Reddit’s new CEO really likes women who eat burritos.
That’s the first thing we learned after creepily Reddit-stalking Yishan Wong, the former director of engineering at Facebook, who announced his new job at Reddit with an official blog post yesterday.
Wong’s a five-year redditor and, like a lot of his peers on the social news site, divulges a fair amount of personal information. Redditors are so revealing, in fact, they’ve invented a game: scour through each other’s comment history and write a biography. It’s a Web stalker’s dream come true.
So, in honor of Wong’s former employer, we decided to collect his personal data on Reddit and use it for our own nefarious gain.
The first thing we learned: Wong comments a lot more than he submits, and when he does post links, they are overwhelmingly about women eating burritos. Seriously.
Before his official blog post, the most popular link Wong ever submitted to Reddit was this: “A Girl Decides To Try Eating Only Burritos For 14 Days and Blog About It.”
Ten days later he followed with this: Another Girl Tries Eating Only Burritos for 14 Days (And Blogs It)
We’re not sure what to make of Wong’s obsession with the Mexican gastrointestinal torpedoes. (Why not tacos, Wong?) We’re happy to say, however, that his comment history is far more diverse and expands well beyond Taco Bell menu items.
Here are the important facts about Wong we learned after scouring his comment history:
1. He is a self-professed “bleeding heart liberal” and probably voted for Obama.
“I support him because, unlike pretty much every other person in Washington, he’s not an old-ass baby boomer and actually knows what the fuck a “wiki” is.”
2. He is a supertaster.
I don’t enjoy numerous foods that many others enjoy and find various things bitter or unpleasant (chocolate, olives, coffee). Other things which most people find tasty or flavorful just end up being too strong for me (e.g. tomato sauce). This makes eating at expensive restaurants difficult because I’m “out of band” of the usual human taste spectrum, so dishes designed to be flavorful and delicious to the average person tend to overwhelm me [and my pocketbook].
3. He should quit his new job at Reddit and make this website:
We need a website where people can report their experiences with cops and rate them on a scale of evil to good (really evil like “I got tased reporting a robbery” to kinda-blah like “They took down my name and number and never followed up” to good like “A cop took a bullet saving me and I’m black”) with approximate locations, and then we can plot them on a heatmap so we can see the rough geographic distribution of good-cop/bad-cop-ness.
4. He grew up in Minnesota and is basically a Viking.
There came a day when it was “only” 20 degrees F (i.e. still below freezing). I walked outside and swore it felt warm, took off my jacket and hung out for like 20 minutes in a t-shirt (and jeans) – I didn’t know it was that cold at the time; only a few minutes later did I look at the thermometer to check the actual temperature, so I stayed out there as long as I could. I ended up getting bored (it’s Minnesota) and going inside before I got cold.
5. He likes Futurama
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD.
6. He really, really wants to go to Mars.
I have actually long said that I’d be willing to go on a one-way mission to Mars. It simply leapfrogs over all the other possible plans in terms of feasibility. And come on – so you die, but you’re immortalized as the FIRST MAN ON MOTHERFUCKING MARS!
All joking aside, Wong’s comment history reveals a man who holds nuanced, intelligent opinions about a whole range of topics, including politics, science, and, of course technology.
“I asked all of the candidates I interviewed the question: ‘Why did digg fail?’ Reddit’s cofounder, Alexis Ohanian wrote yesterday. “Yishan knows. And I’ll do everything in my capacity as a board member of reddit, inc. to make sure he doesn’t fuck it up.”
Wong also received the endorsement of former Reddit tech honcho and current Netflix engineer Jeremy Edberg:
I’ve never met Yishan personally, but from what I do know, I think this is an excellent addition to team reddit. He knows technology and data and advertising, the three main things I think the reddit CEO needs to succeed.
So good on you Reddit. We think you’ve found your man.
We still want to know about that burrito obsession, however.
Image via Quora