President Obama’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ forum crashes Reddit

By Megan Dunbar

September 3, 2012

FILE – In this Sept. 6, 2012, file photo President Barack Obama addresses the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. A deep obsession with the story of America, who tells it, and who gets to write its next chapter, was a rare piece of common ground that speakers at both the Republican and Democratic conventions managed to share. Over and over, they spun different versions of the same notion. Mitt Romney spoke passionately of “the essence of the American experience.” Obama talked emphatically of “the basic bargain at the heart of America’s story.” (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

Reddit.com users reveled in a rare opportunity to directly question President Barack Obama when he posted an “Ask Me Anything” last Thursday on the popular social news website.

Reddit touts itself as “the front page of the Internet,” where users post articles and pictures they find interesting or amusing on specific forums, called subreddits.

Obama posted an invitation to the Internet community to ask him anything, promising to answer however many of the highest-ranked comments he could in 30 minutes.

User Dave Stroup saw the AMA within the first few minutes of the presidential posting and asked, “What is the first thing you’ll do on November 7, win or lose?”

Obama responded that he would thank everyone involved in his campaign.

“I never expected I’d be able to say, ‘The president replied to a comment I wrote on a website!’” Stroup said in an email to The Daily Reveille.

Obama’s post shut down the website a few times over the course of his question-answering.

“An extremely popular submission may have 2 to 5 percent of visitors at any given time …the Obama AMA received over 30 percent of all visitors to Reddit at its peak,” according to the official Reddit blog.

Stroup said the president using Reddit showed he and his staff are in tune with technology, “parts of our economy where we lead the world.”

Another Redditor, going by the name Ormirian, asked the president about possible increases to funding for the space program.

Obama responded that the funding is “a big priority for my administration.”

“I already liked the guy,” Ormirian said in an email to The Daily Reveille.

Reddit is now calling for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to take the same route as Obama.

Other notable people who have also allowed people to ask them questions on the Internet include astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Nick Offerman of the NBC show “Parks and Recreation” and scientists from the Mars Curiostity Rover Mission.

There are 1,177 LSU students on Reddit who follow LSU’s official subreddit. Recent posts include a tailgating invite, information about Hurricane Isaac and a video of LSU quarterback Zach Mettenberger’s first sack of the football season.