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The Internet asked, and Joel DeSpain delivered.

A Reddit user posted a request last month for an AMA with the Madison Police Department public information officer, who has gained national fame for his humorous, literary interpretations of MPD crime reports.

AMA, short for “ask me anything,” is an online question and answer session that has become one of the most popular features of Reddit, an online community with millions of users.

AMAs can be legendary, like President Barack Obama’s historic appearance, or they can be disastrous, like actor Woody Harrelson’s (or more likely, his publicist’s) ill-fated attempt to use the platform to promote a movie. Some are inexplicably fascinating, like this now-famous AMA with a vacuum repair technician.

A previous request for a DeSpain AMA came up on Reddit about a year ago. According to comments, he was interested, but the timing was off -- the request came around the same time as the swearing in of MPD Chief Mike Koval as well as an officer-involved shooting.

This time, however, the stars aligned. DeSpain tells Isthmus he learned about his Internet summons a few weeks ago from a coworker, and after learning what Reddit is all about, DeSpain decided the AMA could be a useful outlet for him to educate the community about MPD and his job.

“It was definitely a different experience,” says DeSpain, a former WISC-TV reporter who describes himself as a “manual typewriter” kind of guy.

“I’ve always thought my job was to let people know what the people who work in this department are all about,” he says. “I enjoy sharing those stories.”

Friday’s AMA began at 11 a.m. and quickly amassed more than 150 upvotes and nearly 130 comments -- significantly more than most posts in the Madison subreddit ever get.

"I found it a little exhausting," DeSpain admits. But he says it was fun. "I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks."

Questions ranged from general inquiries about DeSpain’s job duties, writing approach and inspirations to more personal topics like his favorite local restaurant (Sa-Bai Thong), his preferred Wisconsin beer (Spotted Cow) and his most embarrassing incident (toss-up between doing the Polar Plunge in a wedding dress and getting caught out-of-bounds by ski patrol in Montana as a teenager...with his pants down).

Others were more philosophical:

Another user asked for DeSpain's take on Madison's struggle with homelessness:

And DeSpain revealed his dream writing projects:

Most of the AMA questioners were unreserved DeSpain fans, but at least one user questioned his light-hearted approach:

DeSpain says he approaches his job with sensitivity and feels badly if people take offense. And there have been reports in which he regrets taking a lighter tone or publishing a suspect's name -- he points to one incident about a man who posed as a restaurant manager and cooked himself a cheeseburger and fries while a confused employee called corporate (and eventually 911). The story got national attention, but DeSpain later learned that the suspect had a mental illness.

Still, few can argue that DeSpain has penned some classics. Some of his favorite incidents include the finding of a suspected suicide note that turned out to be a poem by Christina Rossetti and the 30 sets of clothes found in a park that some took to be a sign of the Rapture.

After all, so much of police work is heavy stuff, DeSpain says.

"We should all laugh once in a while."