Unidan
You might remember it as jackdaw comment, the excited biologist
The archive does not hold the original post.
2014·The social era·dramatic
Reddit's most-loved expert, undone by an argument about whether a jackdaw is a crow.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- jackdaw comment
- Spread in
- 2014
- Began as
- A social-media post
- Where it started
- Format
- Post
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
Ben Eisenkop, an ecologist posting as Unidan, answered biology questions on Reddit at enormous length and with visible delight, and became the site's best-known and best-liked user. In 2014 he got into a dispute about the taxonomy of jackdaws that opened, memorably, with the words: here's the thing. Shortly afterwards he was banned for vote manipulation, having used secret alternate accounts to promote his own comments and bury other people's.
It is Reddit's own morality tale, and the site tells it to itself constantly. The jackdaw comment became copypasta almost immediately — it is quoted, parodied and reformatted years later by people who have no idea who wrote it — and the fall itself is the standard example of a platform discovering that its most beloved contributor was gaming the mechanism that made him beloved.
Eisenkop apologised and largely withdrew. The phrase "here's the thing" is now unusable on Reddit without invoking him. The episode is cited whenever a platform's reputation system is shown to be manipulable by the people it most rewards.
Why it is here: it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This first circulated as a social-media post, not as a video upload. Originally published on Reddit.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This first circulated as a social-media post, not as a video upload. Originally published on Reddit.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.