Woody Harrelson Learns About Reddit The Hard Way.

        Once upon a time, there was a thing called a "laptop". However, this "laptop" was merely shorthand for "laptop tray" and it was used to stop your dinner and your sofa becoming one while you watched the Generation Game. Back then, there was such a thing as the Internet, but it was rarely used as "I browse the internet" translated from Computer-speak to English as "I'm going to die a virgin, aren't I". This is a crazy idea to me, you see. The idea of someone working an office-y job without the Internet blows my mind! I mean, I would never get anything done at all if I had to, say, organise a meeting with people by ringing each and every one of them to confirm? I just want to type "meeting at 11. Biscuits available" and be done with it, thus leaving me with more time to think about important matters, like do Pigeons get dis-orientated by the way they wobble their heads while they walk, or why I always seem to wake up 10 minutes before my alarm, like my brain has a pocket-watch or something. Whatever, the lack of Internet is crazy enough, but I really can't get around the idea of lack of computer! I mean, I can't even imagine doing anything if all I had in front of me was a typewriter, and a biro. What can you do with that, besides maybe put on one of those hats with a cardboard "PRESS" thingy in it and pretend to be a 1920's journalist while saying, in gangster-voice "what a scoop, scheee".



        However, we have the Internet now that plugs into a toaster, so it can toast the days weather report into your breakfast, obviously (can't find a link, but it was on Tomorrow's World many years ago, and Peter Snow mentioned it, so it's clearly true). Using the internet is totally normal for me, but can you imagine if you were in fact 80? Today's world would seem like the most confusingly surreal place! Growing up in a world where daily wireless (radio, not fibre-optic Broadband) reports that Jerry is getting bolshy again was the only news and people centred their furniture around a fireplace rather than a plasma-screen means that hearing someone tapper-tapping on an eye-fone while facebooking people while tweeting about their weather-based toast, is like you waking up tomorrow and finding out everyone teleports into work, or your neighbour has run out of oil for his spaceship. But that's ok because he can make his own with a can of Coke and some baked beans, because technology is that confusing. If you're a millionty years old, then you're excused from fully understanding today. My grandparents, for example, still shop by leaving their house and actually visiting the premises where they store the goods for sale! They still think Amazon is just a tree amusement park in South America with a water feature, rather than an online shopping centre. No, old people are excused not understanding any of this.

        People who are paid good money to understand it, however, don't have any excuse. Take, for example, Woody Harrelson. Bless 'im, poor Woody, born with a first name that is a euphemism and a girl's middle name (It's Tracy. There, that saved you going on Wikipedia), he does his best pretending to be other people. Now, in the movie game, it's sad to say that Woody is merely a small (yet well paid) cog in a big machine. He's there to perform, and be a famous face in order that you or I say "honey, that guy with the funny name has another film. Shall we?" and all is well. I'm sure performing is fun, but what is not fun is trying to promote the film. Woody takes stuff like this seriously, and will endlessly sit in those horrible scarlet chairs being interviewed a selection of pre-arranged questions while a big cardboard cut-out of the film poster sits behind you. I suppose you have to, seeing as he was probably paid some millions of dollars for his time, so I suppose you get used to the odd "edgy" question (that's not edgy, but justifies the title "THE MOST REVEALING INTERVIEW IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE") where he would giggle, then bring the question back to the film. It's all very orderly, and amazingly boring. I don't like any of this "E" Channel rubbish because I don't like being sold to, but hey; it makes the studios gazillions of dollars, so, why not.

        Then one day, some publicist decided to say "Hey, woody , have you heard of the internet? This was probably the move that cost said Publicist his career.

        You see, there's a website on the Internet called Reddit. Reddit is another "user-generated content" site, so users can upload links to pictures (usually of cats), links to videos, links to.... well, anything really.  I've briefly mentioned Reddit before, but this time I want to refer to a specific part of Reddit. See, Reddit is divided up into "subreddits" depending on what they're for. Funny content goes into the Funny subreddit, videos of anything can be put into the video subreddit, people who want to ask a question, get opinions or simply vent their situation can write it up on the AskReddit subreddit. It's all very civilised. However, there is a subreddit called IAmA. IAmA (meaning I am a....) is a section where literally anyone with anything interesting to say can post there, followed with the phrase AMA (meaning Ask Me Anything), and anyone can ask them questions, for example, today among many others, a former heroin addict has posted "IAmA former heroin addict with nearly 2 years clean. AMA".  Anyone with an honest question they've always wanted to ask as former heroin addict, maybe what his favourite flavour of ice-cream was, can ask away. Another here is a girl who works at a brain-injury rehab! Also, celebrities go on IAmA, so their fans can ask them many questions, from the banal to the awkward. American comedian Louis C.K. did an IAmA a while ago, and it went down a storm with over 9,000 comments, and Brit survivalist Bear Grylls did one as well.

        "AH", Woody's Publicist thinks. "Maybe we can use this Reddit thingy as another sort of hollywood interview, and bring a quick 15 minute round of questions directly to the public". So off he goes to explain to Woody about it, and he just has to answer a few questions about the film and off he goes with lots of new people who are going to go and see him in his new movie. So, off Woody goes to Reddit, sets up an IAmA, and off he goes. To date, over 10,000 questions have been asked!

        Now, it's obvious that not everyone is going to get an answer, but how many questions did he actually reply to? 15.

        Yes, that's right, 15 answers in as many minutes. This, as you can imagine, really annoyed the hell out of quite a lot of people. Just when people were getting annoyed at his lack of answering questions, it turned out that his answers were all to promote his new movie Rampart!!! Questions about what he likes to do in his spare time, what his favourite meal is, what he thinks of Obama, and even the ice-cream question went unanswered. The ones that were answered were almost crazy! For example, it turns out that the answer to what his least favourite, most favourite, most challenging and easiest movie role ever was... yep: Rampart! Really, Woody? After only 15 minutes, he'd gone away to hide from the barrage of relentless criticism about him treating his fans like idiots for saying "I'm Woody Harrelson, Ask Me Anything" when he meant Ask Me Anything (as long as it's about my new film, because I'm only interested in promoting that rather than speaking to any of you). It's like winning a meal with your favourite star only to find out that they say nothing else except "Go pay to see my latest flick! Go pay to see......." You'd get very annoyed, very quickly at the meal being treated as a mere marketing exercise, rather than a way of "giving back" to the fans. That's ignoring how things got much worse, when someone accused him of crashing a high-school prom, sleeping with a girl (who was apparently a virgin) before scarpering and never calling. Not only did he not respond well, but he tried to turn the questions back to plugging his new film! Oh dear.....

        So he's now the subject of much mockery on the internet. He looks (at best) like a sell-out and (at worst) like someone who tricks a girl into bed then bolts. At least there's one fact we now know; there's a publicist out there, right now, who's currently proof-reading his CV. So if you're going to try and use something like this that's totally new to you, make sure you actually read up on it first. People on the Internet don't pull punches, as Woody Harrelson has found out.

        Or if you're like the aforementioned elderly, don't worry about bothering yourself with the Internet. It's mostly filled with cat pictures anyway.

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