Interview: /r/shanghai moderators kinggimped and Mob_King, Part 2

Give me your elevator pitch for /r/shanghai. Why should I join?

kinggimped: Honestly, the only thing I’d say for /r/shanghai over other regional online communities I’ve seen is what I mentioned above - we’ve tried our best to foster a more positive, community-based environment rather than just using it as a place to vent. I understand as much as anybody that there are certain frustrations that come with living in China, but in many ways I honestly feel pretty blessed to be living in such a vibrant, exciting city. I think it’s a pretty neat place to shoot the shit about Shanghai, without having to shit talk Shanghai. If that’s not your thing, there are plenty of other websites and subreddits that will be!

Mob_King: Hey man, badass tattoos. Thirty-second floor please. So you ever hear about this website Reddit? There’s one for everything - Street Fighter 2, Game of Thrones, Hey man, badass tattoos. Thirty-second floor please. So you ever hear about this website Reddit? There’s one for everything - unicorns asian chicks with big boobs … and there’s also one for Shanghai with about 3,000 people hanging out. There’s heaps of interesting shit there about where to eat and what to do. I even met up with some pretty onto-it people in real life. Check it out - or keep jerking off at the same old websites! Why should I go to the monthly /r/shanghai meetups? KG: I may not be the best person to ask since I haven’t attended one for a while now! In fact, since we started encouraging people to organise their own, there have only been a couple of them. We may have to kickstart those up again. On the whole, I think they’re as good as any kind of random mixer. But it depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re relatively new in the city and don’t know too many people, it’s a great way to meet people in a similar situation. Many people have told me that they’ve met people at a /r/shanghai meet who have stayed good friends in their time here, which I think is awesome. That’s exactly why I started organising them in the first place. If you’ve been here a while and have a well established circle of friends, it’s probably not as enticing a prospect. I found it quite surprising how many girls come along - they’re really not the sausage fests you’d expect. From my own experiences at meets, the fact that it’s a Reddit meetup ends up being kind of inconsequential - nobody (that I’ve met, anyway) talks in memes or spends the whole time redditing on their phones. A lot of people bring non-redditor friends or partners and they get along just fine. Besides asking somebody for their username, Reddit is barely mentioned at all, and most people just see it as an opportunity to have a night out and make new friends. I have met some genuinely awesome people at meetups who I still see and talk to today, but then I’ve also met lots of other people that I didn’t have much in common with. Like I said, it’s like any other mixer of that kind and you get out of it what you put in. MK: Come to the meets - or better yet, organise one yourself and make a cool party! The meet-ups are always fun, and there’s a good mix of younger kids who’ll be going on to different clubs later and older people who’re content to just sit there and get drunk. We have a few more local Chinese faces earlier on in the night and people usually bring a friend or two so it’s not just internauts from /r/shanghai. I have made some good friends at meets, and try to get to every single one because pretty much just meet a whole lot of cool people and talk trash about funny shit. If you could punch one /r/shanghai member in the genitals, who would it be and why? KG: Mob_King for recommending that I watch Mob_King for recommending that I watch Shanghai Calling with a totally straight face, claiming that it’s “totally not that bad” and “really funny in places”. MK: I’m not sure I dislike (or even think about) any particular user often enough to want to punch them in the dick, that’s mean. Your thoughts on Shanghai’s live music scene? Do you have a favorite band? KG: Sadly I don’t really get out to gigs much besides the occasional one-off concert or festival. The only time my favourite band have played in Shanghai I was out of the country, and I don’t know the local music scene well enough to have a favourite. My bad. MK: It’s getting better, I think the overall cultural/arts scene here from int'l stars right down to grassroots scenes is one of the only things holding Shanghai back from being that iconic world-capital for the 21st century. Still, if you get down to a particularly rockin’ night at House of Blues & Jazz on the Bund, or see : It’s getting better, I think the overall cultural/arts scene here from int'l stars right down to grassroots scenes is one of the only things holding Shanghai back from being that iconic world-capital for the 21st century. Still, if you get down to a particularly rockin’ night at House of Blues & Jazz on the Bund, or see Omnipotent Youth Society playing their souls out at MAO Livehouse, that’s going to be a unique, world-class experience. I think Spill Your Guts are absolutely kick arse, and also want to shout out to the Exquisite Delegates , Amine and SunBiz. What type of content would you like to see more of on /r/shanghai? What could you live without? KG: It’s all pretty much fine by me, the upvotes and downvotes decide what gets seen and what doesn’t. Like most of Reddit though, I would love to see more original content. For a city subreddit I think sharing experiences is essential, and it’s something I’ve tried to encourage since the start - if you had a particularly good meal, night out, or any experience like that I think /r/shanghai is a great place to mention it to spread the word. It happens occasionally but I think either people don’t see it as somewhere to do that or can’t be bothered to share.

I love it when people post their own photos and videos: a couple of guys made some amazing timelapse videos, and lately one user has been posting random facts about places in Shanghai. I love that kind of thing. Basically any kind of original content is totally welcomed.

We used to get a lot of posts - anywhere up to half the new threads on any given day - that were the same kind of newbie questions over and over again - “Where is good to eat?”, “I’m in Shanghai for 3 days, what should I do?”, “What should I look out for while I’m there?”, etc. A lot of regulars got pretty tired of the same questions being posted and people being too lazy to search, so I started writing a very barebones FAQ, which filled out over time,and eventually extended to me starting up a wiki ( shanghai.wikia.com ). This became a side project for Mob_King and myself (credit to him for coming up with the name ‘Laowaikipedia’). We both tried to dedicate some time to it every day, and since then it’s grown and grown. Sadly it’s fallen a bit to the wayside in the last few months as both of us are pretty busy with other stuff, but in its current state I think it’s a still a pretty good resource for the most oft-asked questions from new arrivals. It’s still pretty barebones considering just how much there is to write about Shanghai, but it did a great job of its main mission: stemming the tide of repetitive threads and opening the gates for more interesting discussion.

MK: I think all original content is gold. I’d personally like to see more threads like “Hey, I live in Zhabei / Waigaoqiao / wherever and this is what my neighborhood is like”, more mini-travelogues about uncovered treasures that Shanghailanders have found throughout the city. It would also be cool to see more mini-meet-up threads going on - “Hey, we’re playing D&D / frisbee / poker / Starcraft 2 this weekend, anyone wanna join in?"

How do you feel about the recent glut of promoters & content creators – Donnie Does, Split Works, Heatwolves, Mao Livehouse, Kung Fu Komedy, Josh from Stegosaurus?, me, etc. – leveraging Reddit for our own ends? Why are so many people gravitating toward Reddit as a promotional tool at this particular point in time?

KG: To answer the last question first, I’m guessing it’s because Reddit has become far more mainstream nowadays, but it also gives promoters and content creators a direct line to their audience in a way that many other websites don’t. I’m fine with people promoting their stuff on /r/shanghai if they do it in an actual genuine way that somehow embraces or interacts with the community - especially when people offer some kind of discount or deal to redditors.

I would say that this is true for all of Reddit. The people who come in and spam their website or shitty linkbait blogs get downvoted mercilessly, but it’s great when people actually engage with other people instead of just throwing ads in their faces and fleeing. Soapier is an awesome example of pandering to Reddit - some guy’s mother was running a soap business from home and it was about to go under, so as a last-ditch effort they made some Reddit alien-shaped soaps and a few other popular Reddit things (like bacon flavoured soap), threw up a discount for redditors, and posted it on Reddit. Last I heard the mum couldn’t handle the orders from her home any more, she ended up selling the company to an entrepreneur, and they’re still doing great today. It’s just one of many Reddit success stories: they engaged with the community and did it right.

A good example on /r/shanghai was Café del Volcán, who were voted "Best Coffee” in a little “Best of Shanghai” awards thing we did last year. When they found out they’d won our utterly inconsequential popularity contest, they posted a personal thank you note on the subreddit and even included a voucher code ('volcanlovesreddit’) that gave a discount on any order from their website for the next week or so. Even better, they replied directly to comments and questions from users. Super classy guys, and that kind of direct contact is such a great way to get feedback from customers. This has happened a bunch on Reddit and pretty much each time the more genuine their approach, the better the results. I guess people like being treated like people.

As for specific promoters and content creators, I think it’s cool that they’re doing what they do, even if I personally don’t enjoy the content they’re creating or the events they’re promoting. As far as I see, everything is interesting to someone, and the whole point of Reddit is that the good stuff floats to the top. It’s so easy to ignore or hide content you don’t like - people complain about some of the content that is posted because they don’t like it, but the vast majority of them aren’t offering anything original themselves. So long as people aren’t repeatedly spamming the subreddit with the same content, it’s all good by me.

And as far as local bands/musicians go, fuck yeah, go nuts. If we can help talented musicians get heard by more people, I’m all for it.

MK: We discussed this pretty transparently about 18 months or so ago, and we do have a sidebar advert available for charities, redditor causes or redditor discounts. /r/shanghai is not-for-profit, we are volunteers and do not take any money, so if anyone wants to use the sidebar advertising slot we think it’s only fair that you offer up something of value for the community. As for content that’s posted as a thread - well, ultimately the content is dictated by the people and if someone is spamming the site, you’d like to think that they would get downvoted to invisibility. Failing that, we can and do control over-the-top spam. I think two threads max for any promotional event is enough - first the early bulletin to warn everyone 3-4 weeks in advance, and then a follow-up 'bump’ thread because your 3-week-old promotional thread is now buried underneath 3 weeks’ worth of conversation.

We are always keen to provide a direct line for the creators themselves especially when they are already members of the /r/shanghai community. It’s great that we have this platform of nearly 3,000 users within which up-and-coming bands can add their voice and communicate with an audience. I have to admit, it’s less cool when promoters become involved because money becomes involved; but the best way we’ve seen this handled is how someone like young Dutch intern /u/TheRealBobSaget used to throw parties with the codeword “Reddit” or “bacon” at the bar for Reddit-only drinks deals.

I can understand why promoters are leveraging Reddit; it offers a unique chance for a targeted conversation that music messageboards can’t (disparate demographic) and magazine-websites like TimeOut cannot (the focus is still on journalist-created content, rather than user-created).

It’s your last day in Shanghai. What do you do?

KG: Ooh, good question. Get up early and watch the sunrise over the Bund. Meet up with friends for street food breakfast (or dim sum at Lynn if it’s a Sunday). Wander through the French Concession and stop at favourite cafes and bars for coffee/snacks. Poutine at Hungry Lung’s Kitchen for lunch. More wandering, walk through a few parks, do a rooftop bar or two. Dinner and beers at Southern Barbarian or Xibo or somewhere fancier if I’m feeling rich. One last hearty laugh taking the Bund Sightseeing Tourist Tunnel to the other side of the river and buy the shittiest souvenir I could find from the underground market. Fill up a growler with White Ant at the BREW, then maglev to the airport. That’d probably do for me. It’s not exactly 100% China authentic, but after this long here I know what I like.

MK: Jog at sunrise around Suzhou creek area, then head down to one of those Bund-champagne brunch places with an excellent view. Stroll the length of the Bund one last time, cross over to Lujiazui and do an observation deck one last time. Then it’s delicious afternoon beers with all my mates at someplace cozy like Liquid Laundry or one of the Boxing Cats. I’ll have a backpack on filled with one jiao coins; every bum I see gets a fistful of money. I’d probably eat Ding Tai Fung or Jesse’s for a last supper before catching the maglev to Pudong.

Please relate one embarrassing anecdote or fact about yourself:

KG: One time years ago I was on the phone to my boss at the time and finished the call with “love you, bye!”. Fuck, I still cringe when I think about that. I’m having trouble coming up with a recent anecdote, but I’m sure I do things daily that others would consider embarrassing.

MK: When I was a student here ten years ago, I contracted the worst case of food poisoning that I’ve ever had. We were playing C&C: Generals in a cyber cafe and I risked a fart … and that was how a (very sick) grown man shit his pants in a 网吧.