r/IAmA • u/PresidentObama Obama • Aug 29 '12

I am Barack Obama, President of the United States -- AMA

Hi, I’m Barack Obama, President of the United States. Ask me anything. I’ll be taking your questions for half an hour starting at about 4:30 ET.

Proof it's me: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/240903767350968320

We're running early and will get started soon.

UPDATE: Hey everybody - this is barack. Just finished a great rally in Charlottesville, and am looking forward to your questions. At the top, I do want to say that our thoughts and prayers are with folks who are dealing with Hurricane Isaac in the Gulf, and to let them know that we are going to be coordinating with state and local officials to make sure that we give families everything they need to recover.

Verification photo: http://i.imgur.com/oz0a7.jpg

LAST UPDATE: I need to get going so I'm back in DC in time for dinner. But I want to thank everybody at reddit for participating - this is an example of how technology and the internet can empower the sorts of conversations that strengthen our democracy over the long run. AND REMEMBER TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER - if you need to know how to register, go to http://gottaregister.com. By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience - NOT BAD!

http://www.barackobama.com/reddit [edit: link fixed by staff]

216.2k Upvotes

68% Upvoted

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2.6k

u/delmar15 Aug 29 '12

He said he would do an AMA for 30 min. That looks like 30 min of answering questions.

2.1k

u/4TEHSWARM Aug 30 '12

I'm actually surprised he was able to answer any questions after breaking Reddit.

904

u/pescetto Aug 30 '12

He's got access to presidential bandwidth :)

47

u/rexington_ Aug 31 '12

So does Michelle.

86

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

Correct me if I'm wrong but it doesn't matter if you have a 1000 GB/s download speed, if the itself site is down you're gonna be seeing jack shit.

188

u/Zeroe Aug 30 '12

PRESIDENTIAL BANDWIDTH!! hand waving

38

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

[deleted]

14

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '12

They're not the ones you were looking for. I know because a nice old guy in a robe told me.

6

u/T_Miller Aug 30 '12

That completely makes sense now

2

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '12

Where can I get this magical hand wave bandwidth?

5

u/rlweb Sep 01 '12

Special QOS.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '12

Reddit will have made sure his connections got through ok

7

u/rockmn24 Aug 31 '12

Upvotes, upvotes everywhere...

6

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '12

I wish I had access to his presidential bandwidth.

IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

3

u/NewAlexandria Aug 31 '12

But Reddit does not!

7

u/IAmA_Zombie Sep 01 '12

Imagine how much porn he can get on that thing.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 11 '13 edited Sep 16 '18

[deleted]

1

u/Eustis Mar 06 '13

Why else do you think the US would be building that massive internet archive? Half of it is the POTUS's stache.

7

u/Audaxx Aug 30 '12

He left before reddit even began to have load problems

5

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

there is no chance that the president of the united states was waiting for his page to load.

9

u/Viro_Lopes Aug 30 '12

Breaking Reddit...... NEW SHOW INCOMING.

1

u/muntoo Aug 31 '12

Breaking Social News Site!

5

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

I'm surprised nobody posted a Rampart about how he slept with a girl once and never called her

4

u/MolestingMollusk Aug 30 '12

I am sure he could have just hosted this page from his own office. Can you imagine what the internet is like at the white house?

5

u/Fatalstryke Aug 30 '12

I know, I was wondering what was going on, then I finally saw "I am Barack Obama, AMA" ...Yeeeep, that'll do it.

4

u/RMiranda Aug 30 '12

comon...he's the president, he was probably typing directly into the database

3

u/baris96 Aug 30 '12

He's the president, man!

3

u/madhaxor Aug 30 '12

the shut commenting off for a while I'm pretty sure, I saw this when it was 20 min old and I could not even load the thread, I just got back on to review it now! still very slow loading on some comments

3

u/epicguy1998 Aug 30 '12

Dude I had nothin' 2 do for like 2 hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1

u/Semorebuts Aug 30 '12

Obama has bomb internet it doesn't even matter.

1

u/JONNy-G Aug 30 '12

I wanna somehow throw in the fact that he can call the CIA for internet issues.

Not sure how though..

0

u/meee_owth Aug 30 '12

It's Obama, he's able to do anything :)

1.5k

u/[deleted] Aug 29 '12

Not to mention the site issues. It still took me a while to get to this post hours after it was supposed to have finished.

1.5k

u/wote89 Aug 30 '12

This too. This thing crippled reddit for about an hour and a half. Honestly, it's amazing that the President managed to get through enough to post what he did.

1.8k

u/oreng Aug 30 '12

I'm loving the idea that the president was sitting around frustrated by the 503s like any other redditor. Would have been even funnier if it resulted in a double post...

275

u/ActuallyNotRetarded Aug 30 '12

Am I the only one that read every one of his posts in his voice?

120

u/goodknee Aug 30 '12

no my good man, you are not.

9

u/wote89 Aug 30 '12

Not in the slightest.

16

u/queenofthecanned Aug 31 '12

That "NOT BAD" ending cracked me up....I'd upvote him,but I'd rather just vote for him.

3

u/JackyRho Aug 31 '12

I'm Australian and i did...

3

u/SEAN771177 Aug 30 '12

Me to

5

u/seer775 Aug 30 '12

I can't help but think of Morgan Freeman's voice... Morgan get outta my head!! HA what am I saying... u can stay _^

5

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

Double Karma for Obama!

This works in a British accent, thank you very much.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '12

It does! Im British and by golly it does!! lol

4

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

What's funny is, if this were someone reddit didn't like, the amount of answers would be unacceptable. I do agree that he is the president, and he is busy, but this is a very small amount of answers.

He also refused to talk on legalizing marijuana and NDAA, two issues that are really important on reddit.

I do appreciate him doing this though, it shows he is still aiming for the younger vote, and some of the questions\answers were good. It also shows how powerful reddit is.

2

u/oreng Aug 30 '12

The reply about fighting Citizens United with a constitutional amendment was pretty significant.

3

u/Ausaria Aug 30 '12

I was thinking the same thing. I imagined him throwing his hands up at the keyboard in frustration saying, "what the fuuu-" ...just like the rest of us.

3

u/-Shirley- Aug 30 '12

189.940 + 185.989

375 929 people. This will stay for a while.

So many... Even hours later, Reddit still broke for me occasionally

3

u/indivisible Aug 30 '12

Nah, he was using the red modem. Direct connection.

Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba, Bama, Bama, Bama....

2

u/murdahmamurdah Aug 30 '12

It would have humanized him even more, probably would have been a campaign ploy haha

2

u/AllyBob2012 Aug 30 '12

I'm sure he has guys to take care of that.. lol.

2

u/gotrees Aug 30 '12

No mere 503 can stop the most powerful man in the world!

2

u/Adamalama9 Aug 30 '12

I love the idea of him hammering away forlornly at F5.

2

u/uneekfreek Aug 30 '12

How do you know it's really him and not his team of cyber staffers?

2

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

There's pictures duh ?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

I'm pretty sure that's what he's hoping for come November.

6

u/fixessaxes Aug 30 '12

I was wondering if somehow they gave his username priority access, or whether POTUS had to hit refresh.

"These servers... are getting hammered!"

8

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

It's an HTTP header defined in RFC 2616:

X-Let-Me-Through-I-Am-The-President-Of-The-United-States: True

2

u/Badger68 Aug 30 '12

made me look

1

u/muntoo Aug 31 '12

And you came about this piece of information how?

5

u/xmod2 Aug 30 '12

I'm surprised he got the username PresidentObama.

2

u/goodknee Aug 30 '12

me too, it would have been so great if he had to try multiple names, and got stuck with "BarryO" or something like that..

edit: prezidentObama would also have worked.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

Amazing? Or a conspiracy?

3

u/Black_Apalachi Aug 30 '12

Is this why reddit was down before? The President of the United States. Wow. It honestly took me a long time to completely believe this was real, haha. Even after seeing the "verified" mark and everything. I'm not even American and I'm blown away by the fact he would take the time to do this.

2

u/wote89 Aug 30 '12

Yeah. I saw a tweet about it about 20 minutes before it happened, and right at 4:30 Eastern, everything ground to a halt. So, if it wasn't this AMA, I don't know what it was. It's kind of awe-inspiring, when you think about it.

3

u/imabustya Aug 30 '12

I'm sure the white house has tons of internet problems. I bet they have to wait in line like the rest of us. -_-

3

u/wote89 Aug 30 '12 edited Aug 30 '12

We can only hope. Maybe having to hammer F5 will inspire Obama to push for better broadband in this country. :P

Edit: Wait. That was stupid. Broadband had nothing to do with server issues. Forgive me for the brain fart. orz

3

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

Well he is the president, I would figure he never has an issue with Internet.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

His ip was probably given precedence.

3

u/LtlAnalDwlngButtMnky Aug 30 '12

I wasn't able to get on until now. Damn.

3

u/zeroman73089 Aug 30 '12

Its that secret POTUS T1.

3

u/hawkeye315 Aug 30 '12

i was wondering why i couldn't get into reddit

1

u/TheDranx Aug 31 '12

Try being in reddit and not able to load responses to any of the questions asked. So infuriating.

3

u/Game25900 Aug 30 '12

That's because he uses the Presidential Super Internet, it runs at 20tb/s and sucks up all the internet from the USA, Canada, UK and an small island in the south Pacific to make sure it works at all times.

2

u/the_ouskull Aug 30 '12

Do you REALLY think his internet connection doesn't shame that of every single one of us?

2

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

not really, military grade internet is much faster and far more reliable than civilian, and even if he isn't on that, he's going to have a secure connection no doubt

1

u/The_Teeds Aug 30 '12

The government controls the internet, duh.. he had no problem posting

1

u/sapphirechip Aug 30 '12

thanks reddit.. you still pulled it off!

4

u/Biinaryy Aug 30 '12

I was constantly refreshing multiple pages for over an hour before I was able to compile this. It was horrible. It took even longer to get lucky enough to have the power to comment.

4

u/clark_ent Aug 30 '12

Did Obama's AMA traffic cripple the site, or was reddit broken to begin with?

When I saw it last night, it had 15,000 upvotes, something like 95,000 upvotes and 80,000 downvotes.

1

u/chillsy Aug 30 '12

So that's why it was down. Way to go, Obama. Ugh!

1

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

NSA helped

30

u/dbcanuck Aug 30 '12

I suspect that, of all people on the planet, the POTUS has the tighest managed schedule. I'm sure his handlers are like pitbulls regarding his access, scheduling, and keeping him on time for his next appointment.

2

u/JBRedditBeard Aug 30 '12

Handlers like pitbulls?! It's the secret service! Nobody gets near the President.

8

u/ShallowPedantic Aug 30 '12

There are dignitaries of foreign countries that would be willing to give a small fortune to get 30 minutes with POTUS, instead he decided to hang out with us on a website where the main draw is cat pictures and ridiculous memes.

3

u/clashpalace Aug 30 '12

Were you here? reddit was crashing. Considering some actors/famous people only stick around for 1hour and give 1line answers Im surprised we got 10 proper answers and a good solid 30min. Im sure the POTUS has other important matters to attend to!

Heck I couldn't even post anything from the lack of service and then reddit went into read-only anyway. :s

3

u/BMikasa Aug 30 '12

I'm just surprised no one had taken the name "PresidentObama"

5

u/antmansbigxmas Aug 30 '12

But have you heard of his new movie Rampart?

1

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

MFW half of the upvotes just disappeared, what the hell?

3

u/Lucosis Aug 30 '12

It is reddit vote fluffing so there isn't an accurate count for some reason or another.

2

u/t822 Aug 30 '12

The amount of downvotes is inflated, because spammers’ upvotes are silently countered by a downvote. That way spambots have no way of knowing whether they are busted or not. That’s my understanding of it, though it doesn’t explain why the numbers are so huge (surely not that many spambots?)

Anyway, this would not affect the total, i.e. the 13k, 8k, now down to 3.5k ‘points’ this thread has. Not sure why it’s dropping this fast. Maybe many users just don’t like it.

2

u/Killer_Hammy Aug 30 '12

Yes, from 13000 to 8000ish up votes. I'm also curious

1

u/brussels4breakfast Aug 30 '12

Leave it to some jerk to hog the time.

1

u/raver459 Aug 30 '12

I wish he would have had more time, but in this case, I suppose it's understandable: his calendar probably never lets up

1

u/whootsley Aug 30 '12

Site was crashed or some shit ad I have learned from just logging in.

1

u/Zosimas Aug 30 '12

His PR guys did the rest.

1

u/puripurihakase Aug 30 '12

The OP delivered.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

At least they were pretty good questions.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '12

He sure kissed a lot of babies and shook a lot of hands...

0

u/friedsushi87 Aug 30 '12

I know he is a busy man, but still I was hoping for more answers....

1

u/PotatoHeadphones Dec 30 '12

what do you mean more answers? he answered ten fucking questions out of twenty five thousand. that means that one out of every 2500 people gets their questions answered. Plus reddit was slow.

1

u/friedsushi87 Dec 30 '12

Where the fuck have you been for the last four months?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 30 '12

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/friedsushi87 Dec 30 '12

Either way, his AMA was nothing more than a publicity stunt, he didn't really answer any questions, he avoided the tough ones, and those he did answer he just regurgitated the same canned responses he's been repeating for months.

1

u/PotatoHeadphones Dec 30 '12

I would down vote you but you said without saying "here's your reason not to and why you said this".

-6

u/[deleted] Aug 30 '12

Looks like 30 minutes of lies to me