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We Are the Nerds
- The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory
- Narrated by: Chloe Cannon
- Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
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We Are the Nerds
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Publisher's Summary
Named a Best Book of 2018 by Fast Company, this is a "sharply written and brilliantly reported" (Shelf Awareness) look inside Reddit, the wildly popular, often misunderstood website that has changed the culture of the internet.
Reddit hails itself as "the front page of the Internet". It's the third-most visited website in the United States—and yet, millions of Americans have no idea what it is.
We Are the Nerds is an engrossing look deep inside this captivating, maddening enterprise, whose army of obsessed users have been credited with everything from solving cold-case crimes and spurring tens of millions of dollars in charitable donations to seeding alt-right fury and landing Donald Trump in the White House. We Are the Nerds is a gripping start-up narrative: the story of how Reddit's founders, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, rose up from their suburban childhoods to become millionaires and create an icon of the digital age—before seeing the site engulfed in controversies and nearly losing control of it for good.
Based on Christine Lagorio-Chafkin's exclusive access to founders Ohanian and Huffman, We Are the Nerds is also a compelling exploration of the way we all communicate today—and how we got here. Reddit and its users have become a mirror of the Internet: it has dingy corners, shiny memes, malicious trolls, and a sometimes heart-melting ability to connect people across cultures, oceans, and ideological divides.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
What the critics say
"Reddit is life. Or at least that's the case for millions upon millions of people on the Internet. In We Are the Nerds, Christine Lagorio-Chafkin has done a masterful job of explaining how Reddit became the Internet's dominant cultural force. It's a riveting tale that shows how the best and worst sides of humanity coexist online and how a virtual world has managed to have a profound impact on the undulations of reality. Fast-paced, packed with insight, and, above all, wonderfully entertaining, this is a must-read for anyone hoping to make sense of the century ahead." (Ashlee Vance, New York Times best-selling author of Elon Musk)
"In We Are the Nerds, Christine Lagorio-Chafkin has done for social media what Tracy Kidder did for the dawn of the modern computer age in The Soul of a New Machine, namely, provide a riveting narrative that captures the spirit of an industry being born. Thanks to the extraordinary access she had to the founders of Reddit and other key players, she is able to show us in dramatic detail the hopes and fears, triumphs and frustrations of the team that invented what is now the third most popular website on the Internet after Google and YouTube, having surpassed Facebook in 2018. This is an excellent book. It is also a great read." (Bo Burlingham, author of Small Giants and Finish Big)
"Christine Lagorio-Chafkin has stepped into a male-centric genre, the start-up narrative, and produced a book of monumental power and importance: a rich, thoughtful chronicle of Reddit that grapples just as brilliantly with the dark side of tech - its trolls, its problems with gender and diversity - as it does its culture-shattering innovations. I was wowed by this book." (Liza Mundy, New York Times bestselling author of Michelle and Code Girls)