One of my favourite social media web sites used to be Digg. The site provided people a place where they could find countless interesting links to explore. If you signed up for an account on Digg, you could also comment on those links and have discussions with other Diggers. I really enjoyed visiting Digg several times a day.

Then a few months back, the people behind Digg rolled out what was dubbed Digg V4. The new version of Digg was immediately panned by just about everyone. There was a lot to complain about. First, the site became broken and unavailable for many users. Some features that had been core to the Digg experience were just removed without explanation. Digg user accounts were also butchered. Usernames were changed without warning and people’s commenting history (which for some spanned years) was deleted overnight. It was a complete mess that Digg is still trying to fix to this day.

For many people, the alternative to Digg became Reddit. Though Reddit is another similar social media site, I resisted at first because Reddit’s user interface looks horrendous. There was no other real alternative though. At first, I just visited Reddit without signing up. Then, with the urging of a friend, I actually made a Reddit account. Over the course of several weeks, I learned to overlook the barebones UI and discovered Reddit was actually quite entertaining.

One of the best sections of Reddit is one called “I Am A <insert whatever you are> Ask Me Anything“. It’s essentially a section where Redditors reveal whatever they are, whatever job they might have, whatever life situation they might be going through, etc. and then call upon other Redditors to ask them questions. In my opinion, it’s the most fascinating part of the web site. There are IAmAs for strippers, a guy who’s dated a stripper, a US Special Forces soldier, a pizza delivery driver, a guy who lost his wife to a car accident, Joe Rogan, a former AHL player, woman who just had an abortion, porn store employee, and many, many more.

As you can see, some of these can be quite entertaining, while others are quite serious. It’s the serious ones that remind me that while life is full of great experiences, there is a lot of adversity and hardship that people go through on a daily basis. Consider browsing through some of these people’s lives. I am sure you’ll find some fascinating ones.

3 thoughts on “ASK ME ANYTHING”

  1. I had heard that some of the changes at Digg were brought on because of an attempt by youg Republicans to corrupt the system during the 2008, essentially drowing out any positive discussion about the Democrats, and driving the popularity of Republicans (McCain) by flooding the system with positive discussion. I had read a story a while back that they would have youth volunteers do nothing but flood Digg all day on behalf of the GOP.

    As usual, another democratic society thrown to hell by organized politics.

  2. Yeah, I remember reading about the Digg Patriots and how they were discovered. Of course, all of that didn’t matter after Digg went to their new version.

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