone’s ass and questions and I’ve just got answers and Steve’s just killing it we’re like flipping open your phone and like type in text and then food without hearing it was everybody’s going mmm yes they loved it loved it and that night we got the guy was like Campbell Soup already has the corner on them mmm that’s Rover we could rebrand it we could have mmm that’s different this is just one oh right right Oh soup I’ve only watched Shark Tank I’ve not been on it but you can imagine this room was electric and everyone was so excited and so that night Steve and I go out we were celebrating and we get the call and they let us know that they had rejected us it was all it was awkward yeah so so the good news was we were already drinking so then it went from celebratory drinks to like misery drinks and and it sucked it really sucked indeed he did he give you a reason yeah yeah and it was it was it was the right reason yeah he said it’s just it’s so early right now too soon um you know you’re both the setups are gonna 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 figure but the restaurants back then especially we’re like not at all interested in any kind of technology in their back rooms like they’re still using fax machine 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 he just it was just too early but it led to the net did it lead to reddit was that well step well that night oh yes we were drinking and and it sucked it really did and then the next morning we’re hungover on the train back to Virginia and we got a call from Waffle House get in here you we got we got fax machines at every location you know it’s it may not be too late for this yes but I I pick up and it’s Paul and he says listen we still don’t like your idea yeah but we like to deal you got we 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 then one of the other founders of Y Combinator Jessica Livingston she was the one she was the only advocate of the four who bangs on table and was like their ideas terrible but I really like them we should give him a shot and she was the one who got us in and and 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 worked on everything else start on something in a browser I’m working working on for over he cannot back shoot it in the head Yeah right I get 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 like I don’t Connecticut at the time and they gave parameters they said something browser related 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 add like a brainstorming session and 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 it he’s he’s very good great advisors I think are really good at sort of drawing up this stuff with questions and Steve is like I read slash that 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 alright 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 we’ll do it and and so that’s that’s what we set out to build and that was the 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 do when you you’re given this money you go to San Francisco right or no this is all in boss back then it was in Boston Boston and they put you up someplace and what kind of space do they give you to work like what 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 and if you’re gonna start a company like you should be able to figure out I don’t know how to rent an apartment right right you’re in bunk beds next to other guys like that is how like incubators that is how that would that’s how they were always done like that would be the true way of doing things was well it was exactly that like let’s just we’ll take care of you we’ll give you a space we can come in and you know they’re thinking really was like just 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 you’re doing them 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 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 they’re all sort of all came out a lot happening through Y Combinator exact same way and dude it’s just 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 with I mean they were 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 like that was a struggling startup for year-and-a-half oh yeah fan of air beam look at it now I know that San Francisco is – with all those taxes they just base what how quickly did it take off I mean what was the 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 I need to work on that not drastically but when we we were the actually were the first Y Combinator company to launch we basically showed up in June and about three weeks later four three four weeks later Steve and I launched the first version of Reddit so it’s like every weeks worth of development and it was that moment yeah of launch because it I would imagine it’s gotta be pretty anticlimax extremely anti-climactic because you put this thing online and and also cuz it so v you don’t 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 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 a giver it’s super well but when you when ours didn’t we had like two people actually use the site and tell em I need it go to my website where what the the pitch was and back then there was only one from 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’s a place where you will find what’s new 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 leave 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 we like the ambitions of the site back then were let’s build this place we’re like we have this vast network of thousands and thousands of communities so if you’re into if you’re into the Tar Heel there’s a community for you now we are not oh geez oh wait NC State yes okay no there was one other option and I didn’t want to even say it you didn’t put a third at least we’re really into the Wolfpack because somebody’s got to be right yeah yeah alright somebody if you’re really in the Wolfpack really an NC State there will be a community for you there if you’re really into there’s one called reddit Lac aristos which are people just showing off photos of their fingernail polish or red found grilled cheese so yeah yeah that’s a great there was actually a schism there because people were posting images of what I guess are consumed 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 they the purest just want cheese yeah right yeah I I don’t want to get in the middle of this i I want to believe that these two communities can coexist like the melts and the grilled cheese right like if but that’s the but they can’t they can each have their own subreddit exactly and and that was the 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 rub basically the essence of it that was 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 don’t know he did Steve actually the first ever submission or edit by me was it it was it was a link to the Downing Street memo and and I I submitted it and again there’s only two people on the website and I see it gets down voted I’m looking I’m looking across the table I’m like really really there’s no one else and and and there’s got to be a thought that’s like this website may always just be me and Steve let’s change it to me and Steve dot-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 ax submitted under different usernames of course you did so that like someone showing up for the first time would understand it wasn’t just Stephen alexis submitting links on this weird-looking website it was like anyone can and and the moment we knew it was working was a month there about a month in when we just used the website like anyone else we just went on and just read stuff and vote didn’t submit anything and it just worked like there were enough people there weren’t a lot there were enough though that we’re contributing and it was good content and and that was when all right we knew we weren’t totally wasting our lives and so you you get this initial funding from Y Combinator that’s to develop right Bennett then if they like the idea do they like how do you how are you making money the first year so so we raise twelve so we got twelve thousand dollars from Y Combinator six grand per founder and 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 pho like it is a scene back then it was like Paul’s twelve rich friends in a room in Boston who were just like why are we here and and we Steve and I ended up raising seventy thousand dollars now to us that was a lot of money cuz we were like we’re not paying ourselves anything like we could live off this for a year and a half two years this is amazing today you know a typical company is gonna raise a million million and a half at that same stage but back then we just had different different mentality and and and we thought are 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 once you started using the site with like a number of people yeah did it slow growth or all of a sudden you know Bill Gates has started using our website I well that that was a that was a big moment but it never felt like reddit it’s consistently doubled basically every year since the start but it’s over ten years and you look at stories like I’m a snapchats 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 I guess was four three four years ago like that was amazing and he also did it from Charlottesville coincidentally and so is a room right it was already pretty huge I mean yeah it was there an earlier it was it really just a slow go there was never a whoa we just went up by a thousand decks because know 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 snapchat or Instagram they all blow up everybody jumps on the bandwagon of then of the quote will it be the next thing right because of Reddit and the other predecessors that didn’t have that mm so you know well and because of the way social media works now which was not the case when you guys were yeah I mean that’s we do we watched you know 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 it had we’ve had milestones for sure there was a there was a rally to restore sanity and/or fear that’s Stephen Colbert dad that was it wasn’t it it looks like it was started by some random user on reddit who had this idea of doing this rally but it the rally sorry was already in the works beforehand but what happened over the span of a couple months was I know Stevens the son of north 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 donors shoes I think they raised eight hundred thousand dollars for basically the explicit purpose of getting Stevens 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 and I I don’t think it 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 whether you’re a brand like Lady gaga I can tell you or your people like here is how you play on facebook Instagram snap chats a little trickier but like there are rules of the road for how to do that and it benefits you as a celebrity mm-hmm because reddit is just a username and because like 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 gonna see it it doesn’t it is it is more democratic in the sense that it is less about who you are and more about what you have to say is that right but is that why it’s all about text I think the first time you go to read is that what’s will all the text yeah I mean I have to read yeah is that reddit is the YouTube for text I it’s yeah that’s mostly a hangover frankly it’s mostly designed hangover from 2005 just because like image hosting back then sucked like the reason imager exists which was born out of Reddit 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 all off and so like a lot of this stuff evolved and I mean a lot of reddit has stayed constant when it comes to the like I said the aesthetics of it and the text heaviness of it is that not a strength of of the site oh it is it is it really democratizes all of the content it really it it’s a level playing field if you’re Lady Gaga or if you’re if you’re Pamela the Armenian woman yes what have you a much worse than the Army was made of 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 their their communities on reddit like are 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 read it just because of the the platform works so well for text there are parts there’s a whole like what’s a good example like food porn earth porn there are all these safe for work porn communities that are just it’s like beautiful high-res photography of like Earth or you know space or food and and it’s funny how reddit works for that um even though the photos are still not the like primary focus in part because the discussions around them all the text is really really interesting and and I like I said I don’t that was not something we thought about and we’re like yes this is what read it will be it 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 you 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 everything I 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 my mascot designing skills but I mean I take responsibility for choosing Verdana as the font I’ve read it like I there’s a lot of like design Baggett’s just because I’m not but the red-eyes reddit thing you design that yeah I was I was bored in and you’re out I drew very well very that one I will totally take credit let’s take a little tangent give us give us just give us the rationale behind that oh dude 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 gonna do all I knew is at this point we’ve been accepted into Y Combinator and I had a couple months left in school and we knew we were gonna build the front page of the internet but we had no idea what the anything was gonna I was gonna work or what I was gonna 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 it I like I maybe it’s a little bit nibbler subconsciously from Futurama maybe it’s a little bit snork I’ve heard that from folks that short-lived kids show like it really was a bored doodle but then I went home through it into photo no paint shop pro oh yeah yeah and it was a cracked copy but I threw it in there and and tidied it up a little bit it was like this is gonna be our icon this chimera 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 company your doodle came from the future yes that’s a great job I mean not really but the the story of it what’s crazy you can bet Steve that that’s all that mattered yeah man dude it’s from the future yeah and then read it the name that’s just a play on words yeah we were trying to get snoo Snew like still people would ask what’s new 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 Ari I’m I bought it re di TT as well as re d di t and for like a day I was calling it the the former but then one of my friends talked me out of it and so we don’t read did it yeah I know is yeah what was I thinking but how did AMA start randomly some user so the the ask reddit community which has always been a pretty popular once you go on the ask a question you know people answer had someone who came on there and instead of asking 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 hi Emma and the I am a community is you know that’s the home to just I mean daily multiple just amazing real-time crowd-sourced interviews and now other communities on reddit have sort of picked up the AMA thing meme just like app replies on Twitter this is all very organic stuff great and and it’s great if you go on our science the science community on 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 AMA s those science animes are one of the best ways to bring science to the public and you’ll know they are posers by their lies well here’s what’s here’s what’s cool so they do a certain amount of vetting where you have to like you know you can 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 yeah who we’re gonna 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 there’s probably one or two some of them are pretty rare slip-ups but like you know when I first heard about AMAs oh people are gonna answer anything but like the president is not gonna answer anything you can add anything but he ain’t gonna answer it but there are people who some well you might get some like whoa answers you have you have any examples of that yeah this one so Anna this is also a slight shameless plug for the reddit podcast so I interviewed him and hasn’t dropped yet but we had a amazing interview we mmm the guy goes by double 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 and this is a horizontal or vertical orientation uh wait wait that’s the only question oh wow I mean so you’ll have to read the AMA he did an AMA that spanned I think 36 hours like he just answered he’s got double the stamina he mean you got him Yeah right you should you should read the it’s fascinating because it really it has because it’s a real-time kind of crowdsource to 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 because it just feels like a double penal yes drop did he drop like a bombshell he he talked 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 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 alright 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 ya you were in the room with him no I was very very secretive yeah he did we did this over Skype I don’t even know his name I need so you didn’t see him no you didn’t see that I did not I I mean it has been verified let’s just say not personally he is who he says he is so you sold mmm reddit yes when did that happen and why 2006 for a variety of reasons really really it was yeah it was insane I mean that was that was part of it right it was 18 months 16 octoroon anyway 16 18 months into it and to be 22 23 and have the opportunity for like 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 working on this thing for 60 once 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 gonna happen I did not want 10 years from now to be looking back on that moment being like you idiot you greedy idiot and and so it was it was pretty much a no-brainer for me well the best seriously the best phone call I’ve ever made in my life well two phone calls where the first phone call it made to my mom when the you know 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 the Washington Redskins ticket office upgrading his season tickets from the nosebleeds front row and then I called him those were the best like those were the best two phone calls my life and I’ll 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 this company is is so much bigger and and I just I’m thrilled I’m thrilled to be back him so so being back you know ten years later is there a sense of you know is there ever since of regret or is it like no I’m glad everything worked out this way and I’m back and it didn’t happen the way it did I I would be such an if I regretted anything that has happened to me in the last like seven or eight night 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 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 job as my parents did like I worked enough jobs at like Pizza Hut to know the difference and I so appreciate being able to look forward 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 continue to work together how what does that relationship been like so we so we both left right at about the same time he went got married and then he started enough said I know what happens at marry well he started he had another company in him and his travel search site called Hipmunk like chipmunk about the sea and and I rejoined up with him about a week or two before they launched to sort of run I created their mascot as well it sort of run all the public facing sort of marketing PR whatever social media stuff and yeah it’s been that’s that’s a whole nother amongst as big as read it is now and 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 um a little bit of personal yeah 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 some night 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 I was doing I was ok 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 gonna have a land party and that’s all we knew I literally never went to a party that wasn’t a land party at college I would be the one sort of like organizing getting done and I never ran the lemonade stand but I was but the land party was your idea – yes yeah and like and like let’s do this and I’m gonna make it happen yes that’s the personality from a lot yes and and I was you know and I’d be the one who’d manage our quake 2 clan for competitive gaming although it’s so much mad competitive gaming so much better now that always make them are they but you’ve always been crazy enough to believe yes you should actually do the ideas you have yeah and and I’m and I had a dad who so this was awkward when we launched Hipmunk 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 sorry dead 15 years ago it was a minute ago and so I saw that Oh even longer maybe 20 but I saw that he was starting that while was in high school and so I liked it it demystified starting a company it was a very different company right I mean on the phones all day booking flights and stuff but like I could see that model and I could see at work and any managed to survive the dot-com like explosion of online travel which is to his credit like he found a niche the secret is old people that is how you keep a travel agency in business in 2015 people who don’t want to use the internet to book a book a trip but uh so you kind of lay – oh yeah for sure and and I’ll tell you the other thing – so my so my mom immigrated from Germany when she was like 24 20 five 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 you know very much a first world country but it’s a very different culture a very different language and all of her relationships and connections pretty much ended when she left and she basically said it I’m going to New York I want to be with this dude my dad and 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 and and so seeing that – really made me think well like if this is the hardest thing I’m gonna do like this isn’t so bad and and it really I don’t know it helped 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 mm with mm-hmm one day since it’s gonna be a thing since then what hasn’t worked mmm I mean there 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 who we had I launched an app called I read it because I wanted people the hope was that people would say like originally 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 great redemption we can finally do some cool on a smart phone let’s build an app and we ended up this was a good lesson in not outsourcing developer work but we ended up spinning up this I reddit app which I thought was such a clever name it wasn’t and and it was just not it was not a not a good look there are plenty of projects plenty of products like that we had to essentially shutter it I think it’s still on the App Store but like there are so many missteps and the great thing is isn’t 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 then alien blue was doing the same yeah it’s just a much better execution of a way to browse reddit in an app like that was it and something 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 mm-hmm sounds like your experiences both the failures and the success [Music] you rolled those up in into a book and into empowering other people to demystify entrepreneurship for them right yeah no 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 it I I don’t want entrepreneurship just sounds like a fancy special word like III 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 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 read like like who like what what radio station is 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 and hack it right I mean I can certainly relate we talked about gatekeepers a lot within the entertainment industry having done the television show thing a couple of times and then you know finding our voice in our audience directly through YouTube the gatekeeper was removed you know for everyone to create whatever they wanted to create on YouTube when we were grown-up you were either successful as an artist or you were starving artist right it was like binary he was one of the other yeah and now it’s like as better and better platforms come as sort of smarter and smarter ways to monetize those relationships happen in a way that fans love and artists love like they’re gonna 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 that’s such a believer in it India I guess this is one of the reasons you’re a huge advocate of net neutrality mmm 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 FCC like a year ago I was putting up ads in DC bus stops about net neutrality and having and contacting the FCC and I remember the atmosphere back then was forget it Wheeler’s like former lobbyists for the telcos like your host cable companies spend more money than anyone else almost anyone else I think right see the writing on the wall just to bring everyone up to speed was didn’t gonna have yeah Comcast and Verizon are gonna have their way and forget it you’re not just gonna be able to put any you know I can it’s not gonna be a level playing field it’s you anyone wants to put something on the internet it’s going to be it’s gonna be downloaded by people with power and money yeah so to speak yeah and the people who have the power and money will be able to prioritize their stuff which it would feel like television it would feel like the gates here the gates are being did yeah yeah and it and it flows it’s it’s not even it’s it’s not even limited to just content creators because they’re all they would all all be affected but it’s even the next platform so like the the thing that caught a lot of people’s attention was Verizon was a calm guy right it’s either Comcast Verizon basic he 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 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 because the cable companies have that leverage to be able to pull that switch and decide like 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 like the next Netflix like I did a lot of investing these days I want to invest in the next Netflix I’m an mi gotta have a netflix shareholder but I still want to invest in that girl who’s in her dorm room right now and he’s gonna build a 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 we don’t have no neutrality you actually get innovation like the next Netflix that gets killed before we even get 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 yes monitoring the front lines so we’re doing we’re doing very well if you’re the mayor of the internet Forbes that said yeah I we’re we are doing very very well I’m not celebrating right now because we still you know any decision by the FCC still can be meddled with by Congress and fortunately Congress has been I think one of the least productive ever at least I mean that’s not we’re not 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 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 that neutrality was so many websites came together so 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 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 was a record number of petitions fighting for title 2 which is the 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 only it really only takes a minute or two and it actually makes a hell of a difference yeah we we went dark on good mythical morning one day as part of that so we you know that was 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 like and then they have their voice to talk back yes or to become a voice in their own right and every you know so it’s power to the people it is it is certainly a very beautiful thing that again is embodied in Reddit it kind of as I’ve thought about it and right and I have talked about it a question we’ve had is what does your experience with Reddit reveal about humanity um I mean people good or people bad it is I think all of social media at the end of the day is a reflection I mean all 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 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 that you know I don’t know and lay sure 24 write some alias yeah 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 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 re-elected you want to make us fear you want to make us worried that and that dude won’t go on a date we may because I smell bad and so I got to get this deodorant or I’m gonna 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 we’re just disparate people all over the world who don’t actually know each other are coming together just to be decent just to be kind whether it’s you know 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 they’re sending to total strangers oh yeah sometimes it is but I mean but reddit also has to decide okay we’re not gonna allow child porn on our website right so yes I how do you at a certain point but how do you draw that line oh well that one’s that one’s very easy that one’s easy but then like what does it say about humanity as my point is that you had yes that’s an easy line to draw but you had to draw it you know there’s you know you’ve got the best of people and the worst of people coming out whenever you give people free rein should everyone really be given free rein um well I don’t know the alternative right I mean we can the eye 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 there’s been when they do something good like I mean the Boston bombing thing that happened people trying to do the right thing and then it wasn’t you know right so it’s people being bad it’s good people accidentally being bad yeah and that was it that was a difficult situation too because the thread that missed’ Dennis 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 and unfortunately a couple of journalists like tweeted out reddit hat like journalists tweeted like reddit may be on to something I think they discovered who the Boston bomber was and and that’s not to absolve you know that redditor of posting that comment but it’s we’re in this dangerous ecosystem where so much there’s so much pressure now on being fast and because you know the Internet’s producing content 24/7 that it’s gonna be more important than ever that we are right and I don’t know how that looks like the the rate at which we’re gonna have information coming out is only gonna increase everyone with a smartphone is now a reporter they’re not a journalist but they are a reporter and 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 like journalists to do that great job of sifting the signal from the noise yeah and I I think that you know you had you you have to solve these things or at least take a stance and you know with the infrastructure with it or the gentle hand I mean if you think about it with everything 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 there they go unchecked versus having a democratized process of people presenting information that’s self-correcting you know I think that our generation is is definitely more prone to trust the what self-regulated the collective the hive yeah and I and it’s it is this is gonna 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 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 think in the last twenty years you have a generation that’s really looked around skeptically at a lot of the I mean Brian Williams can’t even keep a story straight about right now it’s 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 entities this sort of aggregated wisdom or amount of 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’s being in 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 that the risk is lower when there’s more people involved well and I you know I’m not just interested in the solutions in the future but going back to the whole question about humanity hmm I think that it separate from everything we just said it 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 well you know I think where you were going to a place of it became as read it became a source of hope in humanity for you hmm but I think people who kind of graze reddit yeah oh that’s that’s a scary place you know I don’t know I’m an outsider hmm or there’s some you know the Internet is scary when people just can kind of express themselves so I mean where do you where do you land what’s your what’s your what’s your view of that the consciousness the view of humanity well I mean this is I 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 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 2/3 decides the United States I couldn’t even generalize good like I couldn’t even generalize the state of North Carolina let alone generalizing you know 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 by you know whether it’s because of over-aggressive PR firms whether it’s because if you know people who come off as these infallible tastemakers and deciders we’re telling us what’s right and it’s 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 gonna have that range but I really do see across social media more reasons to be hopeful than not hmm and you know you bring authenticity is the value of whether you’re good or bad the overarching value of of realness of being real is is a valuable commodity if you if if there’s bad in you I think everyone and yeah if there’s if there’s bad and good in everyone then I’d much rather see it for what it is then 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 yeah and back to coverage we’re sensitive we’re so the onus especially when somebody calls something tries to make something bad seem good we’re really sensitive to that you know that’s a we we have a keen this generation has a keen sense of that kind of thing it’s 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 lourd posted a photo of herself with like pimple cream on because I think for one world that’s really wheat like what what’s going why would a famous person be showing something like that but for all of her 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 I have many more reasons to believe in people than I do don’t because of it the 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 that means 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 a hundred percent pure and good and and I think few people would believe that 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 as you’re seeing the polished you’re seeing the Brian Williams version on the night being that person telling you here’s what’s 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 let’s really have that breakdown this is so it’s it’s hard because it’s not as obvious as like just it’s not as obvious as I 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 think don’t come up with a username that’s not you and post your own work astroturf yes exactly oh okay well yeah and and it is here’s the thing right so your video could be submitted to any number 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 gonna 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 what I like it is in that way it is actually a much 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 just shouting and and hopefully there’s some followers who might catch what we’re saying 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 and it is come out and like and like the the message board mom 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 no I’ll let you sign the table anyway yay yeah this has been really cool thanks for hanging out with us well there it was a near biscuit with Alexis Ohanian tweet at him and let him know what you thought of our conversation Alexis Ohanian is his Twitter handle use hash tag ear biscuits 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 no I mean any review is helpful to you say what say what you feel guys on iTunes or comment on soundcloud now he introduced me not 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 which because it’s it’s planning something fake yes yes thanks for explaining that I’m not I’m not kidding oh you didn’t know I didn’t realize it until you just said that oh [Music] why I never heard the term either but i but i but i got there and thought about it for a second but I’ve asked her turfed quite a lot I mean we don’t know now anytime recently but okay so we’ve been doing this internet thing for a long time we got started in oh six so in Oh sick I would say in oh six and oh seven maybe a little bit in oh eight but really strong in oh seven probably peaked in oh seven I did whatever astroturfing is on YouTube I created a number fake names fake profiles to come in and thumbs up and that thumbs up what did you even do back then to comment I guess you coming oh oh no I because it was back in the day where there was so few comments that one comment could really make a difference you know could really sway the conversation in like if people were reacting badly to something right it’s kind of like what could top comments do today but you’re saying you also did that on reddit more recently yeah no not more recently I would say oh eight would be the most recent that I would have done that back out this video that I didn’t make cough and I and I would never say that I didn’t make it I would just say you know it would be our video and I mean 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 but about a desperate man to tell us what the no IDs were no I can’t I couldn’t I could 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 alias as I’ll put a mick in the front of the last name I don’t know why we couldn’t do that it’s you you remember that it was you yes you don’t want to fall for it yourself well you know wow that guy is really nice he’s really he’s a super but have you ever noticed that that’s what that’s what criminals do with her aliases so my name is Rhett mcLaughlin then like my criminal name is like Reggie make you know McClane you know it’s like in ml 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 alias has 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 initial rim oh yeah that’s me Reggie McLean 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 if I had not cheated a little bit I’m just kidding it what probably wasn’t effective and I’m a little ashamed of it I apologize for astroturf ring 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 astroturf talk at you next week okay [Music] [Music]