I am a Gawker Staff Writer. AMA

Adrian802 · 3 months

I honestly use reddit way less than I used to. Back when I was working nights and weekends I would probably get a story a shift from Reddit, since I was expected to cover everything, and Reddit is great for general stuff. But now that I've sort of dug into an Internet/tech beat, I find Twitter is a much better source of stories. Most of the stories I get from Reddit are stories about Reddit.

Adrian802 · 3 months

right now I think it's LCD Soundsystem on the office speakers

Adrian802 · 3 months

yeah, we have 401k, health insurance, gym discount.

Adrian802 · 3 months

credit for what? If I find something on Reddit I always try to do a [via Reddit] in there.

The whole obsession on Reddit with Gawker and other media outlets "stealing" from Reddit is ridiculous, considering how much content on Reddit is blatantly ripped off from other sources and slapped up on Imgur, or is just a link to someone else's news story

Adrian802 · 3 months

Maybe there's similarity, but at the end of the day we take responsibility for what we create. When Reddit does something great, everyone rushes to heap praise on the awesome unstoppable community, etc. But when something shitty happens suddenly it's either a) a few bad apples or b) "Reddit is bad because the internet is bad".

Incidentally, I think Gawker and Reddit are going to become even more similar; we're implementing a new commenting system that supposedly draws a lot on Reddit.

Adrian802 · 3 months

I think there's some sort of commenter purge going on right now? I'm not sure. Don't tell the commenters.

Adrian802 · 3 months

Thanks! Glad you liked Craigslisting. I don't think I'll ever go back to just pure comedy-writing--I like talking to real people and writing about them, and at Gawker, at least, I can be funny while doing it.

Adrian802 · 3 months

No. We have to hit a certain visitors target every month to activate a bonus pool. Then the site editors divide up the bonuses how they see fit. I wish we did, though, because I could probably have retired from this dumb japanese sign http://gawker.com/5874304/japanese-department-store-may-want-to-look-up-the-word-fucking

Adrian802 · 3 months

I'm having a good time; things have really opened up as far as our ability to do longer, reported things. I probably wouldn't have been able to do this long piece about a mercenary IT guy before: http://gawker.com/5878862

Adrian802 · 3 months

I think the main reason for Reddit's unique brand of terrible is the crazy lack of diversity among the hardcore users. They're mostly white, mostly young, mostly male. I'm sure a lot of the sexism, racism, etc. would just go away if Reddit was able to attract more people from different backgrounds. Not sure how that's going to happen, though, given that "white" "geek" and "male" seem almost coded into reddit's infrastructure at this point.

Reddit gets its power from being able to use a really simple technology to co-ordinate a lot of similar-thinking people--you could see this with SOPA--but the group-think is its biggest downfall and is something that will have to be overcome if it's going to ever have a big influence outside of geek/tech circles.

Adrian802 · 3 months

Ah come on, "Why do you suck?" is not a serious question. Although, if you insist: It's because of Max Read.

Adrian802 · 3 months

As much as I don't like a lot of shit that goes on on Reddit, it is definitely a must-read for anyone who writes about internet stuff. The "front page of the internet" slogan is pretty accurate, if you're talking about a small section of 4chan/tumblr/reddit culture.

Adrian802 · 3 months

Usually I just post the top three things from the Reddit's front page.

Nah, everyone has their own Twitter and RSS feeds they read for whatever beat they're on, and then they decide what to post themselves. It's pretty self-directed. A lot of stories--and a lot of the best stories, actually--come from tips.

lemmykilmister · 6 months

what exciting news?

siteroaster · 1 year

Adrian from Gawker here.

So, a lot of people are complaining that it didn't make sense for me to call out Reddit for its cult of skepticism while also criticizing it for not being skeptical enough in the the Lucidending case.

Except I wasn't arguing that Reddit was too skeptical. I was arguing that that Reddit's skepticism is often hypocritical and baseless (i.e. "full of shit"). It's not a matter of degree of skepticism, but of consistency: So, users instantly believed and celebrated lucidending's incredible story with zero proof, but instantly attacked and vilified the cancer fundraiser's believable story even after she offered ample proof. It was this double-standard that I was criticizing, not the fact that Reddit is skeptical.

The double-standard in the two cancer cases can't be explained away by real skepticism or rational consideration of the facts since Lucidending = incredible and zero proof while cancer fundraiser = believable and some proof. It was largely based on gender. And that's bullshit.

(People will rationalize this double-standard by saying: "well, she was asking for money; he wasn't asking for anything." Sure, she was asking for money. But if you don't believe her why not just not donate, instead of waging a massive witch hunt and voting it all the way to the front page? She was reported to the FBI, her website was shut down. The witch hunt was justified by a fanatical skepticism that the facts didn't back up, and which wasn't applied in lucidending's case. Her gender had a big role in why she was subjected to such intense scrutiny.)

hueypriest · 1 year

Adrian Chen from Gawker here. A redditor asked me about how I checked out this story. Here's what I told them in an email:

I didn't include all the evidence in my article, mainly I am 100% convinced she's legit, and giving a long, drawn-out explanation would just raise unnecessary doubt.

1) Read the local newspaper article about her fundraising. Absolutely nothing suspicious about it. http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x982168205/Rockport-student-reaches-out-for-shaving-cancer-benefit

2) Found her Facebook profile. Details matched what she said in the article and on Reddit.

3) Got in contact with her via Facebook. She emailed me and had a St. Lawerence U. .edu email address. Confirmed she's a student.

4) Googled and found other charitable events she'd organized at her college.

5) Spoke with her on the phone for 30 min. Everything she said fit with other details.

6) Compared her fundraising page with other fundraising pages set up to raise money for the exact same university where the children's hospital is located:

Page for a 2010 charity walk: http://support.kintera.org/faf/error/errorEvent.asp?err=c&ievent=438596&lis=1&kntae438596=7739C1B017A14FFAAA8684E3D2E95320

Page for Maya's charity: http://support.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=463517 Same system, same layout.

That's my evidence. The evidence presented by the OP was basically: She spammed reddit annoyingly and also she solicited donations to her personal account, therefore she must be a scammer. I guess it's possible she is a lying sociopath and a mastermind criminal who spent huge amounts of effort to fool me and scam Redditors out of a few hundred dollars while living a double life at her Liberal Arts college. But all the evidence says she's just a college student who doesn't really know how to fundraise on the Internet.

97867564534231 · 1 year

Adrian Chen from Gawker here. A redditor asked me about how I checked out this story. Here's what I told them in an email:

I didn't include all the evidence in my article, mainly I am 100% convinced she's legit, and giving a long, drawn-out explanation would just raise unnecessary doubt.

1) Read the local newspaper article about her fundraising. Absolutely nothing suspicious about it. http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x982168205/Rockport-student-reaches-out-for-shaving-cancer-benefit

2) Found her Facebook profile. Details matched what she said in the article and on Reddit.

3) Got in contact with her via Facebook. She emailed me and had a St. Lawerence U. .edu email address. Confirmed she's a student.

4) Googled and found other charitable events she'd organized at her college.

5) Spoke with her on the phone for 30 min. Everything she said fit with other details.

6) Compared her fundraising page with other fundraising pages set up to raise money for the exact same university where the children's hospital is located:

Page for a 2010 charity walk: http://support.kintera.org/faf/error/errorEvent.asp?err=c&ievent=438596&lis=1&kntae438596=7739C1B017A14FFAAA8684E3D2E95320

Page for Maya's charity: http://support.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=463517

Same system, same layout.

That's my evidence. The evidence presented by the OP was basically: She spammed reddit and also she is soliciting donations to her personal account, therefore she must be a scammer. I guess it's possible she is a lying sociopath and a mastermind criminal who spent huge amounts of effort to fool me and scam Redditors out of a few hundred dollars while living a double life at her Liberal Arts college. But all the evidence says she's just a college student who doesn't really know how to fundraise on the Internet.

Adrian802

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login