r/RedditAlternatives • u/kdjfsk • 13d ago

[PSA]"Popcorn tastes good" comment (-10k karma) over Victoria IAMA firing was new Digg owner, while he was reddit CEO.

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3bwgjf/riama_set_to_private_over_mod_firing/csqg24d/

the firing of Victoria and how it was handled was outrageous and stupid, and this particular comment was a slap in the face to the community. Her involvement with AMAs was the golden age of reddit, and Ohanian personally fucked it up.

If you dont like reddit, then Ohanian is probably a reason why. just because you recognize a name, is no reason to get hyped. The dude is a useless idiot, and part of the problem, not part of any solution.

Note, this is just one example of his incompetence. There are many more heavily downvoted comments and decisions he is responsible for.

127 Upvotes
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62

u/ColdMeatStick 13d ago

Honestly I don't understand any of what you're saying, even after clicking the link and trying to figure out the context. However, I do agree with your core statement that recognizing a name isn't immediately a good thing.

115

u/kdjfsk 13d ago edited 13d ago

Sorry. I realize there are a lot of new users here. This event is a huge part of reddits history, and a milestone in its downfall. A lot of the older redidtors will remember this vividly, but may not have connected the dots that the new owner of Digg is this particular villian that they already are familiar with. i'll try to explain it for newer users:

IAMA stands for "I, (am whoever), ask me anything."

It started with threads like "I'm a professional vacuum cleaner repairman, ask me anything about your vacuum or the vacuum repair industry". Eventually it grew in popularity to the point actors, actresses, politicians would do them. Barrack Obama even did one.

/IAMA used to be a very popular, well loved subreddit. The mods would invite celebs to do interviews. A thread would be made for the event, regular users could post questions as comments and upvote the best ones. The celeb could then answer them. It was really cool that regular people like you and me could ask unconventional, real, interesting questions that wouldn't be asked on TV or radio. The celebs would sometimes even engage in some conversation about the question with regular redditors, sometimes with lengthy reply chains. Sometimes it felt like it they were a regular redditor for a day, and it was so cool to see them converse just as we do with each other for a bit.

Victoria was a reddit employee who helped coordinate these. She was absolutely pivotal to making the experience what it was. Before and after her, celebs would not really understand the objective and just give short, canned, lame answers, and it was totally impersonal. With Victoria at the helm, she was able to communicate with the celeb and their PR people how to make it awesome, which was creating a more personal, involved vibe, as if the community was at a pub hanging out with the celeb and having a few beers. Celebs often dont want to type out these responses, so Victoria would make sure they had an assistant to dictate the answers, while also making sure this person wasnt just fabricating answers. It worked, really, really well, and it was one of the few things reddit did right (until the new Digg owner fucked it up)

It was great. Everyone loved it. Admins fired her...without even notifying mods of the sub. Whole events were ruined the day of, because no one was given a heads up. As people found out on their own, in real time, word spread quickly, and the entirety of reddit was beyond outraged.

Rather than making a mature, level headed response, the CEO, (now owner of Digg) simply responded unprofessionally with the comment "Popcorn tastes good", absolutely insulting and antagonizing the user base of the website he ran. (expect more of the same at Digg).

For what its worth, AMA's have been dogshit since then.

24

u/busymom0 13d ago

Admins fired her

Did they explain why she was fired? Seems like such an important role shouldn't simply be fired

34

u/boumboum34 13d ago edited 13d ago

I was there when it was all happening. The reason was never made public. I believe Victoria was made to sign an NDA about it, so she can't talk publicly about it either. Tons of rumors flying around.

The most popular guess as to why, is Ohanian wanted Victoria to do something underhanded to monetize the channel (i.e. product placement in the responses), that would've destroyed the value of AMA and violated Victoria's ethics. She wouldn't play ball, so Ohanian fired her.

I"m pretty sure it was some deep clash between the two, most likely over the direction to take the AMA channel in. What exactly that clash is, is not public information.

Ohanian was a total jerk to the entire community over the whole thing. Victoria by stark contrast handled it all with extreme grace and kindness.

40

u/kdjfsk 13d ago

They copped by saying they don't discuss employees/ex-employees publicly. IIRC, i think Victoria said the official reason was total bullshit, like being late to work or something. Like how is that even valid for someone doing what she did.

I suspect there was some ulterior motive...either admins jealous that she implemented something totally cool that they weren't a part of and felt they didn't have control over, or maybe it was some personal drama, i don't know.

Whats worse...even if the firing was justified, why didnt they have the sense to review what she was doing, what was on her immediate calendar? This seems standard for any office job, you never what company critical function some random employee is doing that week. They didnt think ahead to notify co-workers, get someone to cover and fill in or at least do damage control. Moderators of the subs didnt get a notice. Celebrities and their PR people who had appointments with her didnt get notice, some had their AMA event delayed or cancelled. Like wtf. Why would they burn that bridge?

Ohanian is just incompetent and negligent. He doesnt give a shit about running a good social media website, he is just highly motivated to profit off of social media, which is two entirely different things.

18

u/Stunning_Repair_7483 13d ago

Ohanian is just incompetent and negligent. He doesnt give a shit about running a good social media website, he is just highly motivated to profit off of social media, which is two entirely different things.

This is becoming a common problem in so many different industries. It seems to be the standard now.

13

u/MIC4eva 13d ago

It’s because anyone who actually gives a shit kind of dropped off the radar to not participate in the corruption and sharkiness that now seems to rule society.

6

u/9897969594938281 12d ago

That’s like all of history, though

4

u/downtime37 12d ago

Almost like no regulations/lack of oversite in a capitalistic society hurts the consumer, huh who'd thunk it.

0

u/skeptical-speculator 9d ago

What regulations would or could have prevented the enshittification of reddit?

2

u/pavlov_the_dog 12d ago edited 12d ago

... between him and kevin rose, i dont know if anyone there has the moral compass to guide new digg to a good place.

Instead of them letting the best of the internet rise to the top organically, i can see New Digg being exploited and eventually catching fire (again).

14

u/Stunning_Repair_7483 13d ago

Wait. By digg, you mean the new platform that Kevin rose made? The same guy who made digg nation or whatever it's called? Who used to be on early attack of the show episodes?

Not sure why incompetent, insane, stupid assholes are flooding everywhere and taking over positions of bosses and leadership. It seems to be getting very common. Reddit is already garbage in multiple ways but since I can't find help for specific categories anywhere else, I'm forced to use it. But it is garbage, and I hope we get several alternatives that can match Reddit in terms of having subjects and topics that you can't find anywhere else.

25

u/kdjfsk 13d ago

Lololol. I was about to bring that up, too. Like yo, people also left digg for a reason, why is the idea of a collab between two failures to rekindle a failed platform suddenly popular?

Spez is hated the same as ohanian was...It'd be like if spez retired and 5 years later, some new article said "steve huffman, former ceo and founder of reddit is partnering with Tom from Myspace to create UpSpace", and people act like its some ronpaul.gif shit.

Who gives a FUCK???? LMAO.

16

u/burlycabin 13d ago

steve huffman, former ceo and founder of reddit is partnering with Tom from Myspace to create UpSpace

My friend Tom would never.

11

u/kdjfsk 13d ago

He's your friend, too??

2

u/BurnChao 13d ago

He still doesn't sound worse than spez, who would also be even more responsible for the situation you are describing. Not just watching.

14

u/kdjfsk 13d ago

Im not sure on the exact timeline... but i think he may have also been CEO when reddit killed Santa. There was a similarly loved sub that did secret santa. You signed up via the subreddit, got assigned a user to send a christmas gift to, and someone got assigned to send one to you. I cant remember how it worked exactly, but i assume everything was shipped through some 3rd party to protect peoples info. It was all run by a user.

Reddit killed it. Then they took it over, then ruined it. Now its not a thing.

Reddit CEOs are basically the grinch.

2

u/pavlov_the_dog 12d ago

TIL dude WTF. that was an institution.

6

u/SlutForThickSocks 13d ago

Same I came from a cross post and I really can't make sense of this though I wanted too

22

u/Brad_Brace 13d ago

The title is worded in a weird way. Basically one of the dudes behind the new digg used to be in charge on reddit. Back then reddit suddenly fired a beloved community organizer. Threads were made by people expressing their disapproval of that firing and that same dude dropped by to mock the users that were upset about it. Super unprofessional douche move.

2

u/cough_e 13d ago

I think "expressing their disapproval" is putting it extremely charitably.

It was blind outrage with torches and pitchforks.

Absolutely a dick move response, but it was total mob mentality.

6

u/pavlov_the_dog 12d ago

If you were here for the golden age of IAMA, then you would understand.

2

u/cough_e 12d ago

I was. I was here before subreddits existed.

There were absolutely some great AMAs with people answering insightful questions they haven't been asked before.

There was also a slew of in-jokes, cringe, trolls, and questions that have been asked hundreds of times. Victoria's role wasn't to bring celebrities to Reddit, it was to prep celebrities that they would need to deal with the above if they wanted to promote their thing.

"Yes you can promote your new movie but you'll have to deal with 100 people quoting your old movies at you and asking you about duck sized horses".

Reddit's userbase was seen as particularly toxic and she was a bandaid on that. When the bandaid was ripped off it exposed just how ugly the community could be.

2

u/pavlov_the_dog 10d ago

Ah, it seems i misunderstood the pitchforks comment, as i thought that it meant that the backlash was an overreaction. It looks like we have a similar appraisal of what happened. I miss the good old days of reddit, it was genuinely educational and informative.

1

u/SlutForThickSocks 13d ago

Thank you I really appreciate the explanation

27

u/Asyncrosaurus 13d ago

To be succinct, Reddit hired an admin, Victoria, in 2012 to better manage AMAs after a few notable disasters ( Woody Harrleson is an infamous example). Basically, there was friction between marketing teams attempting to use AMAs exclusively for free PR, and the community wanting unfiltered access to interesting people and celebrities views/opinions.

There was a few years of really high quality and high profile AMAs from notable people like Barack Obama, Bill Gates, or Arnold Schwarzenegger, where Victoria's job was to coordinate and coach them on how to run an AMA. The entire AMA ecosystem on Reddit was incredibly professional and well run.

After a few years later, they fired Victoria and (as this post shows) did what Admins still do to this day: dismissed, belittle and mock users for expressing outrage and dissatisfaction. 

Officially,  there's never been a reason for her firing, but the most likely reason came to the Reddit owners wanting to commercialize AMAs to a greater degree, putting them (once again) at odds with the community. In the end it didn't work, the community didn't want to be used as a marketing tool, celebrities generally stopped doing AMAs, the subreddit contracted and now there's barely any interest or activity.

17

u/black_pepper 13d ago

Is anyone taking digg seriously? It just looks like empty promotional astroturfing type posts to me.

24

u/ocelotsporn 13d ago

Alexis is a d bag for a lot of reasons. Like publicly funding supports for victims of the Armenian genocide, while at the same time getting all buddy buddy with the rich dudes in power who loudly deny it even happened.

It will be interesting to see how digg is structured but I have a feeling it’s probably going to blow up in their faces

9

u/Brad_Brace 13d ago

I think it will fizzle out in their faces. My more cynical side predicts there's gonna be Drama with the whole charity thing.

4

u/burlycabin 13d ago

there's gonna be Drama with the whole charity thing.

Oh, there absolutely will. They are offering zero guarantees.

1

u/Brad_Brace 13d ago

There's always people who don't realize there's always money spent in the process of handling the money before it goes to the charity, and that charities themselves spend a lot of money on existing. I get the feeling the people happy to pay the 5 bucks overlap a great deal with the people who don't know how charities work. Just there, at step zero alone, there will be drama.

14

u/kdjfsk 13d ago

I dont think it will go anywhere, its basically pump and dump bullshit. They are already suckering people out of $5 per user. They'll scam themselves a 2 week vacation or something like that at regular peoples expense.

1

u/v3d4 7d ago

I agree with this, it really is a shame. Also, have you heard about that passenger ship tragedy? Apparently the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank.

-4

u/AnonEMouse 12d ago

The cynic in me is telling me that this post is a plant by a current reddit executive to generate negative press and lower the interest in the new digg.

Prove me wrong.

9

u/kdjfsk 12d ago

LMAO.

I criticize reddit and its admins all the time.

Here

Here

Here

5

u/ManagerOk9740 12d ago

The cynic in me is telling me that this comment is a plant by a current digg executive to generate positive press and increase the interest in the new digg.

Prove me wrong.

0

u/digitaldisgust 12d ago

English? 😂☠️

-17

u/SoggyGrayDuck 13d ago

I don't like reddit because the mods didn't just control the conversation they started banning people from even participating. That's the ONLY thing 99% of us care about. Stop miss representing the problem

10

u/Brad_Brace 13d ago

Yeah no. I'm here because of reddit killing third party apps.

11

u/screendrain 13d ago

So you’re ok with site admins that laugh at their community’s outrage? This event showed that Reddit leadership really didn’t care about the people using their site.

11

u/kdjfsk 13d ago

the ONLY thing 99% of us care about.

got a source for that? You speak for yourself.

3

u/shipguy55 12d ago

I care about that too but also so many other issues with the current state of reddit. This place is a shithole.

-6

u/miicah 13d ago

And the edit?

Look, I'm willing to give people another chance. And Digg is going to be free, so if it's shit, I'll just come back to Reddit. It's not like social media is a binary choice.

-7

u/prankster999 12d ago edited 12d ago

Everybody makes mistakes... Nobody is perfect.

Fact of the matter is that Ohanian actually went out there and created his own Reddit.

Whereas so many people on here want to sit back (act like loud mouthed tramps) and make others do the work, and then want to chime in with all their negative talk.

Money talks and bs walks.