He's done six AMAs and made it to the front page - and he's not even a celebrity. Scientist Ben Eisenkop, 27, has captured the hearts and minds of Reddit through his ability to get Redditors excited about science.
In real life, Eisenkop is a graduate instructor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Binghamton University. And while he dedicates a nice chunk of time to answering questions and comments on Reddit, his research is a priority.
"A lot of people don't realize I might be out in the middle of the woods responding to their questions or comments," Eisenkop said.
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Eisenkop remembered one question in particular: A Redditor stumped by a "living rock":
"Someone had this weird photo from a beach and it looked like someone had cut open a rock and there was internal organs and blood and all this other weird stuff - really bizarre creature - and it ended up being something I recognized as a piure or a tunicate, which is a sea organism," Eisenkop said. "So just a weird organism that most people just aren’t familiar with, but I kind of noticed and described and people just were blown away to see some weird thing described in an interesting way."
Eisenkop says Reddit has helped with his own research by raising questions he may not have thought of.
"What's cool about Reddit is that there's so many people there that they're kind of additional eyes for whatever you're doing," Eisenkop said. "All the different questions that I get certainly help me stay on my toes."
Watch the full interview with Eisenkop here.
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