The one good thing about Reddit’s mobs: They tend to correct themselves.
On Tuesday, a big portion of r/gaming was out for Telltale Games’ blood. The small company had borrowed redditor Kevin Henry’s jeep. When he got it back, he found $2,000 worth of damages. That’s the kind of stuff most people would take to a small claims court, but evidently this redditor decided Internet mobs were more his style.
So a day before Telltale Games released their latest game, which the company had been working on for over a year, Henry posted his story to Reddit, whipping some members of the r/gaming community into a frenzy. He even posted the name of Telltale Games employees. Nearly 100 people called her or emailed her. One threatened her with rape.
But quickly after the shitstorm broke, Telltale Games itself also took to r/gaming, explaining its side of the story. Everyone calmed down.
Of course, next time it would be nice if the calmer minds take over before anonymous rape threats get made.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson is a karmic superhero. The scientist and educator (and host of the upcoming Cosmos series) accumulated more than 80,000 comment karma in just a few days after his wildly successful AMA. I’d call it an astronomical score, but he’d probably correct me. There’s nothing astronomical about it at all. It’s just really, really big. Hopefully he’ll make good on his suggestion and do an AMA every month.
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On Wednesday, site cofounder Alexis Ohanian prepared to head to Capital Hill to testify against the Stop Online Piracy Act. But that was just a small part of the site’s push to drum up opposition to the act. Reddit admins blacked out the site’s logo in solidarity and redditors themselves (unsurprisingly) launched a hugely successful petition on the White House’s official website. That collected 40,000 signatures. Well done by all, Reddit.
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In other news, for a time on Thursday a mathematician was nearly as popular as a male porn star (definitely a Reddit win). A Reddit virgin is set to star in a reality show, and redditors discussed how many children were conceived when the site crashed nine months ago.
