Farhad Manjoo explains the increasingly influential role of Reddit, the popular crowd-sourcing site:
In many ways, Reddit is a more accessible, less vulgar version of 4Chan, the meme-spewing online redoubt of the Web’s most vicious trolls. The two sites differ, though, in that Redditors aren’t just in it for the lulz. While 4Chan is for nihilists, Reddit users get wrapped up in the political fights of the day. In 2008, the site became the Web’s most pro-Obama destination that wasn’t funded by the campaign itself. But Redditors’ political awareness has peaked in the last couple of months with Occupy Wall Street and the Stop Online Piracy Act.
That the Occupy movement and SOPA got Redditors riled up isn’t surprising. OWS’ simple, us-vs.-them message jibed with Redditors’ underdog sympathies, while the piracy bills confirmed the site’s suspicion that nobody in government nobody in government understands the Internet. During OWS, Reddit became the source of the movement’s enduring memes, including the Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop. It was an online counterpart to Zuccotti Park—a place where people who had no real-life connection to the movement could add their virtual support.
The Dish 