I often wonder what kind of thought goes through a person's head before they do an IaMa on reddit. You need to be either crazy, stupid, crazy stupid, or Neil Degrasse Tyson to think "Hey this is gonna be awesome!"
I disagree vehemently. The vast majority of AMAs by celebs go very, very well. There've been a few well-known trainwrecks (I'm looking at you, Woody Harrelson), but for the most part they're quite successful and a good way to engage with fans.
I used to subscribe to IaMa a while back and yes they were and to some extent are still a fantastic opportunity for the unwashed masses to quiz celebrities of all walks of fame.
Still considering what happened to Woody, I would think that incident would give a few celebs and PR managers a moment of pause to think "Is this really worth the risk?"
On the other hand, generally the dark side comes out of Reddit only when people are obviously (ab)using r/IaMa soley to benefit their current PR campaigns.
The failure of Harrelson's AMA was in a mismatch of expectations between him/his PR people and the reddit community. Whereas the longstanding tradition on reddit is a back-and-forth dialogue between the users and the OP, with the users deciding which conversations gain prominence, Harrelson/his PR person approached it like a late-night talk show.
Honestly, as harshly as reddit came down on Harrelson for that, it was entirely avoidable with even the most basic preliminary research. It's hard to feel bad for Harrelson, and it's similarly difficult to imagine that savvy PR types would be put off by the response. It's pretty easy to see what leads to a successful AMA, and not particularly difficult to prime your client for it.
