Quick summary to catch you up if you have not been following along: I recently launched Reddit’s First Ever Self-Proclaimed Sponsored Novelty Account and named it IMadeYouATeeShirt. You can read all about it in this blog post.
After a little more than one week, we have good news and bad news. The good: we turned a few heads, made some people smile, and averaged over 50 upvotes per comment. The bad: we got hellbanned.
The hellbanning was actually quite a shock, because early in the week we had received one month of gold and a message of encouragement from someone at reddit HQ. It was a private message, so I’d rather not go into the details other than to say it was a brief note, and I took it to mean that they were cool with the concept and curious to see how it played out.
My current hope is that there is a discussion happening at reddit HQ right now, and it will eventually lead to the un-banning of my account. Perhaps they will also set more concrete rules on how exactly a sponsored novelty account could be implemented, which would be perfectly cool with me. If they decided that they needed to kill my account until this could be sorted out, I would understand completely and would harbor no ill will. Fingers crossed that this is the case.
One of the nicest things that happened as a result of this whole experiment was hearing from a couple of the moderators of /r/InternetAMA. They requested that I come and talk about the sponsored novelty account concept, so I will make a post at 2PM EST today. In preparation for that post, I will list out all of IMadeYouATeeShirt’s comments below (because, unfortunately, those comments currently show up as [deleted] on reddit.)
The Future of Teaching…
In this thread, someone posted a screenshot of an email their friend sent to a professor. It’s a somewhat clever, but not at all relevant email for the professor. The top comment thread goes like this:
- Thus begins the period of Reddit history in which Redditors sent useless messages to busy professors.
- The great karma rush of 2012.
- I hear they have karma out cally-phona-way.
- I responded with:
————————————————————–
IMadeYouATeeShirt is reddit’s First Ever Self-Proclaimed Sponsored Novelty Account. This is how it works.
This comment resulted in a $5 donation to DonorsChoose.org, via RedditDonate.com, in the name of reddit. Transaction ID: ch_0RdrQ1hL6hiDuM.
This comment also resulted in a direct contribution to reddit via one month of reddit gold for user Sqk7700.
(All of my comments had a footer like this. Again, I tried to be as transparent as possible.) This was the shirt design:
Points: 253
Afraid of Where This Might Lead…
Later in the same thread, I start to get dozens of responses. Most of them are very encouraging, including:
- I can safely say this is the best novelty account ever.
- That’s actually pretty damn funny. I could get used to this novelty.
- Whoa, awesome.
There are many others, but I’ll leave it at that. Some people still don’t quite get it, so I feel like I need to take action. That’s when I see CoCo26’s comment:
- So, if you reply to my comment. You will spend 9 dollars?
- I respond with: Afraid where this might lead, but…
Points: 50
Chin Up, Friend
Still in the same thread, CoCo26 replies:
- Fuck you man. Now I feel bad.
- I respond: Chin up, friend…
Points: 40
That was never a condition of our agreement!
In this thread, someone posts a rather hilarious gif of Han and Leia about to walk through a door in Cloud City. When the doors slide open, instead of Vader you see the guys from the Gangnam video dancing like crazy. Khdutton comments:
- Psy is altering the deal. Pray he does not alter it any further.
- I respond: That was never a condition of our agreement!
Points:113
SHIT JUST GOT META
Personally, this is my favorite post though also the least successful. In an AskReddit thread about marketing gimmicks I, as Reddit’s First Ever Self-Proclaimed Sponsored Novely Account, respond with a simple, elegant, one line comment:
Points: -6
Goodyear? No, the worst.
Someone posts a hilarious gif in r/FantasyFootball about the no-longer-locked-out NFL refs. The gif is Leslie Nielsen doing his brilliant strike dance in Naked Gun. Billmurrionaire comments:
This scene is like a grilled cheese sandwich: a classic from my childhood that I appreciate more and more with age.
I respond: RIP Leslie Nielsen. My favorite quote…
- Frank: It’s the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day.
- Jane: Goodyear?
- Frank: No, the worst.
Points: 16
Christmas Crisis…
In r/HarryPotter, a post appears hypothesizing that Santa is actually a wizard from the Harry Potter universe, and that his “elves” are really “house elves”. This is pretty cool, except for one problem. I comment:
Points: 29
Stan Misunderstands…
Someone posts an FB screenshot to r/funny describing a conversation with their Botany classmate named Stan. Stan is only taking Botany to get better at growing weed. DrKomeil sees the fallacy in this, and responds thusly:
- And of course, the funny thing is, Botany doesn’t necessarily have anything to planting plants. It’s studying, identifying, and otherwise researching plants. Horticulture is what you want to grow plants.
- I reply: I imagine a mustachioed Stan, reading your comment right now.
(Note the dead marijuana leaves contrasted against the green design. I was particularly pleased with that touch.)
Points: 17
Paul is Dead
David Corn, the Mother Jones journalist who had just released the infamous Romney “47% Video”, was cool enough to do an AMA on reddit. One of the threads goes like this:
- Is there anything about the leaked Romney fundraising video that the media did not tell us about that you can reveal to reddit?
- David Corn replies: During the brief gap, Romney said, “I buried Paul.”
- I respond: To help clarify what he means here (just look at those dead, evil eyes). … Unless he is serious and talking about RON PAUL, in which case that would be a pretty interesting revelation…
Points: 5 (It was quickly buried in the crush of questions and responses).
In total, we raised $45 for DonorsChoose.org and gave out a month of gold to nine different reddit users. We’d love nothing more than to keep going, keep donating, and keep paying reddit. I hope they let us.