*Update

I don’t use Reddit much but the subreddit I enjoy the most is r/IAmA. If you aren’t familiar it is essentially a series of interviews where a person (sometimes famous, sometimes not) answers everyone’s questions, and it’s really a great way to learn a lot about them.

So the reason I want to do one here is that I am often emailed the same questions over and over, and I’d love to answer them all in one place. Hopefully if enough people ask questions here this post will become a great resource for anyone starting a blog, pursuing a career in the arts, or maybe just looking for a good movie to watch.

There’s some rules/etiquette that Reddit uses and I’d like to use a variation of the here, consider the following:

• The value of the question: Questions should be original and on topic. They aren’t required to be, but AMAs are a unique opportunity and it is sad to squander them by asking 100 iterations of “if you could fight 1 horse sized duck or 100 duck sized horses.” The point here is to encourage thought-provoking, discussion-inspiring questions that I would not likely be asked anywhere else.
• Civility and Politeness: users are free to (and encouraged to) ask tough questions. But this should be done in a respectful and polite way. There’s no need to use harsh language, and a comment that treats me like a person is much more likely to be answered.
• You should upvote interesting/helpful questions. I’m not sure how many people will get involved with this, but if there are lots of questions it will be easier for me to see which ones lots of people want answered and I’ll get to those first.
• You should downvote joke questions that aren’t intended to get a real answer.
• You should downvote duplicate questions.

The reason this is an ‘Ask Me Almost Anything’ rather than an ‘Ask Me Anything’ is that I’d like it to be filled with content worth looking at. I don’t know everything there is to know about everything but I do know a bit about building a large online community and turning a hobby into a job.

This is an experiment for today. If there is interest I will keep coming back here to answer your questions. Anything that disregards the rules/etiquette might be ignored.

So here we go!

I AM A 30 year old Japanese Canadian who started a blog in my parents’ basement five years ago, that blog became Booooooom, and it is now my full time job. Ask me almost anything.