iama
I am a Best Buy Salesperson. I am the writer of famous Twitter account shitmydadsays. I am the creator of Ren & Stimpy. I am Roger Ebert. Ask me anything.

This is the basic premise of IAmA, a recently-added sub-page of the social news site reddit. Reddit usually has its users voting on links to stories and content submitted from elsewhere on the Web, but IAmA takes a different approach: turning the comments page that is part of every submission into a large-scale virtual interview.

Instead of a link to a news story and comments about that news story, people in reddit’s user base are encouraged to pick an interesting part about themselves and answer questions about it. There are no restrictions: people can answer questions about their job, a previous experience they’ve had, even their sex life. Other reddit members will then ask questions and vote on other’s questions, and the most popular will drift to the top where the submitter will be able to answer them easily.

“I Am A, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal,” reads the title of the site’s homepage. That slogan comes across with the variety of the submissions. On the homepage now there are IAmAs from ex-Scientologists, former NFL athletes, Jeopardy contestants and even a federal lobbyist.

The NFL IAmA about a very retired Packers player from the 60s who worked under coaching legend Vince Lombardi has hundreds of questions and thousands of views. The former place-kicker talks about his Super Bowl win, the medical issues surrounding pro football and the differences in the sport now versus the ’60s. If you’re wondering what an 80 year old man is doing on an Internet forum, all you need to know is that it’s his grandson relaying the questions to him and answers back to the Internet.

“Lombardi didn’t put up with a lot of bullshit,” he wrote. “Apparently one guy had his agent call Lombardi to negotiate his salary. Lombardi promptly hung up, dialed a number and traded the guy to another team.”

Musician Steve Vai submitted an AMA so people could ask questions about his Grammy Award-winning recording career.

Musician Steve Vai submitted an AMA so people could ask questions about his Grammy Award-winning recording career.

While most of the IAmA’s are from everyday people who have an interesting part of themselves they wish to share, celebrities and other well-known people have also popped up to answer questions, either on their own or through a correspondent friend. In September 2009, a post was quickly rushed to the top of the page. “I am a Grammy Award-winning career musician who has been actively playing and recording for almost three decades. AMA.” (AMA stands for ask me anything)

The musician didn’t reveal himself, but answered questions about his Grammys, the major label recording industry, his stance on the music file-sharing debate, and his personal favorite music. Before long, the reddit userbase determined that the musician in question was Steve Vai, a former guitarist for Frank Zappa and solo artist with 14 albums.

The unveiling prompted Vai to post a photo confirming that it was indeed him, shown here. Once people knew who he was even more questions came about Frank Zappa and his career in particular. Although he didn’t get to every question, it was still an incredible thing for so many people to be able to ask questions of a famous musician.

IAmA shows a different side of this hyper-connected world we live in. While it seems like most user-driven content lacks real depth, this gives everyone the chance to feel important and share their lives in a way that goes a whole lot further than starting a blog that nobody reads or posting a badly written comment on a news article. Everyone can learn something from reading about other people’s interesting lives, and everyone can also learn something about themselves by answering others’ questions. There’s a reason that IAmA won the best reddit community of 2009 award.