Thursday, August 28, 2014

blog post #471


reddit is full of beautiful things. Hi-res photos of stunning vistas, delectable culinary shots, and exotic wild animals frolicking in their natural habitats are known to frequent the front pages of reddit. We even have an extensive network of SFW Porn communities that are havens for fostering the most breathtaking things you’ll ever see, from awesome weather shots to perfectly organized cables.

But not every vista, meal, or goat can be extraordinary.  In fact, more times than not, they are simply mediocre, mundane, or otherwise unremarkable. And then… then, there are some that are downright shitty.
And it’s this type of diversity on reddit that we are here to showcase today! Fortunately, we have some amazing communities dedicated to the absolute shittiest of worldwide phenomena. You can explore shitty scenery! Shitty advice! Shitty… robots!

So, without further ado, visit some of our communities dedicated to the shittiest of the shitty things, and celebrate the things that make us say.... ew.
And a handy multi with even more!

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

We’re back for more Extra Life. Come join us.

extra-life.jpg
Extra Life raised over $4 million in 2013. reddit helped!

Over here at reddit, we like playing video games and we like helping kids. That makes Extra Life one of our favorite events of the year - what could be better than a 24-hour video game marathon to raise money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals? We’re bringing Team reddit back for round 4, and we want your help to make it our best year yet.

How does it work?

The Extra Life marathon works like other charity marathons: participants sign up, pledge to complete the event, and convince their friends and family to sponsor them to fund the cause. Most marathons involve running, biking, or some other physical challenge -- what makes Extra Life unique is that you’re asked to complete 24 hours of video gaming! Children's Miracle Network Hospitals are a highly reputable international charity program whose focus is helping treat sick kids regardless of a family's ability to pay.

We want to set a new high score

Last year, team reddit’s 785 participants raised over $90,000 for CMN Hospitals. Our memory is a little fuzzy, but we think we didn't try hard enough.

Special thanks to /u/EditingAndLayout for this gif

So this year, we want to go higher. Let's break that $100,000 mark! There’s no reason we can’t go higher, but we need your help. If saving lives isn’t enough to encourage you to sign up, participants on team reddit who raise over $100 will earn 2 free months of reddit gold. So help us hand out more one-up mushrooms this year than ever before. Sign up and join team reddit!

Ready to get started?

To join, go to extra-life.org/team/reddit and click "Join This Team". Of course, feel free to join a different team instead, if you prefer. As part of sign up, you’ll choose which hospital will benefit from your participation. Once you’re signed up, spread the word! Tell your friends & family, post to Facebook, Twitter; send messages via ICQ, or write a letter. Reach for that $100 mark! It’s as easy as getting ten friends to donate $10. Then, come join us in /r/ExtraLife to find people to play with during the event and discuss fundraising strategies.

Come October 25th, 8 AM in your local time, grab your controller, keyboard or gaming dice and get going! You’ll be playing for 24 hours. You don’t have to do it all in a row (or even on that day) if your schedule won’t allow it - make up the hours later or earlier if needed. You’re on the honor system here, and we trust you.

Don’t want to game, but still want to help kids?

Helping out is easy. Visit the team reddit page, pick someone out from the roster, and donate to their cause! And on October 25th, check in on our Twitch stream to cheer us on! reddit, Extra Life and the Children’s Miracle Network hospitals really appreciate your support. Happy gaming!

Further Info

About Extra Life
Extra Life FAQ
About Children's Miracle Network Hospitals
Team reddit
/r/ExtraLife

Monday, August 25, 2014

3rd Annual Global reddit Service Day & Global Cardboard Challenge are coming October 11th

/r/Seattle GrSD

Global reddit Service Day is a day to have fun and give back to your local community, and it's less than 2 months away (Saturday, October 11th).

Find your local subreddit HERE
List of local GrSD events HERE

This will be the 3rd year of GrSD, and while many local subreddits had awesome service events, organizing volunteer events for large groups of people is really hard. There just weren't enough events to match the interest from local users. So this year, we've partnered with the Imagination Foundation so that local organizers can plug into their Global Cardboard Challenge events. 
October 11th, 2014 will also be the Global Cardboard Challenge's 3rd Annual 'Day of Play.' This day marks the 3rd anniversary of a surprise flashmob that reddit helped put together for a creative 9-year-old's cardboard arcade (original reddit Caine's Arcade flashmob post).
reddit users then helped the Caine's Arcade video go viral, which helped raise over $239,000 for Caine's College Fund and inspired kids to start making their own cardboard arcades. Parents and educators started sharing pictures, and a few days later a non-profit to foster creativity in more kids like Caine was started. This became the Imagination Foundation, whose goal is to foster and support creativity for kids throughout the world, and the Global Cardboard Challenge was their first program.



While the event is simple, it really helps grow the creative confidence of the kids who take part. Educators are using the challenge to create a fun and engaging curriculum, and local organizers have used it to raise tens-of-thousands of dollars for various causes. They are also partnering with National Headstart to introduce 30,000 pre-school kids to STEM, largely in underserved communities.

One of the things we love about this event is that it can be as big or as little as you want it to be - whether your reddit meetup group is huge, or just a few people, you'll be able to plug into and volunteer at an excellent, pre-organized event in almost every city around the world. If you want to organize your own park clean-up, animal shelter refurbishing, or other volunteer event that is awesome, but now you also have a fun and meaningful option to "help kids all over the world to build something amazing out of cardboard, recycled materials and imagination" on October 11th.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

reddit's creative communities with added statue selfies

Dream Big by /u/youngluck

"Think left and think right
Think low and think high.
Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”

One thing that never fails to surprise us is the limitless potential of the reddit community. Like this example of art imitating life. This is why we wanted to highlight the creative side of reddit. Art and Culture are an integral part of all communities, and the reddit community is no different.

Art, being subjective, can mean different things to different people. One look at r/art and /r/museum shows the reddit community obviously has an interest in looking at things that make their eyes and brain feel nice. We want to share only a tiny selection of the subreddits on offer. This is only the tip of the iceberg of the various art related subreddits that exist.

Painting/Drawing: You may have heard of the popular /r/redditgetsdrawn, where redditors draw redditors, but there are a number of other subreddits dedicated to the appreciation and creation of different types of artwork. Here are a few of our favorites:

Creation/Design: Have a look at how creative people can be when it comes to items of a 3D variety.

Creative writing subreddits: A place where walls of text (be they beautifully written, funny, moving or thought provoking) are encouraged rather than apologised for, and where tl:dr is rarely an issue.

Photography: A picture is worth 1000 upvotes.

Everyone has their own creative outlet, and nearly every creative outlet has its own subreddit. If you can’t find a subreddit that captures your creative vision it might be time to start a movement for yourself. If you want to learn more there are plenty of resources from the /r/WritingPrompts wiki to /r/learnart. We hope you found this blog post inspirational. Go forth on reddit and make art!

Monday, August 11, 2014

Take me out to the [insert sport here] game

Football season is about to kickoff, and we’re excited for all of the things that will be happening on and off the field this year. For the past four years, /u/krispykrackers has organized a “grow your NFL team’s subreddit” contest. Each year has been a great success, with much trash talking, camaraderie, and warm fuzzy feelings for everyone (no matter how poorly your team did IRL). In addition, many individual team subreddits have score prediction contests for each game and weekly TRASH TALK and game discussion threads.

Football isn’t just about the NFL, though. College football season starts at the end of August and has just as vibrant a community on reddit as the NFL. If you love marching bands, passionate fans, and intense rivalries, then head on over to /r/CFB and tailgate all week long. You can find weekly game threads, season long pick’em challenges, AMAs with coaches and players, charity donation drives, and so much more. Don’t forget to subscribe to your school’s subreddit to keep the collegiate experience going!

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sports fans on reddit. /r/worldcup and /r/soccer are two of the largest sports subreddits on the site and they both have very active userbases. You can find all of the game scores and rankings in their sidebar, along with a very helpful link to a time converter so you won’t miss games no matter what time zone you are in!

Summertime in much of North and Central America wouldn’t be the same without hours upon hours of baseball every day. /r/baseball hosts daily discussions in their Around the Horn threads, weekly baseball history updates, and an up-to-date list of division standings and daily game information. Be sure to check out the individual team subreddits so you can support your favorite team!

Basketball season is rapidly approaching, and /r/NBA has been getting ready for the upcoming season ever since the playoffs. The moderators hosted a thread that updated as players were selected during the NBA draft back in June. They host game and TRASH TALK threads in which hundreds of users participate, and users can be found offering excellent advice and recommendations for March Madness (the annual college basketball tournament that is held in March) and posting personal experiences they have had because of the NBA.

\

/r/hockey is like a beacon of light during those cold, dark winter months. The mods host a number of contests throughout the season (score prediction contests and picture of the day contests, among others), hold gameday threads, and much more. Users submit great game recaps and videos of unbelievable saves and amazing goals.

If you’re a tennis fan (or even if you’re not) be sure to subscribe to /r/tennis. Get excited, because the US Open starts at the end of the month, and you’ll want to see all the ridiculous shots, inside jokes, and amazing rallies in the weeks to come.

/r/NASCAR, though small, has one of the most dedicated fan-bases out there. Many of you should remember the time when they raised $55,000 in dogecoin to sponsor a racecar. The subreddit holds weekly charity donation drives, up-to-date race times and standings, and a tight-knit community.

One thing in particular that we love about all of these subreddits is the attention to detail in all of the CSS that the mods do. They have some of the most interactive CSS that can be found on the site, like drop-down menus of team names, different types of CSS filters you can turn on and off, extensive flair lists so you can show off your team loyalties, and easy access to tools and information about team standings and divisions. The mods are true fans, dedicated not only to the sport, but to the subreddits that they maintain dedicated to them.

Finally, if your subreddit (sport-related or otherwise!) is interested in setting up a contest with reddit gold prizes for the winners please let us know. This would also be a great time for subreddits to test our new reddit live feature for game day threads.

We know we haven’t covered all of the sports subreddits that are out there, so please feel free to share your favorite sports team and sports subreddit in the comments!

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

reddit acts of kindness

real-life karma part 2: now with more good!
It’s been almost a year since our first blog post commemorating some of the incredibly inspiring moments created by the reddit community, and since then, there have been countless inspiring moments taking place.




We wanted to share a few of our favorite latest acts of kindness with all of you below:
o   A young man reaches out on behalf of a childhood friend who was put in a coma by a car accident seeking to make contact with the band The Offspring: the community rallies together to help make that possible.

o   The /r/ComicCon community joins forces to help a reddit user in need be able to attend the San Diego Comic-Con of their dreams.

o   The /r/Art community provided kind words of support to a six-year old girl who won a medal at the State Fair.

o   A little boy with a brain tumor only wants one thing to help encourage him during treatment: letters. users around the world send more than 1,000 letters to him.

o   A grieving father reached out to reddit after his baby daughter passed away, asking for help in preserving his baby’s photo forever. The community responded in a way he never could have anticipated.

o   A reddit user receiving treatment in the hospital by himself reaches out to the community on /r/pics and finds friendship.

o   /r/Fitness saves the life of a man with a life-threatening case of Rhabdomyolysis,  a condition that creates breakdown of muscle fibers by identifying the cause and encouraging him to seek treatment.

o   In the UK, a 90-year-old veteran whose funeral was slated to have no one attending has a plea posted on reddit to /r/Pics, with the community volunteering to attend all together and hundreds showing up.


o   A user in Austin reaches out to /r/Assistance in need of help making their rent and basic necessities for their young family and the community helps them barter and find their way.

These are just a few of some of the thousands of incredibly inspiring random acts of kindness we saw on reddit.
Would YOU like to do something easy to give back right this second? We’ve launched our redditgifts for the teachers exchange which helps support classrooms in need. There is a huge need for GIVERS to sign up: so far we have over 2,000 more teachers signed up to receive supplies than donors--that's a HUGE gap we need to fill and shows just how much your help is needed.  

You can register to donate supplies here: http://redditgifts.com/exchanges/redditgifts-teachers-2014/
And if you’ve seen something on reddit we should celebrate that didn’t make it into the blog post--feel free to note it in the comments. On behalf of all of us, we thank you for being a part of this community.

Friday, August 01, 2014

Bring us your tired, your weak, your jobseekers!

Among many other things, the reddit community has proven itself to be a handy place to ask for job application advice, as well as one for providing tips and tricks of landing one.
Nearly a month ago, curious redditor /u/TheYarizard pondered to /r/AskReddit, “Reddit, Can we have a reddit job fair?”

What happened afterwards was a feat of pure brilliance, and we’re celebrating the replies and support that came from the responses. The post attracted some incredibly interesting people with fascinating professions. It was graced by the likes of speech-language pathologist, a medical librarian, a Chief Metallurgist and Heat Treat Manager, and lots of others. Thank you to all those who illustrated your diverse array of interesting workplaces.

Furthermore, we'd like to enthusiastically highlight the subreddit that this post birthed — /r/JobFair, where "you can post your job in an AMA style-format and answer questions regarding your job."
We've already had some super interesting job AMAs from beekeepers, locksmiths (could have used your help with that safe, man), butchers and body piercers. The community already has nearly 8k subscribers (and could easily surpass that mark once this blog post goes live), and it's is only 29 days old!

In addition to this amazing community effort, we're excited to pitch in our support as well.
Not only do we have current job openings (omg!) that we encourage you to apply for, we've also aggregated some lists of communities dedicated to providing help and resources on applying for jobs, as well as places to look for job openings in general and specific fields. Here is a handy subreddit multi for you to subscribe to and tailor to your particular interest, containing the following:

Getting Employed/Guidance:

Just Jobs:

Jobs for digital currencies:

Dev jobs:

Specific Fields:

We've also compiled a list of subreddits dedicated to location-based employment help. Find your area and subscribe!

Country-wide jobs:

Province-wide jobs:

State-wide jobs:

City-wide jobs:

It's awesome and humbling that so many redditors feel so passionately about helping those who are going through the unpleasant and often frustrating experience of unemployment, and choosing the platform we provide to find solutions. We hope this you found this helpful, and so without further adieu, feel free post your own job-fair type AMAs, other communities dedicated to helping the unemployed, job openings that you currently know of, and as usual, your thoughts and discussion.