Blown Ramparts

The Madness of Crowds

Apr 22, 2024

The classic talk show format was pioneered in 1954 by Steve Allen, in the precursor to the Tonight Show. It’s more or less the same today: an opening monologue, maybe a comedy sketch, 1 or 2 celebrity interviews and a musical act. This is performed in front of a live audience.

Right from the start, the celebrity interviews were a means to promote something: an upcoming movie, tv series, album or book. You had a captive audience in a nice mood, softball questions and banter from the host, and a readymade national platform to plug your stuff. The PR angle was a no-brainer for celebs, trading their presence for free eyeballs.

Reddit, which recently went public, was launched in 2005. We’ve talked about one of the most popular subreddits- r/askreddit. Here, users can ask mundane or profound questions and crowdsource answers from domain experts, smart alecs and the general public.

There is also an inversion of this – r/IAmA, where one person takes center stage and fields questions from commenters. (The name comes from I Am A…, ask me anything”.) The most popular comments/questions get upvoted and float to the top.

Commenters can ask any questions they like to tradespeople, ordinary folks, people in unique situations or with unique life experiences. Basically anyone who volunteers to host an AMA. But the most commented, upvoted and viewed AMA’s are usually from celebrities – Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the like.

The key distinction from a talk show is that these are not sanitized, pre-approved and carefully filtered questions. AMA’s are a contact sport. And not only will users smell bullshit, they will call it out in the most caustic, witty and bare-knuckle way.

The correct way to do an AMA, then, is to present your most authentic self for a candid conversation. Like you would with a group of people you met over coffee. And if your personality or history prevent you from being warm, personable and open to being asked anything, just stay the fuck away. An AMA is just not for you.

In this unfamiliar territory, actor Woody Harrelson (and his PR person) set foot on February 3^rd, 2012. He was there to promote his upcoming movie, Rampart. And neither he, nor his PR person realized that they had stepped on a landmine.

One of the most upvoted questions insinuated that Harrelson, a grown man, crashed a high school prom party and allegedly went on to deflower and then ghost a girl named Roseanne. The PR person (or Woody, we’ll never know) should’ve just ignored the comment, and answered others. Or, if they saw a clear approach, to engage with it meaningfully. Instead, they replied:

Big mistake. This was not a talk show, or a fluff interview to a film magazine. This was an anonymous online messaging board.

And this was just Woody’s first reply.

Now, it is common (and easy) for questions to be planted. You just ask the question you want from another anonymous account and answer it from your main account. Maybe pay a bot farm to upvote your planted questions for highest visibility. Do too much of this though, and the pattern becomes obvious.

Said nobody about any Woody Harrelson role, ever.

You’ll sprain yourself from patting your own back so hard, buddy.

There were some benign, thoughtful questions too:

Woody’s answers though, were quite wooden:

By now, the AMA was a train wreck. No matter what the question was, Woody’s account always spun the answer around to Rampart.

They weren’t asking about Rampart specifically, you know.

The wisecracks were flowing in full force now. Never a good sign:

Never piss off anonymous internet folks.

Some comments tried (quite kindly) to educate Woody about Reddit etiquette:

That’s white people speak for: “Educate yourself, fool!”

But when you smite Reddit, they hit back hard, dredging up shady things from your past.

The end result was quite predictable:

The movie bombed.

I don’t believe it was just reddit that did it, but the AMA sure didn’t help. Except to serve as a cautionary tale for future AMA’s, and good advice for internet users in general: Don’t be disrespectful and condescending to people who have anonymity and nothing to lose.

Oh and don’t feel too bad for Harrelson. His career’s doing fine: