This comes up when you Google "Nate Silver baller." (Photo: Mashable)

Statistical genius and maybe-witch Nate Silver popped by Gawker Media's sports site, Deadspin, today for a little Q&A session. Mr. Silver answered some interesting questions that have been bouncing around the web ever since his mic drop moment, wherein he accurately predicted the electoral outcome of all 50 states.

Mr. Silver wrote that he does plan to make predictions for the elections in 2014 and 2016, and that being suddenly famous is "Completely terrifying. Still, file under 'Good Problems to Have.'"

The most fascinating moment, however, came when an enterprising Deadspin commenter named blackjack870 asked the question everyone else wanted to but decided against in order to preserve their dignity. "What is the statistical probability that a 28 y/o male gets laid this weekend?" he asked, before clarifying, "Specifically, me."

Though many have assumed his mathematical wizardry lends itself innately to social awkwardness, Mr. Silver replied with what was really the only appropriate response:

It's inversely correlated with your likelihood of asking this question.

To that, poor blackjack870 did not respond.

(Photo: Says-it.com)

If websites are one big dysfunctional family, Reddit and Gawker Media are the two drunken uncles who can't stop fighting over who has to pick grandpa up at the airport. Now, the two sites are preparing for a grueling "inter-website war" that threatens to rob netizens of wifi packet rations and provide hours of popcorn-eating fodder.

After news broke on Reddit that Gawker writer Adrian Chen was preparing to publish a post revealing the personal information of Reddit user Violentacrez, a moderator of the controversial subreddit r/creepshots, Reddit began to batten down the hatches. The politics subreddit, which boasts almost 2 million subscribers, announced that it will ban all links to Gawker Media properties--including Gawker, Jezebel and Lifehacker--in response to the news that Mr. Chen may be preparing to publish personal details about Violentacruz.

According to the post:

As some of you may know, a prominent member of Reddit's community, Violentacrez, deleted his account recently. This was as a result of a 'journalist' seeking out his personal information and threatening to publish it, which would have a significant impact on his life. You can read more about it here

As moderators, we feel that this type of behavior is completely intolerable. We volunteer our time on Reddit to make it a better place for the users, and should not be harassed and threatened for that. We should all be afraid of the threat of having our personal information investigated and spread around the internet if someone disagrees with you. Reddit prides itself on having a subreddit for everything, and no matter how much anyone may disapprove of what another user subscribes to, that is never a reason to threaten them.

As a result, the moderators of /r/politics have chosen to disallow links from the Gawker network until action is taken to correct this serious lack of ethics and integrity.

It's worth noting that--despite what was incorrectly reported in Politico--this is not a statement from Reddit administrators or officials, but instead from a Reddit moderator. Reddit moderators are volunteers and do not formally represent or speak for the website.

"Moderators are free to moderate their subreddits as they see fit," Reddit's general manager Erik Martin told Betabeat by email. "They can ban all usernames that start with the letter g if they want."

"The statement is from moderators, who are volunteers," he added, while declining to elaborate on Reddit's official stance on the move.

Other subreddits are following in r/politics's stead, including r/gaming and r/SubredditDrama. r/mensrights has also joined the fight, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

Screenshots between Violentacrez and other Reddit users show that Violentacrez believed Mr. Chen was trying to publish an article about him because of his associations with creepshots, which was set to private before being banned, and r/jailbait, which Reddit admins shut down last year.

Creepshots was just banned, but new subreddits created to fill "the hole in reddit's seedy underbelly" have already begun to pop up. [Updated: Reddit has banned Creepsquad, a related subreddit.]

The feud etween Gawker and Reddit has been brewing for a while. Mr. Chen is vocal about his distaste for Reddit both on Gawker and on his own Twitter page. Last year, he was embroiled in yet more internet drama when he trolled Reddit into thinking he was behind LucidEnding, a user who faked having cancer for karma.

Recently, r/creepshots has been at the nexus of much contention between the two websites. Just yesterday, Jezebel ran a feature about the Tumblr "Predditors," run by a 25-year-old female Redditor, which publishes the personal information of those who post to the controversial subreddit.

"I think it's cute how Reddit's CreepShots apologists/Men's Right's activists/etc. think we care if they stop linking to us. And also indicative of their hypocritical obsession with privacy and control," Katie J.M. Baker, the Jezebel author behind the r/creepshots post, told Betabeat by Gchat. "It's okay for anonymous Redditors to post upskirt photo after upskirt photo, but a huge violation of privacy for a journalist to report on the men who post them? How does that make any sense? Plus, the information on Predditors (which is temporarily down) wasn't illegal--or difficult--for my source to track down."

Tumblr has since shut down Predditors. [UPDATE: Tumblr has reinstated Predditors.] A new thread on Reddit alleges that someone whose information was published on Predditors was violently attacked last night, but there is so far no substantial proof corroborating that claim.

Redditors themselves seem to be barely able to control their glee over the ensuing drama:

Now, I see before me the beginnings of an inter-website war, sparked by mass doxing, blackmail, the fall of one of reddit's legendary figures, potentially ruined lives, admins silently working in the background, and repercussions that will have devastating IRL consequences for those involved ...

I now stand before you on the precipice of the greatest shitstorm of our time. We have come far from our origins as a humble kernel, and if this escalates to the point where the entire site falls around us, I'd just like to say that it was an honor serving with you all aboard the USS Orville.

It is unclear whether Mr. Chen still intends to publish his post, rumors of which began this chilling war. For now, we can only wait as the sounds of furious keyboard clacking and the cries of rage grow ever closer to the heart of the mainstream internet.

(Photo: Indiegogo)

"How Much Would You Pay To See A Photo Of Ryan Lochte’s Alleged Penis?" begs a headline on the irreverent sports blog, Deadspin. The post, which went up a little over an hour ago, is illustrated by a photo of Gawker Media employees clustered around a computer screen looking (and laughing) at an alleged photo of Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte's penis.

The pic, which is "a neck-down bathroom-mirror self-portrait, in which the tip of the penis almost but not quite reaches into the sink basin," was provided by a source, who is demanding a fee. Deadspin has decided to start a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo, probably because Kickstarter doesn't consider dickpics "art" (subjective!).

Unable to decide just how valuable a photo of Ryan Lochte's penis might be--both in cold hard cash and cold hard pageviews--the editors of Deadspin put the question to a crowdfunding test:

Do you want to see Ryan Lochte's alleged penis? Rather than bidding on some hypothetical market value of the photograph, let's establish a real market value. Call it Cockstarter: Our offer price will be whatever you collectively pledge to the cause, plus a contribution from our own budget. Based on your pledges, we will make a final determination on the photo by next week.

We decided to reach out to ff Venture Capital partner and Indiegogo investor David Teten to gauge his opinion on this important story.

"The adult content industry is suffering because of a surplus of free content," Mr. Teten told Betabeat via gChat. "That implies the market value of this photo is near-zero; creating an equivalent photo in Photoshop would take 1 minute."

"That said, I think the management team at Fitocracy should support this Indiegogo project, and perhaps hire Ryan Lochte," he added.

Additional reporting provided by Nitasha Tiku.

Mr. Miller (joshm.co)

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Josh Miller, the precocious 21-year-old Princeton dropout behind Branch, one of tech’s most buzzed-about new startups, took The Observer on a tour of the Obvious Corporation, a growing operation helmed by the cofounders of Twitter that advises and invests in an elite set of fledgling tech companies, Branch among them.

The San Francisco office radiated industrial California coziness, with tall windows and exposed pipes, dark grey walls and a fridge overflowing with Vitamin Water. Mr. Miller, who is tall and insouciant, with the laid-back linguistic tenor of one who spent his childhood in Santa Monica, bustled about the office, seemingly unthreatened by the fact that he is both much younger and less experienced than the majority of Obvious employees.

“Check this out!” he called from a breezy conference room with a panoramic view of downtown San Francisco. He pointed to a wet bar fully stocked with top-shelf bottles. “You know, I’m just out of college, so sometimes I’m, like, afraid to drink any of this because it’s so expensive! It’s like, where’s the Franzia?” he joked, referring to the cheap boxed wine favored by destitute college students.

Though he will return to New York this month, Mr. Miller has been working from Obvious’ offices since January due to the success of Branch, a platform he founded last summer that attempts to make online discussion easier and more worthwhile. The Branch website looks a lot like the comments section of a blog, though with a simpler and sleeker interface, and allows users to host invite-only discussions, ideally between experts or those who are passionate about a given subject.

“Thoughtfulness makes Branch different,” Biz Stone, a cofounder of Twitter and one of Branch’s advisors, told The Observer via email. “Every decision made in building the platform was given craftsman-like attention, and that sort of attention has an impact on the way people perceive and use the service.”

At its core, Branch is an attempt to resolve a raging debate among Internet enthusiasts over how to fix the “online conversation” problem. Website commenting sections have long been the target of Internet trolls and snarky know-it-alls, with anonymity generally exacerbating the problem.

But it’s not just about the trolls: One of the far-reaching problems with online discussion is that it’s open to everyone—the people we’re happy to hear from and also those we’d prefer to ignore. On the Branch blog, Mr. Miller wrote that he sees a “profound power inherent in the open exchange of information.” Branch, with its invite-only model and focus on quality conversations among identified users, is one of the first well-backed attempts at revitalizing online discourse, but it’s also a gated community seeking to promote intelligent dialogue: unlike most of the Internet, no dumb, off-topic or anonymous opinions are allowed.

Of his initial pitch meeting with Mr. Miller, Obvious Corporation cofounder Jason Goldman said that he believed “Branch was a big disruptive idea and was obvious in the sense that all the best ideas are obvious in retrospect.”

Some of Manhattan’s media moguls, including Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, have also been experimenting with ways to revamp online conversation. Recently, Mr. Denton told the tech news blog GigaOm that he believes Mr. Miller is one of the most interesting people in tech.

“Josh is working on a hard and important problem—online conversation—that hasn’t been solved yet,” said Jonah Peretti, cofounder of BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post and one of Branch’s advisors. “He really wants to solve the problem and will do whatever it takes to make it happen, even if it is hard, even if it takes longer.”

Since last summer, Mr. Miller has morphed from being a Princeton soc major to a college dropout with a half-baked idea to a cofounder of a well-funded, highly hyped company with advisors like Mr. Peretti and Twitter cofounders Mr. Stone and Ev Williams.

“If you had told me I was going to drop out of school, I would have said you were crazy,” Mr. Miller announced, after we’d settled into comfortable leather-backed office chairs in one of Obvious’ sun-drenched conference rooms. Behind him, a red plastic pig stared out at us from behind a glass dome. “If you had told me I was going to move to San Francisco, I would have said you were crazy. And then three months later move back [to New York]? I would have thought you were fucking insane.”

Mr. Miller attributes much of Branch’s swift rise to the fact that New York’s nimble tech scene yields myriad chances to meet with tech types who are eager to help. “You know how busy BuzzFeed is. But still, Jonah took this random meeting with this kid who had some sketches on a piece of paper,” he said, still clearly astounded by his luck.

Up until last year, Mr. Miller was known primarily for his activism in the education sector. While still in high school, he was named a CNN Hero Finalist in the “Young Wonder” category for devising a scholarship program that aimed to alleviate racial tensions following the death of his friend Eddie Lopez, who was killed in a gang-related drive-by shooting. At just 18 years old, Mr. Miller spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival, before shifting focus entirely to delve into the tech sector.

As a junior at Princeton, Mr. Miller decided to intern at a startup called Meetup. The company’s cofounder Scott Heiferman brought him to his very first New York Tech Meetup, an event held monthly at NYU that is typically packed with more than 750 tech enthusiasts.

“It was the coolest experience,” gushed Mr. Miller. “The energy of the room was incredible. Especially as someone who doesn’t know tech, it was like—oh, my God! People are excited, and they boo when you talk about revenue, and it was just a really cool environment.”

It was at this event, under the wing of Mr. Heiferman, that Mr. Miller decided to become an entrepreneur. At a startup workshop, he teamed up with an NYU student named Hursh Agrawal; together, the two devised the plan for Roundtable, an early prototype that would eventually become Branch.

By the time the 48-hour event had ended, and his project had won the competition portion of the weekend, Mr. Miller had found a potential technical cofounder and an idea that he was passionate about.

Eventually, he also persuaded Cemre Güngör, an NYU masters student and part-time designer at twee e-commerce site Etsy, to join the team. In order to woo Mr. Güngör, Mr. Miller told him that they would pay him twice as much as he was making at Etsy, which was a boldfaced lie—Roundtable had absolutely no capital at the time.

“What a hustler,” recalled Mr. Gungor via email. “I knew the company didn’t have any money, [but] liked the energy of Josh and Hursh so much that I decided to start informally helping out.”

With the team assembled and well-known advisors onboard, Roundtable exploded. After it was named one of the 20 hottest startups by Business Insider, investors started indicating interest, and Mr. Miller took a leave of absence from Princeton to focus on his startup full-time, much to the chagrin of his mother.

Mr. Miller’s success is attributable in part to his charm, which was mentioned by almost everyone we spoke to. He is also fiercely determined: He once drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back in one day just to meet with Jason Goldman, a cofounder of Obvious.

“I definitely think he thought I was a little crazy at first,” Mr. Miller joked.

“[Josh] is a natural, charismatic leader who people want to root for,” Mr. Goldman said.

Mr. Miller is also take-charge and highly organized; he meticulously scheduled every detail of our interview, including when and where it would take place and precisely how long each portion—the tour, the interview and lunch—would last. Somehow, in an industry bursting with dotcom veterans, his age and relative naiveté haven’t hindered his growth but have served to make him all the more endearing.

“Josh is absolutely relentless and determined,” said Mr. Peretti, whose initial wisdom—that Branch’s vision might be too hard to accomplish, and that Mr. Miller should stay in school—was mostly ignored by Mr. Miller.

After the tour of Obvious, we walked the few blocks over to The Grove, a busy lunchtime spot in downtown San Francisco that boasts an ethereal tree strung with lights. At the register, Mr. Miller swatted away our credit card.

“My mother will kill me if I let you pay,” he insisted, a reminder that, successful or not, he is really young.

“Josh is incredibly focused and responsible at work, but this doesn’t always translate into his personal life,” Mr. Agrawal told us via email. “He is so lazy with laundry that after it’s done, he just leaves it in the dryer—like, perpetually—and runs the dryer for 10 minutes every morning to warm up and de-wrinkle his clothes for the day.”

Next month, the Branch bunch will return to New York to work out of the Betaworks office, another startup incubator that backs them. Despite the ups and downs of the current media landscape, Mr. Miller said that he likes that New York is media-oriented. “I think a lot of tech companies are scared and allergic to the word ‘media,’” he told us. “They’re like, ‘Oh, it doesn’t scale!’ But we’re really interested in that space, so New York is perfect for us.”

“I’m going to try to take a lot of meetings on the Highline,” he added.

A few weeks after our interview with Mr. Miller, Mr. Denton introduced a new commenting platform across all Gawker Media properties that focuses on empowering users, a seven figure investment. Oddly enough, he decided to call each discussion thread a “branch.”

“Well, the idea of comments as a tree is owned neither by Branch nor us,” Mr. Denton told us by email. “Not going to avoid using a word because it’s in their name.” He pointed us to emails he had sent as early as 2008 that discuss the idea of comment threads as trees and branches. Just after we reached out, Mr. Denton started a “branch” on the site justifying his decision to employ the term by printing an old internal email that had used it. There have been discussions about licensing the technology to other companies.

Mr. Miller said he had “no comment” on the incident, but it was clear that the Branch team was not thrilled with Gawker’s terminology. Eventually, he admitted to the The New York Times, “I just wish [Mr. Denton] would have used a different name.”

Mr. Miller seemed mostly unfazed by this taste of cut-throat competition. While start-ups like his don’t have a great survival rate, for now he remains marvelously tanned and earnest, eager to return to New York and build the next great Internet company.

After lunch, as we were both rising to leave, Mr. Miller had a question for us. “Can I give you a hug?” he asked, extending his arms.

A version of this story appeared in The New York Observer on May 2nd.

Drew Magary, The Most Actually-Read* Writer On The Internet. It's true.*

Last week, Read It Later—the site and app that, like Instapaper, allows readers to "save" articles for later revisiting—released a series of charts in conjunction with long-form writing aggregator LongReads detailing statistics they had gathered over 2011. The first chart was of the "Most Saved" authors on the internet.

The second chart was far more telling: Those whose articles were both saved and eventually revisited by those who had saved them. In other words, they build a chart of some of the most actually-read individual writers on the internet, and at the top of that list was Deadspin blogger and columnist Drew "Balls Deep" Magary, whose cult following netted the (in equal measures, profane and profound) writer a book deal and bylines with the likes of GQ.

We wanted to know: What's it like to be the most actually-read* author on the internet? So, we asked. And he answered:

Congratulations Drew. You're the most actually-read "Read Later" author on the internet. How does this feel?

I FEEL SO PRETTY. Nothing makes me happier than knowing that people are putting off their work by putting off reading something I wrote and then going to straight to Redtube to fap. Also, I want more money from everyone.

Note that the first of the two charts released by Read It Later is loaded with Lifehacker readers who save their articles, but never read them. That's probably why they're reading Lifehacker. What do you think it is about your writing that brings them back post—"Read Later"?

I do that with Lifehacker too, by the way. I'm always like, "Holy smokes! Eight ways to turn your toaster into a wireless router? I'LL DO IT!" Then I end up following through on none of their advice.

I don't quite know why I've been able to retain readers, or do whatever it is that the study says that I've managed to do. I'm sure it's precious like a robin's egg, and just thinking about it now will likely cause it to all fall apart. All I try and do every week is write whatever I think people will find entertaining. And I think the easiest way to lose those readers is to spend any long amount of time blowing smoke up my own ass.

How do you decide what to write about? Do you run your ideas by [Deadspin editors A.J. Daulerio, Tommy Craggs, and Tom Scocca], or shoot first, ask later?

Well, there are a couple of things I do that are weekly columns, so those are already set in stone. Within those columns, I usually get ideas from whatever has happened in sports or from something someone wrote to me (which is really lazy on my part). With other pieces, I usually write it first and then just file it. Unless I'm not quite sure of it, and then I'll run it by Tommy or A.J. before I spin my wheels. Other times, I'll have NO ideas, and ask them if there's something I should do. I don't mind being directed.

Do you have a specific writing process? Wear any special garters/Spanx/etc?

I stand up, because my doctor told me sitting all day was bad for my back (I've had three back surgeries). Otherwise, it's fairly routine. I write stuff from 8:30 to 4:30 every weekday, only stopping to eat or hit the gym. I used to be able to write with music playing but I can't anymore. I'm one of those lame "total silence" people. I don't have much process beyond those physical trappings. I just try and take the best idea and pound it into the ground.

Are you finicky about your copy? Do you ever give editors notes about what needs to stay versus what's flexible? You've also done writing for outlets other than Deadspin, like GQ. Do you prefer the process of writing for one format/outlet over the other, moneys aside?

Well, I'm not the most heavily edited guy in the world. Usually, my stuff at Deadspin (and at NBC, for that matter), passes through unscathed. But when Tommy or A.J. or whoever does have a comment, I'm fine with it. They may tell you otherwise, but I don't think I get my panties in a bunch over editing. I don't have much right to complain when my boss openly lets me curse and call Lebron James terrible names. At GQ, stuff is more heavily edited (often for space), but it needs to be because it's a print magazine. It needs polish and it needs to be concise. Deadspin is meant to be much rawer and looser.

Books are a whole other thing. Those things get worked over like a tomato can. It's not always fun, but it beats a real job.

Speaking of moneys, now that your value above all other editorial web monkey slaves is out in the open, are you going to gouge some of the respective pursestrings for a higher rate? Remember: Michael Lewis has [something like] a $1M/year* contract for Vanity Fair, and he's nowhere on this list.

Does he really get paid $1 million a year? HOLY CRAP. That's amazing. I want that. He earns that, by the way. He's awesome. And he does, like, research and stuff. That's like DOUBLE writing. I can't do that.

Anyway, I'm like anyone else in that I'm always interested in more money. But I figure if I do my job well enough that'll take care of itself.

Four Deadspin writers—yourself, Tommy Craggs, Barry Petchesky, and Emma Carmichael - made that same list as you. So did a few other Gawker Media writers. What do Daulerio and Nick Denton have to do with your writing? What do you think their roles are in cultivating this success?

Well, they provide the platform, which is pretty much everything. Without Nick's support and financing, there is no Deadspin. Without A.J., Deadspin doesn't have five zillion viewers a month or whatever. They let me do what I want to do, but they provide the bullhorn. Also, Deadspin gets the RIGHT audience, which sounds weird but is really important. Go read a Yahoo blog post sometime. They get more readers, but most every commenter is an idiot. Put me over there, and suddenly there's a vast disconnect between me and the readership. It would just be 1,000 comments saying YOU CALL THIS JOURNALISM?!!!

You've written a book, which we will plug shamelessly with a link here. Now that you've done 'The Book Thing,' you think there's more to come? Do you enjoy having escaped the Blogging Routine, or do you miss it?

I love to blog, because of the instant gratification. You think of an idea and BOOM! Thar she blows. But you have to evolve if you want to have any longevity, and books let me do that. So yeah, more on the way.

Are your parents proud of you, or do they still think you use the word 'fuck' too much?

I didn't tell my folks about my blogging career until I'd secured my first book deal. And they were so proud of the fact that I had a book that they didn't care that it was loaded with penis photos. Also, I get my sense of humor from them, so it's not like they don't enjoy their fair share of ribald jokes.

Deadspin has a wonderful history of consistently getting journalism and writing traditionalists in a tizzy as it moves forward. You and your opinions have largely been a part of this. Do you think there's still a boundary to push? What does it look like?

It's in constant flux, and you only really know if you've crossed the line when you get a visceral, unanimous reaction telling you that you screwed up. It's not a good feeling when that happens. All I can do is go by my own sense of what's funny enough to get away with and what isn't.

[*According to these charts, or at the very least, actually-read 'Read Later' writer on the internet.]

[**Clarification: Michael Lewis' last word rate before he was at Vanity Fair was reportedly $10/word. At 12,000 words for his August Vanity Fair piece on Germany's financial state, he would've made $120,000. Michael Lewis wrote five articles for Vanity Fair between 2009 and 2011. You do the math, we obviously can't. -ed.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Read this NOW.

Yesterday, content-saving service Read It Later—which, like Instapaper, allows you to save the web pages you want to read eventually but don't have time for quite right now—released a list of data about the most "Read It Later"-clicked authors on the entire whole big bad Internet, which goes hand-in-hand with their celebration of the surpassing of four million users.

But that wasn't the only list they released.   

Here's the first one, of those authors who got 'Read Me Later'd' the most:

Note:

• Lots of gadget readers!
• Lots of tech readers!
• And a whole bunch of efficiency strategy readers!

 
But why is that chart so much different from this one, which presents the writers whose writing was actually read later?

Note:

• Distinct Voices Win: Deadspin's crew populates this list more than any other. So do big names, like Bill Simmons, and scandal-driven short-reads that might be a little NSFW (see: Gawker's Maureen O'Connor). A lot of these writers have a cult of personality; the dedication to them shows.
• Essayists Dominate: Some things are just better read when you have nothing else to do if only for length.
• Breaking news writers lose readers: TechCrunch and BoingBoing lose prominence on lists like these if only because the things TechCrunch writes about often lose relevance in the news cycle after only a day, let alone a few hours. BoingBoing, which is usually an early-adopter of news-like memes—or memes that become news, for that matter—loses prominence because the content they start goes everywhere.

 
But really, there's one very obvious reason why the top of these lists are so different:

Look at the first one again.

Ever been to LifeHacker? There's a reason people are reading it. It's a site about making one's life more efficient.

• Either LifeHacker readers are doing a great, great job about making their lives more efficient, or
• Lifehacker readers are doing a terrible job making their lives more efficient. And need to read Lifehacker more.

 
That is all.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek