Ask Me Anything

((Work in progress. Pointers, help on article itself, and research is GREATLY appreciated))

About

“Ask X Anything” is a common type of thread that appears in general discussion forums. In each thread, the posters ask the creator questions usually related to the title of the thread. These question threads tend to range from serious to humorous to disturbing and can usually be told apart by their title. For example, a thread called “Ask a Biology Major Anything” would more likely to be a serious thread as opposed to a thread called “Ask a Psychopath Anything”.

Usage Online

Reddit

Reddit as a section called “I Am A”, where users share about themselves. A trend has started in that forum called “Ask Me Anything”. It is set up in a similar fashion as “As X Anything”, but instead of X being the title or description of the person, the description is placed before the “Ask Me Anything” as part of “I Am A(n) X”.

Youtube

With the rise of internet video, people have been holding “video blogs” while others have hosted webshows. It has become common for these “vloggers” to have “question and answer videos”. Commonly, one video will be made saying, “Ask Me Anything”, with another video being made later answering questions left in the comments.

tumblr

on tumblr, there is a popular activity called “Ask X”. Most of these are single-topic blogs which center around asking a single fictional character several questions which will be answered with a drawn response instead of a typical post response.