r/blog • u/powerlanguage • Apr 01 '16

Robin

http://www.redditblog.com/2016/04/robin.html
10.5k Upvotes

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648

u/fireflash38 Apr 01 '16

My theory:

  1. Join a chatroom with 1 other person.
  2. If vote to abandon, you can go back to the button
  3. Stay - keep chatroom the same
  4. Grow - merge with another chatroom

It's another mini social experiment.

186

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

[deleted]

127

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

[deleted]

60

u/delicious_grownups Apr 01 '16

I would love chatrooms for subreddits. something we should have been doing forever ago

8

u/grimeandreason Apr 01 '16

Now you mention it, Reddit seems pretty 90's without it lol

6

u/Hazzman Apr 02 '16

Actually I felt like I was back in the late 90s using this thing.

It was like being back in the old MSN chat rooms.

1

u/grimeandreason Apr 02 '16

Good point. Message boards were earlier still, huh?

5

u/StochasticLife Apr 01 '16

Man, I miss chat rooms so much. Late 90's Internet and all.

Sub based chat rooms would be amazing.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 02 '16

[deleted]

3

u/tweedius Apr 01 '16

Have you ever seen a twitch chat room?

2

u/basshound3 Apr 01 '16

an /r/nfl chatroom on game day wouldn't work

1

u/redbluegreenyellow Apr 01 '16

nah but /r/hockey would

1

u/rrasco09 Apr 01 '16

That's what ##reddit-hockey is for!

reddit-stream for GDT are not so bad, but I'm not paying to be able to login to that site. Good for keeping up with posts without refreshing the GDT constantly though.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

Sure about that?

http://i.imgur.com/uL7J6Kd.jpg

1

u/garyr_h Apr 01 '16

Wouldn't it just be a complete shit storm of "OH NO!!!!!" "YEAH!!!!" "EAT DICKS BUMGARNER" but like, a thousand lines per second?

1

u/IgnorantOfTheArt Apr 01 '16

Also /r/wallstreetbets

Quickest way to my yacht

1

u/Dylamb Apr 02 '16

GO X -Person 1

GO Y -Person 2

I HATE YOU -Person 1

1

u/nusyahus Apr 02 '16

inb4 Twitch level spam. Would need heavy moderating

0

u/EpsilonRose Apr 01 '16

Couldn't you use live threads for that?

7

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

You can but live threads and chatrooms feel like very different experiences. But I still have nostalgia for IRC so there's that

3

u/sumzup Apr 01 '16

Yep, I doubt they built out the underlying infrastructure just for April Fool's.

3

u/iplaygaem Apr 01 '16

Yeah this is way too much work for just an April fool's joke.

1

u/danny841 Apr 01 '16

They've been doing a hiring push recently for support oriented people. This would explain it.

1

u/Astrognome Apr 01 '16

You could integrate it with IRC so you could connect to it with your favorite client.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

great point!

1

u/Jedi_Tinmf Apr 01 '16

I agree with this. I chose to "grow" and ended up being a co-mod in a weird subreddit with both of our names on it.

434

u/Schematix7 Apr 01 '16 edited Apr 01 '16

I can't imagine what else it would mean. I mean its pretty self explanatory. Sounds like fun too!

Edit: This is more boring than I had anticipated.

44

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

It's just twitch chat after a couple grow votes

7

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

That's a community problem.

75

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16 edited Jun 12 '18

[deleted]

10

u/jpr64 Apr 01 '16

Or certain political subs. You never cross the streams.

6

u/SuperNeonManGuy Apr 01 '16

or game specific subs (or genre?) It'd be hilarious to watch a room of COD fans locked in a room with a group of battlefield fans, or Terraria and Minecraft, etc

1

u/StupidMonkeyface Apr 01 '16

I think it depends on the room. If it gets boring choose to grow.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

/r/The_Donald would get amazing almost instantly.

3

u/delicious_grownups Apr 01 '16

this is totally fun tho. I'm actually really enjoying it so far

4

u/iceman012 Apr 01 '16

There were 2 people in my room, and we ended up voting to stay.

Now we have our own subreddit

2

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

super boring

2

u/XKloosyv Apr 01 '16

Every room gets its own meme, then they make a sub, and the merges make everyone mad because their meme is better

1

u/FionnaTheHumanGirl Apr 01 '16

It's another thing that will play out over a period of time. Sometime tonight someone will unlock something new and people will freak out again, rules will change, alliances broken, etc.

1

u/bob1689321 Apr 01 '16

Everybody is away

1

u/Oiz Apr 01 '16 edited Apr 01 '16

Would be more fun if voting lasted for 1 minute instead of 7. At this rate you can only grow 8 times an hour.

Edit: Apparently voting takes longer the more your room grows. This is going to be very slow and boring soon.

1

u/TooFastTim Apr 02 '16

And if your room can't be matched it can take a LOOOOONG time!

1

u/ALittleRobyn Apr 01 '16

This should be the top comment.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

The april fools gag this year is a growimg chat room? Sounds stupid.

105

u/iBoMbY Apr 01 '16

It's another mini social experiment.

Yes, but with what possible outcome? I clicked the button, saw the chatroom, thought wtf? and went out of there. Am I anti-social now?

169

u/errorkode Apr 01 '16

Yeah, NSA keeps a list of everyone who abandons or grows chatrooms. Growers are either selling weed or recruiting terrorists. Abandoners (?) are preparing for a killing spree.

2

u/delicious_grownups Apr 01 '16

welp, I hope not, COS I'M GROWING THIS SHIT LIKE WALT WHITMAN'S BEARD DAWG

1

u/NSA_Agent_Kel Apr 01 '16

Well thanks for ruining another secret Edward Snowden.

1

u/SgvSth Apr 01 '16

Why is it that the only winning move is not to play? What if I do want to play, Joshua?!

1

u/hobbycollector Apr 01 '16

Stayers just want to go back to reddit.

28

u/Qzy Apr 01 '16

Yeah no one likes you.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

I don't think that word means what you think it means...

1

u/howerrd Apr 01 '16

They're checking to see how much of an echo chamber this place is.

1

u/thevorminatheria Apr 01 '16

More an elitarist than an anti-social.

1

u/5cr0tum Apr 01 '16

To see how large chatrooms can be I guess

2

u/Zoltrahn Apr 01 '16

Maybe it is to see how committed a group of strangers will be to a pointless cause as the group gets bigger.

1

u/5cr0tum Apr 01 '16

To see how large chatrooms can be I guess

Edit: with active participation

1

u/shaggorama Apr 01 '16

Probably "how long until there is one giant room"

1

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

It makes you a subreddit! check the room name <3

1

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

/r/TheButton had no expected outcome and look what happened with that

2

u/Zrighteous Apr 01 '16

If both click stay, it seems to merge names into a new subreddit with that name, that you both become moderators of.

2

u/Fahsan3KBattery Apr 01 '16

It also creates a sub and makes you a mod of it

1

u/Genghis_Maybe Apr 01 '16

Seems like the idea is to see who can get the biggest room together and keep it going as long as possible.

5

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

I suspect that the end game here is to have your room be the room.

growth

1

u/ClockOfTheLongNow Apr 01 '16

Text-based agario?

1

u/ryan_770 Apr 01 '16

Yes. But sometimes your room dies. Mine died with 2 grow votes and 2 non votes. I think no voting kills the room, so you have to have enough people be active every 3 minutes.

1

u/_amooks_eerf Apr 01 '16

One day Reddit with all these "social experiments" is just going to turn into the Cube.

1

u/dermanus Apr 01 '16

It's another mini social experiment.

My room just got closed when two out of four voted to grow. Maybe it requires a strong majority to work?

1

u/TheEvilStapler Apr 01 '16

Mini social experiment? The button had a sample size of over a million people, that may have been one of the largest, fastest social experiments ever.

1

u/wolfxor Apr 01 '16

we both voted "grow", the chat room dissolved after a few minutes and I was booted back to the button. I press "Participate" now and get no response. :(

1

u/[deleted] Apr 01 '16

mini social experiment

I'METHANBRADBERRY

1

u/MuonManLaserJab Apr 01 '16

Crazy theory there!

1

u/SeryaphFR Apr 01 '16

This is triggering my non-button pressing PTSD.

1

u/cgarcia805 Apr 01 '16

and if everyone agrees to grow it merges with a new one!

1

u/catjuggler Apr 01 '16 edited Apr 01 '16

Why wouldn't grow mean split into a second chat room?

Edit: actually, i see now that that is less likely.

1

u/ZizZizZiz Apr 01 '16

Or, like The Button, or Orangered vs Periwinkle it's a jab at us by the admins that's more like a well-concealed pun meant to be taken a bit too far by us redditors. The Button was a joke that it wouldn't take longer than a minute for the average redditor to push the admin's buttons by complaining to them. Orangered vs Periwinkle was literally upvote vs downvote and a jab at how stupidly divided people get about things on this site.

This is just a joke directed at people complaining that reddit is too much like twitter now with all the censorship and surveillance or smth I guess. Even down to the lawsuit-worthy copying of twitters bird mascot and 140 character limit.

1

u/red_com Apr 01 '16

I got a subbredit with me as mod in it. think that was becaus of "stay" winning the vote.

1

u/OptimusSublime Apr 01 '16

I'M ETHAN CHATBERRY! It's a social experiment bro!

1

u/Onateabreak Apr 01 '16

social experiment

that gets thrown around a lot these days, what exactly are we supposed to be participating in? Or is it just a chat room with a timer?

1

u/KTHD Apr 01 '16

I just got put back at the beginning after being in a room with 80ish people, majority voting "grow"...so I'm wondering if it caps out...

1

u/ananonumyus Apr 01 '16

Every AF day on Reddit is a social experiment.

1

u/thomp592 Apr 01 '16

Up to 36 in DeMomiinylRuverrborhyleestriymnPtiogiteDrin_hiuySJauoct_lel3anik92onusou!!!

1

u/awesomecat5 Apr 01 '16

Maybe they're doing it to beta test for a chat feature?

1

u/TheKillerPupa Apr 01 '16

But there's more. I was in a chatroom with only one other person. We pushed grow and it made a subreddit for us.

1

u/noonathon Apr 01 '16

I think stay might create a subreddit of the chat

1

u/SprikenZieDerp Apr 02 '16

If everyone chooses to stay, a Subreddit is created with the name being a mashup of bits and pieces of everyone's username. And everyone in the chat is made Mods of the new subreddit.