This week, Reddit hosted live interviews with a knowledgeable airline reservation agent, a child of Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps, and a machine gunner in the Iraq War.
Yet it was an actor famed for his role as a stoner in several Kevin Smith movies who took the top spot this week. Jason Mewes, best known as the leaner half of the fictional Jay and Silent Bob duo, netted the most popular interview of the last seven days.
Smith sneaked onto the list of top AMA (ask me anything) interviews himself, snagging seventh spot on the redditor-voted rankings.
Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor and founder of Google’s top-secret Google X lab, landed the runner-up spot, while a terminally ill father, back for his second AMA, took sixth place. (Sidenote: a subsequent AMA suggested the redditor beat his apparent terminal illness.)
We’ve put together a list of sample questions and answers from the seven most popular interviews in Reddit’s r/IAmA (I Am A) section from the last week. You can check out the full list of top IAmAs here.
A note on terminology: AMA stands for “ask me anything,” while “IAmA” is simply “I am a;” AMAA means “ask me almost anything.”
1) I am the snootch or jason mewes or JAY not silent bob, thats the other guy.
What do you worry about? (Punsire)
My dogs, my health, my family and friends. My sister especially she is the only sibling I have and she keeps relapsing and putting herself in bad situations. luckily i have not had anything bad or super stressful happen in the last 2 years or so and in the past when something really bad or sad happened I could numb myself with drugs. Not anymore so i get scared of such situations cause I am unaware of how to handle them.
Software is eating jobs, and self-driving cars are going to put a lot of people out of work who currently make a living driving vehicles. Do you have any thoughts on how society should adapt to what seems to be a “new normal” of higher unemployment? (slideaway)
Ever since time, and certainly through the Industrial Revolution, have seen a restructuring of the workforce. Over 90% of all people used to work in agriculture and now it’s about 2% in this country (number may be inaccurate). Are we better off or worse off? I think better off.
This is just my personal opinion. I believe society is wasting huge resources with “inefficiencies,” and when we invent methods to overcome these inefficiencies, society tends to be better off. I think we have to be socially responsible to the people who might be negatively affected by all this, but just retaining things as they are cannot be our guiding principle going forward.
What do you think of [WikiLeaks whistleblower] Bradley Manning? (Foxtrot56)
To keep my answer short, I think that Bradley Manning knew what he was doing and intentionally violated orders, common sense, and the trust of his position. Furthermore, it betrayed a ton of people who were depending on his job and position to keep them safe. For that – given what I know – I would personally convict him on all counts.
In my mind, whistle-blowing is a form of martyrdom. It’s rarely the answer, and we can’t set the precedent that soldiers entrusted with military secrets can just say “fuck it” on a whim because they don’t like what’s going on. Yet it’s still an important act of insurrection, which can sometimes change the world for the better.
Ultimately, I don’t have any more answers than the next guy. In the long run, however, I hope we look at what happened as a call to reel back the insane amount of classified information that is put in a vault every day and hidden from the American public.
4) IAmAn Ex-Member of the Westboro Baptist Church
Is there any REASON [Fred Phelps] is so hateful? I know this sounds dumb, just curious if you have any insight into this! (intensenonsense)
No idea. His mother died when he was five. Maybe that explains something, I don’t know. He was raised Methodist, but not seriously. Good student, Eagle Scout, appointment to West Pointe that he squandered when he went to a revival meeting and found Jesus. Attended Bob Jones University and Prairie Bible Institute (coincidentally only an hour and a half north of where I live now) then started his career as an itinerant preacher. He showed signs of hatefulness almost from the beginning. Some people from his home town talk about having the tendency early on to piss people off.
I’m in Schipol airport right now waiting for a KLM flight… any tips on how to get any freebies/upgrades/benefits? (doorslammer)
Yes, after your flight you should call or email (preferably the later) and let them know about every single thing you didn’t enjoy about your flight (food, movie selection, rude flight attendant, tray table didn’t work, wifi didn’t work etc). The airlines have a specific department to deal with complaints and they’ll give you tens of thousands of miles, free business lounge passes, travel vouchers, drink tickets etc.
6) IAmA the 43 year old terminally ill husband and father, back with great news!
Does it hurt when it shocks your heart? I’m in EMT training right now and we are practicing on defibrilators, and I was wondering what they feel like. (BiometricsGuy)
Being shocked is exactly what you would think. It’s like touching a very large battery, only the battery is inside your chest. You convulse, you blink a couple times, once it went all the way down my left arm, up into my jaw, there’s a loud snap as it arcs, and things immediately start hurting. My jaw has snapped shut so quick, I was afraid I bit my tongue.
7) I am @ThatKevinSmith. I’m 41, I have moobs, and I made CLERKS once. I’m an AMA bottom so fill me up!
What’s the plan for Smodcast Pictures’ future? How do you plan to keep up with the constantly changing structure of online distribution and pirating? (beefbearsupreme)
Pirates don’t scare me: they help me. Naturally, you’d like everyone to pay for what they’re taking if you’re selling it, but to be honest, even the pirates spread the word and eventually spend their booty on your shit. I heard from lots of folks who stole RED STATE off UseNet or BitTorrent who then added “…and now I’m buying it on BluRay.” It’s a try-before-you-buy culture now, so SModCo tries to put more free into the world than stuff you gotta pay for. […] The SModCo business model is to give out as much stuff free as possible so that when we DO ask for your money for something, you’ll feel better about it because you’ve gotten lotsa funny for free previously.
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