Woody Harrelson Reddit AMA

Overview

Woody Harrelson Reddit AMA refers to an “ask me anything” (AMA) thread that was submitted to the social news aggregation site Reddit by American actor Woody Harrelson. The thread became infamous after a Redditor made claims that Harrelson took one of his classmate’s virginity years before to which Harrelson responded by insisting he only answering questions related to the movie Rampart which he was promoting.

Background

On February 3rd, 2012, an AMA post titled “I’m Woody Harrelson, AMA”^[1] was submitted to the /r/IAmA subreddit by user iamwoodyharrelson.

Hi Reddit, it’s Woody here. I’m in New York today doing interviews for my new film RAMPART, which opens in theaters on February 10th. I’ll be checking in from 3-4EST today and will get to as many of your questions as I can, so start asking now! Be back soon.

The official @Rampart_Movie^[3] Twitter account was used as verification:

Big news!Woody Harrelson will do an IAMA on @Reddit this Friday afternoon.Get your questions ready, its going to be a GREAT one.
— Rampart (@Rampart_Movie) January 31, 2012

Andy Rooney’s Claim

Redditor AndyRooney replied to the thread claiming that Harrelson crashed his high school prom party and slept with one of his classmates. He updated the post with a series of animated GIFs outlining the story. His post quickly became the top voted comment in the thread, with many Redditors replying that his story was amusing.

IamWoodyHarrelson’s Response

Harrelson replied to Andy Rooney’s question claiming the story was not true followed by “lets focus on the film people.” Redditor bersh pointed out Harrelson’s insistence to only answer questions about the film he was promoting, despite using the thread topic Ask Me Anything.

Meanwhile, other Redditors^[10] began speculating that the identity behind Redditor IamWoodyHarrelson may not be the actor himself but one of his PR agents. However, the claim has not been confirmed.

Developments

A Quickmeme^[2] page for “Scumbag Woody Harrelson” was created shortly after the AMA thread was submitted. Many of the image macros parodied Harrelson’s attempts to focus his answers on his new movie Rampart and the allegations that he took a young girl’s virginity after crashing a prom several years before. The page accumulated over 50 submissions in 3 days.

The following day, a post titled “Look, Woody! You’re on Urban Dictionary” was submitted to the /r/funny^[9] subreddit which included a screenshot of an Urban Dictionary submission for the word “rampart.”

Rampart: To have sex with and then never call again.
Did you hear about Woody Harrelson ramparting that girl’s virginity at her high school prom?

YouTube uploads of trailers for Rampart began being disliked in large numbers following the posting. Within 3 days the official upload of the trailer had 236 likes to 194 dislikes.

On Februrary 4th, the New York Observer^[4] posted an article criticizing Harrelson’s handling of the AMA and posted select comments from the thread. On February 6th, the story was picked up by The Huffington Post^[5], Forbes^[7], UpRoxx^[6] and Perez Hilton.^[8] The Daily Dot^[11] and Mediate^[12] also posted articles describing Harrelson’s AMA thread as disasters.