Overview

Robin is a week-long social experiment centered around the titular web chat interface launched by Reddit on April Fools' Day in 2016. The ongoing experiment, which allows Redditors to participate in a massively multiplayer, real-time through an IRC-style web chat client, is set to end on April 8th, 2016.

Features

When joining a Robin for the first time, Reddit users a placed in a chat session with one other person and given the chance to vote "Abandon," "Stay" or "Grow" within a specified time limit. If the majority of users in a room vote to "Grow," the chat session is merged with another room that voted to "Grow." If the majority of users vote to "Stay," a subreddit is then created with an abbreviated amalgamation of the chat user's names. When voting "Abandon," the user is removed from the chat session.

Background

The Button

On April 1st, 2015, Reddit unveiled /r/thebutton, a mysterious subreddit featuring an automatic timer that counts down from 60 seconds, accompanied by a button that any Redditor who signed up prior to the launch date can click to reset the countdown.

Robin

On April 1st, 2016, the official Reddit blog^[1] published a post titled “Robin,” featuring a cryptic message and a link to the site reddit.com/robin,^[8] which directs users to a page containing a button with a red robin logo. Upon pressing the button, users are taken into a chat session and allowed to vote.

Notable Developments

That same day, the /r/joinrobin^[3] subreddit was made public for discussions about the chat client, gathering upwards of 14,300 subscribers in the next 72 hours. Shortly after the chat was launched, Redditor iamhungrybox submitted a "Bernie or Hillary" image macro in which Sanders votes to “Grow” and Clinton votes to “Abandon” (shown below). In 72 hours, the post received more than 3,000 votes (80% upvoted) on /r/joinrobin.^[4]

Online Presence

Shortly after the chat was launched, Redditor iamhungrybox submitted a Bernie or Hillary image macro in which Sanders votes to "Grow" and Clinton votes to "Abandon" (shown below). In 72 hours, the post received more than 3,000 votes (80% upvoted) on /r/joinrobin.^[4]

That day, Business Insider^[2] published an article about the chat titled "Reddit's 'Robin' is a Brilliant Social Experiment That Pits Millions of Internet Users Against Each Other." Also on April 1st, a post asking about Robin was submitted to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[6] On April 3rd, YouTuber Aissurteivos uploaded footage of a chat session with 3,856 users (shown below).

The same day, Redditor Unicormfarts submitted a post titled "How's your Robin experience going so far, Reddit?" to /r/AskReddit,^[5] where it gainved over 900 votes (76% upvoted) and 360 comments within 24 hours. Also on April 3rd, a graph showing the growth of the soKukunelits Robin chatroom was posted on /r/dataisbeautiful^[7] (shown below).

Search Interest

External References