Jon Stewart to Reddit: you don't matter | Hacker News Reader

Jon Stewart to Reddit: you don't matter

fark.com

24 pointskilian15 comments

This person seriously has a screw loose.

When asked the question, Colbert jumped in and preempted the answer to thank Reddit for raising half a million dollars for Donors Choose. Both Colbert and Stewart said the Internet support was nice, validated their idea, and they were thankful for it. Colbert in particularly clearly knew exactly who Reddit was.

On the other hand, both of them independently said that the rally was in planning months before anyone on Reddit brought it to their attention. Reddit wasn't instrumental the rally. Get over it. Glen Beck and Louis Farrakhan were also able to get hundreds of thousands of people to the national mall; Farrakhan doesn't even have a top-rated TV show to do it with.

Agree. This guy seem to have a bad case of confirmation bias (1). The question was "What role did the Internet campaign play _in convincing you_ to hold this rally? Don't pander" (2), not if it helped to make it possible.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias#Biased_interp... (2) http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1010/30/cnr.07.html

Glenn Beck got < 90,000 to the rally, if I remember correctly.

Ughhh....the internet needs to get over itself.

Colbert literally acknowledged Reddit and Alexis and thanked him for the half-a-million dollars they raised.

Jon, too, while he did not grovel at Ohanian's feet, he was thankful for the work that Reddit did.

He was being reasonable, cut him some slack.

Response from Reddit:

I appreciate Drew Curtis' looking out for us, but honestly, we had a great time and don't really care about who gets the credit. At "best", we convinced Comedy Central to pull the trigger on something they were kicking around indecisively and might not have otherwise done. At "worst", they were totally committed to doing it anyway and we "just" pulled off an incredible donation movement for a really good cause, beefed up attendance numbers, and got to meet hundreds of redditors in person. I think I speak for all the staff when I say that we love Jon and Stephen, regret nothing, and don't feel anyone owes us an apology. Edit: That said, Fark is cool and we like Drew. :)

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dzmrl/from_drew_...

Ah, the high road! I'm glad somebody actually understood the message of the rally, and witheld from blowing a nonexistent conflict out of proportion for some fleeting eyeballs.

"On Wednesday Colbert responded to the online campaign with a letter to Reddit users. "You have inspired me by helping untold thousands of students; with the momentum you've created, we could stage a hundred rallies," Colbert wrote. "I might just call on you."

Two nights later, Stewart and Colbert announced on their shows that they will march on the Mall."

Source: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2010/09/rally_to_...

The idea for a march to counter Beck's had little value in itself. Putting the effort and energy behind it like the Reddit community did is what made the rally happen. The March then grew into something larger than its humble internet founding.

StewartColbert:Reddit::Edison:Tesla edit: this analogy is terrible as colbert has yet to execute an elephant. and other reasons.

While I think it was a definitely a little bit of a snub, I'm not entirely convinced it was as much of a 'attack' as it's being portrayed here.

They probably acknowledged Reddit and the internet in general as much as they could without alienating someone. See, the internet is something of a stigma, especially when it comes to political events. References to the influence of the internet for some reason appear to anger conservatives, moderates, media people, donors, politicians and lobbyists. Even worse, for some reason the average TV viewer wants no part of it. I would even go so far as to allege that the influence of the web is somewhat of a taboo in our society.

I remember the early days of the Obama campaign trail, for example, were all about the 'net (mainly bloggers and social media types did a LOT for him). He even went so far as to indicate that he might be in favor of a right to privacy and a possible cutback on the free rain of big corporations on lawmaking, including the allmighty entertainment lobby that is currently writing all of our IP laws. Today, the president wouldn't come close to these issues if his life depended on it, much less acknowledge that early internet support might have been a decisive factor during the campaign.

Can someone please explain what the intended purpose of this rally was? I still don't understand what it was about.

It was The Daily Show and The Colbert Report On Ice; a traveling live version of the television show.

Watch/read the final comments that Stewart made towards the end of the rally to understand.

Link to speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JzGOiBXeD4

Stewart summarizes his points passionately and of course, reasonably

Comedy Central employees taking themselves rather ha-ha only serious-ly.

They're scared of glen beck.

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