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The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com | Thursday, January 31, 2013
INTO REDDIT
BYJUIN IDN DIY4RT RIE
J its 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, to allow less tech-savvy individuals
five weeks into your the same kind of social bookmarking
first semester in college. experience as del.icio.us and Digg offer,
Your paper is due for Reddit puts any given submitted link's
that Academic Writing fate in the userbase's hands.
and Literature class on some poet no Users submit all of the content
one dead or alive ever cared about in posted to Reddit, with the exception
six-and-a-half hours. You're on your of blog posts and announcements
computer, but it's late enough that your provided by Reddit's staff. The
Twitter feed is updating at a snail's pace community, consisting of Redditors,
and your Facebook chat bar is void of can then promote ("upvote") or demote
little green dots. Are you going to peel ("downvote") user-submitted content
your eyes away from your browser based on individual preferences,
and start filling that blindingly white, determining what gets the highest
painfully empty digital page in Word? No. visibility.
You're going on Reddit because Emily It's one of the only places on the
Dickinson can shove it. Internet where you can find professional
You're bombarded by new gaming coverage, metaphysical
information. Pages on pages of blue discussion, intelligent (and not-so-
links and illegible thumbnails tempt intelligent) discourse on world politics
your cursor. You're finding out what and business and, of course, hundreds of
others have just recently discovered, and thousands of pictures of cats. One of the
smile smugly when someone's "Today I Internet's most infamous time-wasters
Learned" has been in your repertoire for and a beaming monument to what
years. You browse through thousands of Internet communities can accomplish,
replies to a thread asking for fan theories. Reddit is (under the mountains of
Your tired lips hint at a smile when you memes) an awesome example of what
find out about the new Daft Punk album, can happen when millions of like-
and you laugh - but not loud enough minded people come together.
to wake up your sleeping, responsible With 30-million submitted links and
roommate - at a pun-prone raccoon. posts in 2012 alone, Reddit owes part
of its success to a network of separate
A community built on versatility boards - subreddits - dedicated to
specific topics. This system allows users
Founded in June 2005 by University to pick and choose what they want to
of Virginia graduates Steve Huffman and see and when. Individuals can view their
Alexis Ohanian, Reddit has exploded own "front page," an amalgamation of
in recentyears in terms of popularity subreddits they are subscribed to, or see
and content diversity. Initially dubbed individual subreddits individually.
a "news aggregator," whose intent was See REDDIT, Page 3B
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