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Given its eight years under corporate ownership, it’s near miraculous that Reddit’s verve, the unruliness that makes it appealing to so many, has survived. “Condé Nast realised pretty early they’re not a technology company,” Ohanian said. (He still serves on the Reddit board.) “They gave Reddit a ton of autonomy.” Martin called Advance Publications “extremely hands-off”.

Huffman has a different stance. He was kept on to run Reddit after its 2006 acquisition and launched the company’s San Francisco office. Huffman found Reddit’s ownership stifling and told me that by the end of his time at the company he wasn’t on speaking terms with the then-president of Condé Nast Digital. One day on Reddit, the joke of the moment – there’s always one – had been to mock the retail giant Sears, a big advertiser with Condé Nast. Sears complained, according to Huffman, who says he was told to remove certain posts, and eventually gave in. “I’ve still never forgiven them.” Huffman left the company in 2009 and now runs a travel website, Hipmunk.

Long, but worth reading, piece on Reddit and the Internet at the Guardian.
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BLUR – “Beetlebum”

BLUR – “Beetlebum”

tomewing:

This is one of those songs I don’t really like, and trying to work out why I don’t surfaced a few elements I DO like, but also kept bringing me up against this irreducible kernel of Damon-ness that I just can’t enjoy. So the arguments here feel a bit weak, but on the other hand, for “Damon Albarn writes a song about heroin”, 5 out of 10 is a hosannah.

I expect something of a pasting in the comments, mind you.

As “Beetlebum” is one of my favorite songs ever – and Blur one of my favorite bands – I’m very much of the “Oh, Tom, you’re so, so wrong” mindset here, but nonetheless. It’s a new Popular! You should go read.

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So you’re 0 for 1, big deal! I’m, like, 6 for 93 and two of those I had to settle out of court.

The most convincing pep talk ever, from this week’s Trophy Wife.
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Brought on by a conversation with the ever-lovin’ Jeff Lester this afternoon, I’ve been wondering about the current Comic Internet Tastemakers, and who they are these days.

Actually, what I’m really wondering is, are there Comic Internet Tastemakers these days? Are there sites that set the conversation and can break creators/series on a reliable basis? Are there writers whose recommendations the masses can’t pass up?

CBR tends to set the news agenda, if only because of scale and access. But in terms of actually tastemaking, is it Comics Alliance? Someone/somewhere else? Is ComicsInternet 2014 too decentralized for the idea to even make sense?

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Intention is a whopper, because here in North America, at least, we live in a society that prizes and rewards self-reported virtue over witness-reported honor. That means that you can move through the world believing yourself to be a good and decent person even with heaps of evidence to the contrary piling up against you. “Look, I mean well,” you might say. And that’s probably true. What we know about creating good fictional villains is equally applicable in real life: almost nobody believes that they are doing the wrong thing. And indeed, intention does count for something, just not very much of the thing. I talk to my six-year-old about intention a lot, because he has friends who are also six, and six-year-olds, generally lacking in refined agility, have a tendency to plow into, knock over, and otherwise pulverize each other at alarming rates. I want him to understand that he doesn’t have to assume that he and little Timmy aren’t friends anymore just because Timmy accidentally knocked him over. The fact that the action was an accident warrants acknowledgment. But then—and this is the important part—I ask Timmy to apologize anyway, because whether intentionally or not, he has hurt his playmate, and needs to take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. In my six-year-old’s school, first graders do this by straight-up apologizing and then asking what they can do to help the person who got hurt feel better. Can you imagine how quickly we could start moving things along if adults took a similar approach?

Devin Grayson takes on intention, offense and other difficult issues.
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Man, today’s one of those days where productivity is happening but it feels entirely the opposite because things aren’t exactly going to plan.

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Hey Graeme, that Mel Brooks quote you put up made me wonder — I don’t know, aside from like geek culture-y comics-related stuff that you have to write about/talk about with Jeff on the p-cast, what kind of movies you like. So what are some big movies for you?

Off the top of my head: Head. Three Colors Red and Blue – but not White, which I remember watching and finding painfully, cringe-inducingly unfunny. If… and O, Lucky Man, which were movies that just blew my mind when I was in art school, which I realize as I type is a terrible sentence to write. Oh! Stanley Donen’s Charade, which remains the greatest example of a Hitchcock film for me, despite not being a Hitchcock movie at all.

As you can see, I’m appallingly movie illiterate.

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I don’t even know if I’m talented. I’m not sure. But I’ve told so many people, that I’m talented. They believe it, and they tell me that I’m talented, so I agree.

Mel Brooks, from his recent PBS American Masters profile. Fake it till you make it, as they say.