Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by malloreon on Saturday November 08, 2014 @05:52PM
(#8578399)
I haven't done any outside reading on "Serial" but if you haven't checked it out I highly recommend it.
Also, starting with episode 5, the Slate folks put out a companion series, "Serial Spoiler Special." After listening to each episode, Slate writers talk about the episode. Not just going over facts, but analyzing Serial as a storytelling medium for true crime stories.
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by judk on Saturday November 08, 2014 @11:27PM
(#8579102)
Serial is troubling. It's creepy to have a relatively recent event, with affected people still alive and struggling, used as pop culture entertainment. It's worse than reality TV.
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by waterlesscloud on Sunday November 09, 2014 @02:08AM
(#8579330)
In this case it kinda is. The This American Life format and those like it really are part pop culture entertainment, just dressed up in slightly more tasteful clothing.
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by mintplant on Saturday November 08, 2014 @09:02PM
(#8578820)
> The subreddit has become a recommended resource for anyone listening to the podcast. It boasts 5,638 subscribers as of this writing, but its readers are probably far more numerous. A lot of journalists, I can testify, are watching it closely.
The traffic stats for /r/SerialPodcast are public, and yes, the number of readers is many multiples of the subscriber count.
Amazing that they have 100k+ monthly uniques vs. ~7k registered subscribers. The former number tends to be bigger than the latter for subreddits, but not by a factor of ten!
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by DanBC on Sunday November 09, 2014 @02:04AM
(#8579327)
> Redditors have also long observed what they call an “anti-doxxing policy”, which roughly means they’re against publishing the identifying details of people who don’t want to be identified.
Reddit admins sometimes don't let you post your own information. There have been a couple of subs with directories of useful users and their contact details who've had to remove those directories.
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by SixSigma on Sunday November 09, 2014 @11:15AM
(#8580139)
I belong to such a subreddit. It is forbidden to include any reddit username inposts to try and stop brigading (invading another subreddit en-masse and upsetting people).
We are regularly brigaded ourselves and have waves of mass downvoting. We just collectively find it amusing, karma is really not important and a lot of people use alts anyway.
We are often threatened with being doxxed although I'm not aware of any actual cases.
Our own users are fairly well behaved, as far as we can tell and the sub is the one i feel the greatest sense of actual community.
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by cbd1984 on Sunday November 09, 2014 @06:31PM
(#8581297)
> karma is really not important
It isn't up to the point discussions are buried because every post is downvoted below the threshold. I don't know if mods can stop that or what, but it is a legitimate effect of negative karma.
I also don't know if enough negative karma can cause someone to be hellbanned, or if that requires more manual intervention.
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by l33tbro on Saturday November 08, 2014 @06:41PM
(#8578546)
Is it really "viral"? I think there's probably some kind of confirmation bias going on for the journalist, where participating in the subreddit makes it seem more popular than it is.The series has its moments, but has definitely dragged on way too long.
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by arrrg on Saturday November 08, 2014 @08:28PM
(#8578753)
Very popular without a big marketing campaign. It can also only be used to describe things that are still relatively new. That would be my definition of viral (or the way I perceive that word being commonly used today).
That Serial is just that can easily be argued. (I also very much disagree with you about it dragging on for way too long – and I don’t think qualitative statements like that have anything to do whether or not something is viral anyway. That is just so irrelevant. To me the average quality has been higher than This American Life, and that’s quite the achievement.)
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by raldi on Saturday November 08, 2014 @09:55PM
(#8578951)
> Very popular without a big marketing campaign. [...] That would be my definition of viral (or the way I perceive that word being commonly used today).
Really? From my perception of how the word is commonly used, anything whose popularity is being driven by a marketing campaign is about as unviral as it gets.
Re:Listeners of 'Serial' Turn into Detectives, With Troublin...
by j2kun on Saturday November 08, 2014 @07:01PM
(#8578587)
How exactly are the results troubling? More like, the results have the potential to be troubling. But rather I see people like "Adnan's best friend" doing "ask me" threads on /r/serialpodcast and it doesn't seem harmful at all.
Also, starting with episode 5, the Slate folks put out a companion series, "Serial Spoiler Special." After listening to each episode, Slate writers talk about the episode. Not just going over facts, but analyzing Serial as a storytelling medium for true crime stories.
Also highly recommended.
Serial: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/serial/id917918570?mt=2
Slate's Serial Spoiler Special: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slates-serial-spoiler-sp...
Why do I need to hear the details of most all crimes? The names of victims of crime are totally useless to me.
A journalist would most likely not string the most interesting details of their findings out over 3 months.
The traffic stats for /r/SerialPodcast are public, and yes, the number of readers is many multiples of the subscriber count.
http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/about/traffic
Amazing that they have 100k+ monthly uniques vs. ~7k registered subscribers. The former number tends to be bigger than the latter for subreddits, but not by a factor of ten!
Reddit admins sometimes don't let you post your own information. There have been a couple of subs with directories of useful users and their contact details who've had to remove those directories.
We are regularly brigaded ourselves and have waves of mass downvoting. We just collectively find it amusing, karma is really not important and a lot of people use alts anyway.
We are often threatened with being doxxed although I'm not aware of any actual cases.
Our own users are fairly well behaved, as far as we can tell and the sub is the one i feel the greatest sense of actual community.
It isn't up to the point discussions are buried because every post is downvoted below the threshold. I don't know if mods can stop that or what, but it is a legitimate effect of negative karma.
I also don't know if enough negative karma can cause someone to be hellbanned, or if that requires more manual intervention.
That Serial is just that can easily be argued. (I also very much disagree with you about it dragging on for way too long – and I don’t think qualitative statements like that have anything to do whether or not something is viral anyway. That is just so irrelevant. To me the average quality has been higher than This American Life, and that’s quite the achievement.)
Really? From my perception of how the word is commonly used, anything whose popularity is being driven by a marketing campaign is about as unviral as it gets.
From my perspective the show seems "viral" because I've been telling my friends about it, getting them hooked, and they go on to tell others.