They didn't "get" Obama at all. He has so far answered a total of 10 questions, all of them canned, standard set pieces from his campaign that you could have just as easily read off his website. And he wasn't even the one interacting with the community; it's questionable if he was involved with this AMA at all. This was essentially a complete abuse of the AMA system but no one's calling him on it because he's the POTUS.
I'd point out that he did say he only had 30 minutes, and given how poorly reddit handled the traffic, I'm surprised he managed to get 10 answers in, copy/paste jobs or no.
How would you have preferred it to go, anyway? Seems like he's not going to make everyone happy no matter how its sliced, so perhaps he should have just not done one?
That's by far the least of the objections raised. 10 interesting, insightful answers that offered new information would have been fascinating. But we got 10 canned answers that told us nothing we already knew. That was the real problem here, although nobody should have been surprised.
Okay, he answered top voted questions at the time, all of which were generic questions that he's answered time and time again. What exactly would you expect? There weren't any different or insightful questions actually asked [and voted to the top where he'd see them].
I mean, I wonder how many times he's been asked "What was the most difficult decision that you had to make during this term?". Probably quite a lot. Hell, I get asked basically that every time I interview for a job.
>Okay, he answered top voted questions at the time
Well, for example, he was asked if he'd consider raising the budget for NASA, his answer didn't directly respond or answer the question, just re-quote his campaign piece on the issue. He didn't answer if he'd consider raising the budget, he just gave some purposefully vague reply about the notion that "we should stay at the forefront of space exploration."
>There weren't any different or insightful questions actually asked
More commonly AMAs are deemed "good" if the subject doesn't blatantly just answer the easiest questions asked and goes out of their way, even just a bit, to offer some unique or exclusive insight. Which Obama, or whoever it was, did not do.
So your complaint is the POTUS should've come to the AMA with more time to spend, hunted down "better" questions to answer, and then spent more time thoroughly answering the questions.
Someone else's complaint is going to be, why is the POTUS wasting his time and our tax dollars with reddit?
Someone else's complaint is going to be that reddit's lucky POTUS gave them any of his time and that reddit was not appropriately prepared for the server load.
So your complaint is the POTUS should've come to the AMA with more time to spend, hunted down "better" questions to answer, and then spent more time thoroughly answering the questions.
You clearly are not reading the subtext of what (s)he's saying, or you're willfully ignoring it to appear steadfast in your dissent: it has been admitted and acknowledged that the POTUS had a limited amount of time with his interactions on Reddit. The complaint is that the answers given were reiterations of campaign points and political tent-poles.
The President took a unique and unheralded opportunity to interact with the voting population in a highly interactive way, and demonstrated a familiar ability among politicians to respond to a question without actually answering it. As citizens and by proxy a community that represents a base of voters likely to support a president keen on engaging his constituents on topics they're overtly concerned about, and responding to them in a fashion they find most accessible: he failed on both fronts. This is frustrating. This is our problem with Mr. Obama's appearance tonight.
"Time", which you seem so fixated on is not our problem with the President's appearance this evening; his lack of at least initiating a dialog by providing politically safe answers is.
I read the AMA while it was in progress, as I could through the downtime, and I read the summary post in the thread afterwards before all of this discussion on HN.
What exactly do you expect? The POTUS to, simply because he is on reddit, to suddenly say "By the way, I smoked pot, I'm an athiest, I think the RIAA is evil, etc.?"
He is the current President and actively campaigning for re-election, and he stated up front that he had 30 minutes to burn to "personally" answer questions. To expect this AMA to have gone any other way is simply naive. Regardless of what you believe politics are or should be, expecting anything different is neglecting the reality of modern politics.
The assertion that holding my politicians to a higher standard than playing word games is naive? That kind of apathetic thinking is exactly what allows the kind of things that stem from Washington to continue, people think it's naive and fruitless to speak up, so no one ever does.
Why can't we express a desire for something better, while knowing full well that Obama is a politician and, like just about any American politician, got into office by avoiding hard questions and giving the answers the great unwashed masses want to hear?
A lot of busy, high-profile people (Noam Chomsky, for example) have done off-line AMAs. That is, commenters will post questions, and upvotes will determine the best/most popular ones. And then, answers for those will be posted all at once, maybe even as a different thread if enough time has passed since the questions were asked.
That would have been an excellent model to follow here, and probably would have meant more time spent answering each question (for the President) and higher quality questions getting upvoted (since there's plenty of time for the collaborative filtering process to shape the question-space).
I'm going to guess because it's on thing to make a promise/statement in a traditional political campaign, another thing entirely to make a statement on reddit, e.g. people won't just forget in 5 minutes what you said.
I think they wanted to take the safe option. It is a shame though the answers were not less scripted, they missed a big opportunity to engage people.
You realise he's the President and has more important things to do with his time? Taking 30 minutes to answer questions on Reddit is probably an important chunk of his day. Answering 10 questions with mostly paragraph long answers in that time is good.
"it's questionable if he was involved with this AMA at all"
In the opening of the AMA he said it was him and posted a photo as proof (fair enough it could have been a lie but I don't see why they would do that).
"standard set pieces from his campaign that you could have just as easily read off his website"
What else would you expect? He's running for a second term. Just look at how much these people get berated when they make a simple slip of the tongue during a speech or side comment to a camera. Most of what he says has to be run through speech writers and staff to make sure he doesn't contradict policy or accidentally reveal non-public information.
I'm not bashing anyone but there must be some observations made obvious.
He's lived in Chicago, the Bulls comment makes sense. Appealing to his home town.
"NOT BAD" - do you REALLY think he knew to say that or do you think someone prompted him?
There are very smart people that control his speeches, people behind the curtains, to get the maximum appeal from the audience in which he is speaking to. Everything is scripted ever so carefully. Always keep this in mind. He's trying to win you over, for your vote.
Speechwriters will still work on the answers for him to use in Q&A sessions, obviously it's not quite the same as a speech where he can give an exact word for word, but generally he'll still know big chunks before hand on a range of anticipated topics, then the skill to doing it live is being able to pivot slightly from the way the question was asked to the answer he wants to give.
Also just realised I spelled "feet" wrong in my previous comment and feel terrible about that.
What do you expect? When you're in an office, and I mean a high office, you represent that office and all that office represents. Right or wrong, the office of the President of the United States represents America on the international scene.
And people are unfair. People take things out of context. Occasionally, people just make shit up and shove it into your mouth. You can't stop them, but you can avoid helping them to the extent it's physically possible.
There's always going to be a noise floor in politics: The rampant idiocy, blatant lying, and absolute unreasoning psychotic hatred honestly felt by certain groups. Going off-message can either raise or lower that floor, and the sad fact is a single bad statement raises it a lot higher than a large number of good statements can lower it. Look at Muskie: He lost the nomination in part because he possibly cried on stage. Possibly. It could have been snow, but the implication was there. Nixon's lies hurt him, but it was likely the 'tears' that broke him.
Then frankly he shouldn't be going on a forum known for its impertinent (to say the least) questions and saying "Ask Me Anything".
The abuse of Reddit AMA for boring, dull, traditional PR purposes takes one of its more interesting contributions to the internet and makes it just another venue for the Same Old Thing.
If a politician wants to be careful, let them go to the old careful outlets.
It's precisely what I'd expect, but that doesn't mean I can't be disappointed by it. I expect the worst from our politicians and my expectations are usually met, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like more.
I absolutely agree that it's tough to be honest and off-the-cuff in politics, much less modern politics. However, as someone else said, no one should look at Obama and think about how 'hip' he is for using Reddit as a phone-in for stances he's already talked about. It's called "Ask Me Anything". I would have even been a little impressed if he were honest and said "AMAA".
Is it "Reddit got Obama" or is it "Obama got Reddit"?
I think the best answer is, "Yes," since it seems to be mutually
beneficial exploitation of Reddit USERS for the sake of press
coverage (both Obama getting press and Reddit getting press).
That comes straight from pg, as reddit was his idea. He sold it to Alexis and Steve as "the front page of the Internet", that is, a user-curated list of all of the most interest links out there. While it may be read as ambitious, it was originally just intended to describe what reddit was and how it worked. It was the precursor of the "AirBnB for lightbulbs" taglines that dominated pitches a couple years ago.
Alexis and Steve applied for the first YC batch with a cell phone food idea that pg rejected.
He told them that he liked them, but not the idea. He suggested instead that they build "the front page of the Internet". They did, and the rest is history.
People have a tendency to think that phrase is somehow bragging, but it's really just what the original idea for reddit was. It's not about their size, but about the intended purpose of the site.
This is a dismayingly flippant comment, and I'm particularly disappointed that you of all people should have made it. Would you be more relieved if our executive branch were entirely composed of people who are completely disengaged from the internet at a social level?
I know your comment was sarcastic, but it touches on the recent debate about whether the US government deserves any credit in the development of the Internet. And it at least gives me hope that the next generation of policymakers will appreciate the power of the open web to facilitate speech, culture, and economic development.
It's so sad to see so many HN and Redditors so intent on their "upwardly mobile", morally relative dreams
that they fail to take account of the totalitarian state they have come to live in. You will NOT be alright, jack.
Listen. As of September 2012, the AppForThat, Startup, bubble is just about over. I say this as someone who warned others of the
dotcom and real estate bubbles. If you want to think of it as a "technical", or chartreading thing, fine. The bottom line
is: GET OUT NOW, the shit is about to hit the fan. Yeah, I know you don't want to hear it. Sorry to bear bad news.
If you haven't heard of it, this is the Fourth Turning. (Startpage.com it). If you think life is going to go on as as usual, think again.
Get ready. Hunker down. This is for real. Don't trust the government.
Fascinating. The last "Fourth Turning" was roughly 1925-1945, with the crises of the stock market crash, Great Depression, and World War 2.
It also was the formation of the New Deal, the Allied victory, the GI Bill of Rights (free higher education for vets), the rise of the US as a global superpower.
Further, it was followed by the "First Turning", from 1945-1965, which was the post-war boom.
A crisis can lead to a lot of good.
I'm not quite sure what this has to do with trusting the government - I think you may be reading far too much into Strauss-Howe to coincide with your own political beliefs. The US is not a totalitarian state, nor is Europe (though disclaimer, I'm in Canada). One of my parents did live in a totalitarian state - it was not like this, by any stretch.
We do exist in a time of crisis, financially, and in terms of global political leadership. In the US, the Republicans have become radicals, not conservatives, while the Democrats can't seem to be focused or unified on anything. In Europe, the leaders can't seem to accept the Euro will destroy their economies if they don't either fix their central bank or move to a more unified fiscal arrangement. In China, the government artificially keeps their currency low to foster growth that hides the fragility of the kleptocracy at the state and local levels of government. I could go on.
These are crises, but they are also opportunities to fix problems that seem intractable today. I do not think anyone can foresee the outcomes, I suspect it will be not hewing to any particular ideology, but rather a mix of pragmatic approaches that "just work".
> Among quants there is a saying that goes “don’t torture the data until it talks”, which is another way of saying don’t over-fit the data. While Howe & Strauss’ analysis is very intriguing, I find many disturbing signs of data fitting that make me uncomfortable.
> William Strauss and Neil Howe think society turns on a repeating set of four 20-year cycles and try to predict the future based on this.
[snip]
> According to the authors (writing in 1997), the U.S. was in an "unraveling" in the 1990s and due for another crisis in the 2000s-2010s, which will be followed once the crisis is resolved by a new "high" of economic liberalism and social conservatism a-la the 1950s.
It's interesting how all these cycle-meisters (a subset of woo-meisters or just plain frauds) always say that the crisis is near. Always. Their magical cycle theories never predict a distant crisis.
Onwards:
> The generations themselves are arbitrary constructs. They have an age range of about 20 years each, but what gives somebody born in 1965 (a Generation Xer) more in common with a Generation Xer born in 1980 rather than a Baby Boomer born in 1961?
It's crap. It's one of many cycle theories that gets promoted every so often, and it's based on torturing the data that isn't ignored entirely with huge amounts of retrospective predictions (predicting the past, so much easier than predicting the future), just like the others.
No, they are not "kooks", nor am I, and far from unintentionally making the reference I am pointing it out.
It is a perfectly rational phenomenon that history depends on generational cycles.
No, there is no magic claimed, or involved, and this "all these cycle-meisters (a subset of woo-meisters or just plain frauds) always say that the crisis is near. Always. Their magical cycle theories never predict a distant crisis" is pure, unfounded name-calling.
It is obvious that you have not given even a cursory reading of S & H's writing before concluding "it's crap".
If generations are "arbitrary constructs" then I take it you do not think "boomer" means anything? Welcome to the real world.
> It is a perfectly rational phenomenon that history depends on generational cycles.
Then why isn't it taught in mainstream history courses?
> If generations are "arbitrary constructs" then I take it you do not think "boomer" means anything?
Not really, no. To begin with, you'll never find a full agreement on when that generation (or any other) begins and ends.
> this "all these cycle-meisters (a subset of woo-meisters or just plain frauds) always say that the crisis is near. Always. Their magical cycle theories never predict a distant crisis" is pure, unfounded name-calling.
Actually, it's a place where you could rebut me with solid evidence that disproves my statement, if you actually had such evidence.
Instead, how about this: What predictions did Strauss and Howe make that have actually come true?
Burden of proof applies here- you can't tell him that something is true then refuse to provide evidence for it. Should be pretty simple to give a few examples, no?
No, really. I was expecting downvotes and I see I'm getting them. I understand people don't want to hear this. Why am I saying this then? I have nothing to gain.
He should send Ann to do an AMA on ColbertNation and only questions regarding Rafalca and dressage should get answered. Would make some entertaining reverse trolling.
The question I wanted to ask was "under what conditions would you call for an accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan, or an extended presence in Afghanistan, compared to the announced 2014 withdrawal date." But Reddit was in read-only mode most of the time.
I really hope Romney/Paul and Gary Johnson (again) do IAMAs.
As much as I love it, Reddit has some pretty unsavory corners. Assuming this makes any news outside the tech space, I'd be curious to see what comes out -- "President Obama answering questions on website affiliated with necrophilia" ?
As much as I love it, the internet has some pretty unsavory corners. Assuming this makes any news outside the internet, I'd be curious to see what comes out -- "President Obama answering questions on new technology associated with necrophilia AND child porn".
I'm being snarky, but it's comments like the one you just made which are echo-chambered into "there is something wrong with communications medium X because it was once used by group Y". Reddit's a big public forum: any big forum will have those issues.
> "the internet has some pretty unsavory corners."
Average voters actually use the internet and understand it. There's porn and stuff "out there", but most people don't run into it when they're visiting facebook, yahoo, espn.com, and other mainstream sites. The average voter isn't going to question the judgment of someone who "uses the internet" because it doesn't seem seedy to them.
The average voter doesn't know what reddit is, and wouldn't "get" it from the homepage. On the homepage right now, there's Obama's AMA and a couple of other serious political stories -- sandwiched between half a dozen memes, a picture of a canker sore shaped like a penis, and several instances of the word "fuck". You don't have to go looking in the unsavory corners of reddit to find stuff that would make my mom question the judgment of people who use the site.
I've recently been wondering why they don't move away from the 'default subreddits' model homepage and to a splash page: "Welcome to Reddit, a place where you can share links and talk about your favourite subjects. What are you interested in?", with a big search box, and a list of suggested subreddits that you can subscribe to. It gets users to create an account, and can allow for a friendlier experience for new people. Of course, there'd still be a 'go to the front page' link for people who preferred it, but this would help change the 'default' reddit experience, which for most people isn't great, as well as helps convey the message that reddit isn't a singular, rage comic-loving, pro-weed legalisation commmunity.
Back when reddit only had about 10 categories, I made a joke about how I wouldn't be surprised to see an xkcd category, because of how frequently the comics posted. When that actually happened, I rolled my eyes and wondered what these idiot admins had done, segregating the community into separate, yet very similar categories. In hindsight, it has shown itself to be a great idea, and by far reddit's greatest strength. I'm glad you guys have plans to highlight that to people.
I guess I'm just more curious to see if the benefit provided from using reddit will outweigh any potential consequences. I do believe this will mostly be overlooked by news outlets outside of tech spaces, but... Most people don't understand reddit and it'd be ridiculously easy for opponents to spin this one deep into the negative.
I guess I'm just more curious to see if the benefit provided from using reddit will outweigh any potential consequences
That's an awfully long-haired way of wondering aloud to no-one in particular whether associating with Reddit will be considered to be a liability. I'm fairly sure the President has a near-army of people whose job it is to worry about such things.
Was the...did you say "necrophilia?"...really an issue outside of Sean Hannity's (or whoever's) shrieking fanbase? I think those people have less power than even pot advocates in the national landscape.
As popular as your former employer is, there's a pretty wide gap from reddit to owning a telephone -- Look how badly CNN misrepresented reddit; that's the level of understanding most people will have if someone who is essentially looking for a news story spins it that direction.
Look, I get it. The President's time is extremely valuable, but 30 minutes? Seriously? I got the page to load 1 time, and by then it was over. I would have rather he didn't do it at all.
I did like that one of his answers referenced the Obama Not Bad meme, but I imagine that was pre-canned by one of his interns or something.
Something overlooked in the "he didn't give interesting answers" complaints is that just being able to ask a question (even if it goes unanswered) is a form of communication with the President that's never been available to an average citizen in this way.
What a disappointing AMA. He answers stupid questions about his favorite basketball player and the white house beer recipe, but completely ignores the important ones about decriminalization of marijuana.
Fuck him. I'm not voting for him. He's a mild and more sociable version of Romney.
Why on Earth would he go touch marijuana legalization with a 10-foot pole? He's not Ron Paul; he's actually trying to win the election. The average swing voter is a middle-aged mom, and you want him to talk about marijuana legalization?
You can either be a frank politician who addresses all questions honestly, or you can be a politician who wins elections.
Hands down, the best [TED] talk this year was from Bryan Stevenson on injustice in the US criminal legal system. For example, the number of prisoners in the last 40 years has grown from 300,000 to 2.3 million (primarily, I believe, due to non-violent drug infractions). One third of young African American men are in prison, on probation or on parole. Ours is the only country in the world that gives life sentences to 13 year olds. As for the death penalty, one out of nine defendants sentenced to death have been exonerated. in California a billion dollars will be spent defending and executing the death penalty in the next 5 years, although a referendum is on its way to re-direct those funds to police enforcement budgets.
What made the talk great was Stevenson's ability to weave in his personal stories, recounting memories of what it was like to grow up among activists like Rosa Parks. There was so much enthusiasm for Stevenson and his cause that TED Curator Chris Andersen jumped on the occasion to solicit donations for Stevenson's private foundation. Right there many of us stood up and, in aggregate, pledged close to a million dollars!
You just wooshed my comment, hard. I'm not saying it's not a real issue, I'm saying he'd have to be an idiot to address it. It's a no-win situation for him: either piss of the young voters he's trying to court, or piss off the swing voters he needs to court. There is simply nothing for him to gain by addressing marijuana legalization.
Ron Paul doesn't suffer from this problem. He's not trying (or able) to win the White House; he's trying to bring issues to the forefront of the public consciousness and raise awareness of libertarian positions. Ron Paul can afford to address the issues that would lose real candidates elections, as he's not about to win any elections outside of his House seat.
> He's not trying (or able) to win the White House; he's trying to bring issues to the forefront of the public consciousness and raise awareness of libertarian positions.
No, he's trying to make money from campaign donations. He always succeeds.
Along with the (Nobel Peace Prize Winner's) wars, this is the major reason why I have left the US until there is a revolution. It is simply sickening that most voters ignore this issue.
As far as I am concerned, the United States of America, as conceived by Thomas Jefferson, no longer exists. That is why I choose to reside outside the USA.
If any possibility arises of a shooting revolution, I will be back with a gun, and willing to give my life for freedom.
All I see on Google is other folks saying he would support de-criminalization of marijuana (and AG Holder actually de-prioritized drug offenses for awhile before the DEA basically decided to ignore them and still continue their busts).
I don't really see what you're getting at. Do you think the Whitehouse policy on drugs has changed since the last time they addressed legalizing marijuana [1]? If not, how is anyone served by hearing the same answer rehashed?
"What a disappointing AMA. He answers stupid questions about his favorite basketball player and the white house beer recipe, but completely ignores the important ones about decriminalization of marijuana."
Wonderful way to be lazy while pretending to take a moral stand: Claim they're all crooks, that you can't see any difference between them, and that you refuse to participate.
It's laziness mixed with condescension and moral outrage. Perfect!
In Ancient Greece, elections were considered (rightfully) as oligarchic, and sortition was the true instrument of democracy.
Sure, their democracy was flawed (not everyone was a citizen), but it's still better than our so called modern "democracies" where a closed oligarchy of influent and wealthy people rule the world while providing the illusion of freedom.
Elections are the circuses of our times, a modern game used to distract the masses, where people get to support their champion and their party.
