So we’ve all had a good laugh after hearing about Woody Harrelson‘s disastrous AMA session on Reddit two days ago, where a proxy for the actor (let’s face it, that wasn’t him typing those answers) basically gave vague answers to half of the questions and in-no-way subtle plugs for his upcoming movie Rampart to the other half. It was a public relations nightmare, and while it certainly raised awareness about the movie, it definitely backfired.

On the social-bookmarking website Reddit, there are few cherished moments as fulfilling as an AMA (ask me anything) session with an interesting person. Previous participants have included such luminaries as Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Folks who join the fray often give thought-provoking answers to user-submitted questions and have provided people with a clearer [...]

Following his somewhat contentious interview with Soledad O’Brien on CNN earlier this morning, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian spoke with Bloomberg‘s Margaret Brennan on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange about Reddit’s blackout to protest SOPA.

Brennan asked the internet entrepreneur why the blackout was still happening, despite Congress not pushing forward as hard as they were.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian spoke with Soledad O’Brien to explain why his social bookmarking site was shutting down to protest SOPA. “Both SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are threats not just to the US economy and not just all the jobs that this tech sector creates, if they had existed, Steve Huffman and I could have never started Reddit. It’s frustrating to see legislation that was written by lobbyists and not technologists perhaps become law.”

One of the biggest legislative battles to be fought in 2012 will undoubtedly be the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act. Opponents claim the bill goes too far in its aims to combat online piracy and amounts to internet censorship. Protests and boycotts have emerged from the website Reddit, and after a huge boycott of GoDaddy after the domain hosting service announced its support of the legislation, activists are now targeting politicians who support the legislation, including an entire operation focused on Congressman Paul Ryan.

So this happened yesterday. Not much is known about the following video, except that it has just begun to go viral. Why? Well it appears that a young woman did not care for one of her Christmas presents, Ron Paul‘s Liberty Defined. In fact, after reading a portion of the book in which the GOP presidential candidate refers to Israel as an “apartheid state,” the young woman was moved to tears of disappointment. A Christmas miracle!

One of the biggest legislative battles heading into next year is undeniably going to be the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill backed by Hollywood that takes a rather strong stance on policing the internet for copyrighted material. Hundreds of companies from 3M to American Apparel are throwing their support behind the bill, including the [...]

Yesterday, a truly disturbing video appeared on Reddit. The video was headlined “Family law judge (Aransas County) beats and abuses his own daughter for using the internet. She uploaded the video.” and has now reached the popular site’s front page. It’s official description claims to be of a 2004 video of Judge William Adams, a family court judge brutally beating his daughter circe 2004. Unsurprisingly given the video’s content, Redditors have rallied in their attempt to get the man behind bars.

Recently, there’ve been a lot of negative stories going around about the social link-sharing website Reddit and it feels like it’s been way too long since we had a genuinely good one. Today, though, we got a doozy. One month ago, a Redditor asked a simple hypothetical (“Could I destroy the entire Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus if I traveled back in time with a modern U.S. Marine infantry battalion or MEU?”) and it caught another user’s interest. That user, James Erwin, began writing a narrative using that scenario, it quickly went viral, and now he’s gotten himself a damn movie deal!

On AC 360 Thursday night, Anderson Cooper spotlighted the “jailbait” section of the social link-sharing website Reddit.com, which features photographs of under-age teenagers. “Somebody somewhere is looking at sexually suggestive photos of your teenaged child and you might be just as surprised to learn where these pervy grownups find the images. They’re posted on a site that’s part of one of the most respected publishing empires on Earth. We’re talking about a site called Reddit.”

When Steve Jobs stepped down as Apple CEO this past week, it became clear just how much he meant to so many people. Some respected him as a brilliant innovator, some saw him as a sign that America could still lead the world, and some acknowledged just how much easier his products had made their lives. Therefore, it’s unsurprising just how saddened many people were to see a photo posted on TMZ yesterday that purports to show a gravely ill Jobs looking frail and needing support to walk. It’s also unsurprising, however, considering just how secretive Jobs always kept the specifics of his illness and its effects, that many are now debating whether or not the photo is real.

Here’s what we know of the following story. A young man riding a crowded bus in Jersey City showed zero inhibition in belting out the Katy Perry‘s California Girls while listening on his discman(!). The odd but strangely sweet video begins to go viral (particularly on the video section of the social news aggregation site Reddit) and some commenters reveal that the subject is somewhat “mentally disabled” and very sweet-natured kid (as evidenced by his very pure and sweet id in the video.) Reddit commenter “heavymetalpancakes” then decides to take the source material, auto-tune the vocals and add a backing instrumental track…et viola! The world becomes a better place!

CNN’s Don Lemon recently becomes a sweetheart of visitors to social news website Reddit after appearing in a segment on The Colbert Report and being profiled on the Daily Show. In the latter segment, Jon Stewart pays homage to Lemon’s disdain for the sort of newsy pablum networks sometimes use to flesh out an hour.

The producers of Fox’s MasterChef have been forced to release an apology after an eagle-eyed Redditor caught them flagrantly faking footage. Of course, as most reality TV shows have as much in common with reality as an animated movie about a world of sentient cars, this is as necessary as forcing a professional wrestling producer to apologize for faked body slams. Still, since many Americans remain as naive to the genre’s tricks as my third grade best friend was to the WWE’s, stories like this remain hilarious and instructive.

Reddit, for those unfamiliar, is a user-submitted news website where you can discover links to stories about, say, a flesh-eating homemade Russian drug (“Drugs are so bad!” – Super 8), and original news items like the ongoing tale of a guy currently trying to decipher a message left by the Zodiac killer. Redditors can vote stories up or down, so that only the strong survive. It’s fun, sometimes controversial, and an amazing black hole quickly sucking up the entirety of your work day. Hulu, meanwhile, is a site where a certain Mediaite editor used to watch SoapNet’s Canadian time traveling series, Being Erica. Now, for the first time ever, the two are combining forces.

While Sarah Palin has refused to admit that her account of Paul Revere’s famous ride may have been wrong, some Palin fans have taken it upon themselves to make it right. Over the weekend, as the story played out on political talkshows, a mini war was brewing on the battlefields of Wikipedia as people attempted to alter the text on Revere’s Wikipedia page to match Palin’s account while other editors tried to shut them down. George Orwell would be so proud. Or, y’know, horrified.

“We don’t know anything about Obama!”

That has been the rallying cry of some of the President’s detractors ever since he became a serious candidate. His supposedly “mysterious” past has haunted him his entire first term. However, it’s interesting to note that the candidate who’s been gaining the most from the fabled blank pages in Obama’s biography, Donald Trump, is a man with no mystery. People know everything about Trump. And a lot of it, on first glance at least, doesn’t look good. So how could he become President?

Thanks to our friends at BuzzFeed, here’s a run down of all the funniest, weirdest, most disturbing, and all around best viral stories of the past week!

Some pictures say a thousand words. Some say more. A soldier overseas with a beautiful girlfriend or wife and a flair for the artistic has, with a simple image, captured the immense feelings of homesickness that he and every other serviceman or woman feels. The photo, taken in a first-person perspective (the camera must be in the crock of his neck), shows only the gloved, dirty hands of a soldier holding a photo of he and a woman, dressed up for what appears to be a marine ball or something similar. It was posted on Reddit with the simple headline “Always thinking of my lady.”

With Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell finally meeting its demise this past weekend, many have been curious to see how our armed forces would handle the change. Prior to the historic vote on Saturday, some people made rather condescending theories that our military would be thrown into utter chaos. Others predicted that the soldiers and superiors would react with class and professionalism. A Redditor who happens to also be in the Air Force, uploaded a screen shot of an email he or she received along with all the other service men and women and it proves, shocker of shockers, that the latter appears to be true.

A Reddit user has posted a pretty amazing picture which he or she has entitled, simply, “Hatred.” The picture is of a truck which boasts, not one, but 18 of the most offensive, anti-Muslim bumper stickers you’re gonna see. Clearly calling Muslims “disgusting maggots” makes this driver feel like a tough guy. However, he’s driving a Ford F-150 and, as Howie Long, manliest man ever will tell you, that means he’s a total girlie man.

Stephen Chao was the president of Fox Television for 10 weeks in 1992 before he was fired by Rupert Murdoch for hiring a male model to strip during a speech on Standards and Practices given to Murdoch as well as Dick Cheney. Since then, he’s branched out into all sorts of areas and, apparently, become interested in Reddit. So, a couple of hours ago, he made a post explaining who he was and offering to answer any user-submitted questions. His answers have been as fascinating as his career.

The Stephen Colbert/Reddit mutual love affair continues today in the form of a series of candid (and out of character) responses the TV host gave to questions from the Internet community. When Redditors first started giving money to the charity DonorsChoose to spur Colbert into having a rally, Colbert responded by promising he’d give them an exclusive interview using questions from users if they reached a certain amount ($500,000).

As the outrage against the TSA body scanners and pat downs reaches a boiling point and anyone who is anyone (as well as anyone) gives their opinion, the collective Internet hive mind known as Reddit has thrown in their two cents as well as a pretty clever gauntlet; if President Obama agrees with the TSA that this is necessary, he should send his wife and young daughters through the process.

All through last night, the media section of TeaParty.org, an official Tea Party website, was bombarded with new users who filled the photo section with shocking and offensive pictures (Example: a very, very NSFW photoshop of Sarah Palin. I repeat, NSFW). The pictures were so shocking that the site almost began to look like the outlaw imageboard 4chan. Now, I wonder who could have done it. I wonder…