“When his celebrity was at its height and he couldn’t walk a street on this planet without getting recognized, jiujitsu gave Bourdain a new, anonymous world to traverse, one where he was just one of us.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How “Am I the Asshole?” Created a Medium Place on the Internet
“The famous subreddit started as a forum for one man to ask about his workplace behavior. Seven years later, it’s become a platform where millions of people discuss good, bad, and everything in between. How did it get here? And can it actually help make people better?”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Millionaire Makers: What Happens When 100,000 People Create Their Own Lottery?
A Reddit money pool — where anyone can sign up for a chance to win a few thousand dollars (and maybe even some bitcoin) — is testing the limits of online honor codes.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Power of Reddit as a Public Health Advocacy Tool
Writing for Backchannel, Andrew McMillen recently profiled a woman named Tracey Helton. Helton—a former heroin addict who now works as a public health advocate—has taken to Reddit to advocate harm reduction strategies among addicts and to distribute the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. Dubbed the “mother of r/opiates,” Helton’s program “illustrates the unexpected good that can emerge from darker corners of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How You (and Your Spouse, Your Children and Your Therapist) Get Targeted When You Become a Whistleblower
“That’s what I’ve been talking about in earlier answers: the ability of the government to go back to taps collected years earlier to look for material with which to influence potential witnesses in the present. (See their interest in the allegation that the wife of one journalist may have been accused of shoplifting in her […]
Posted inUncategorized
Meeting the man behind Violentacrez, the Reddit persona responsible for forums filled with racist and pornographic content like “Creepshots” and “Jailbait”: When I called Brutsch that Wednesday afternoon and told him I knew who he was, I was a little taken aback by how calm he remained during our intense but civil hour-long conversation. I […]
Posted inUncategorized
James Erwin, a writer for software manuals in Des Moines, Iowa, responded to a Reddit thread wondering what would happen if the U.S. Marines battled the Roman Empire. His comments lit up the Internet: The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes. The section of […]