Gallowboob

About

Gallowboob is the Reddit handle of Robert Allam, a former landscape architect and prolific Redditor. Following quick amassing of thousands of "Karma" points, Reddit's scoring system used for quantifying the share rate of posts, media outlets began referring to Allam as the "King of Karma," which led to numerous business opportunities off the website.

Online History

On October 7th, 2014, Allam launched the Reddit account "Gallowboob." Roughly six months later, on April 5th, he posted an image of his "father and mother being young and awesome on Santorini Island, Greece, 1985" in the /r/OldSchoolCool subreddit.^[1] The image became Allam's first successful post, receiving more than 5,000 points (76% upvoted) and 550 comments in four years (shown below).

Throughout the next few years, Gallowboob continued to find success on the website. On August 6th, 2015, he posted an image of "Hotel in Japan uses dinosaur robots at reception" in the /r/PhotoshopBattles subreddit,^[2] increasing his presence on Reddit's front page (shown below, left). Within four years, the post received more than 10,000 points (89% upvoted) and 340 comments.

On January 27th, 2017, Gallowboob posted an image of a man holding a sign that reads, "It's 2017. Flint, MI has been without clean water since April 24, 2014." The post^[3] became Allam's second biggest as of March 2019, amassing more than 150,000 points (89% upvoted) and 5,000 comments in two years (shown below, right).

Allam posted his biggest post on August 17th, 2018 in the /r/aww subreddit.^[4] The post "Kirk, a female Border Collie, watching herself win the 2017 Purina Pro Challenge" received more than 178,000 points (93% upvoted) and 1,700 comments in less than one year (mirror below).

Reputation

Media Coverage

Allam's success on Reddit has been covered by numerous media outlets. In a 2015 profile on his quick accumulation of Karma, The Awl^[5] called him "The Traffic King of Reddit." They wrote:

GallowBoob’s posts make it to the site’s front page on a near-daily basis, which means that the material he shares helps determine the viral content that spreads across the entire web.

GallowBoob’s power is odd and largely invisible -- he has done little to acknowledge or capitalize on his influence, and most casual Reddit readers don’t know his name -- but his most popular posts reach can receive more than sixty-five hundred upvotes, and six of his links appeared on the site’s homepage last Saturday alone

In a 2016 story on the career opportunities, Reddit has afforded Allam Forbes^[6] wrote, "Allam’s meteoric rise on Reddit brought in a windfall of financial opportunities." His success led to a job position at the English media company UNILAD. Upon meeting entering the company's office, Allam recalled, "The first time I got introduced in the office, my boss was like, ‘This is gallowboob from Reddit.’ And people were like, ‘Holy sh*t, this is you? You’re like a celebrity.' I didn’t know how to handle it. I’m not a celebrity. I consider myself a 30-year-old dude who is driving through life. I didn’t know that to do other than just try and enjoy it."

On February 17th, 2017, Allam discussed "how to make money from Reddit" on the Point YouTube channel. The video, as of March 2019, has received more than 40,000 views (shown below).

As of March 2018, Gallowboob has received more than 28 million Karma and 1 million comment Karma.

Criticism

On February 15th, 2015, Redditor^[10] lo_and_be asked the /r/OutOfTheLoop subreddit, "Who is /u/Gallowboob and how is he/she always on the front page?" A Redditor, whose account has since been deleted, responded:

"He's a user who takes content that is popular on one sub-Reddit then posts it to another more popular sub-Reddit, or sometimes the same sub-Reddit a few hours/weeks later. For example, finding a post that's popular on /r/MachinePorn then reposting it to /r/pics, taking advantage of the larger userbase to reap karma.

Another popular tactic is to convert one media to another, then repost it. Such as taking a video from /r/videos and cutting the best/important part of the video into a gif then posting it to /r/gifs.

If you have RES start tagging users you see doing it with 'reposts from /r/videos' or similar. You'll notice that this small number users gets to the front page of the defaults a lot.

tl;dr Tactical reposting for massive karma

On February 2nd, 2019, Gallowboob posted about a new Netflix corporate logo animation to be played before Netflix-branded content in the /r/oddlysatisfying subreddit.^[7] Allam titled the post, "Netflix has had the same logo animation for five years. They updated it yesterday." The post received more than 42,000 points (50% upvoted) and 330 comments.

However, due to the speed with which Allam posted the new animation, some began to question how he received it early and accused him of being paid by Netflix to post it. That day, Redditor^[8] EVra66 wrote about the /r/oddlysatisfying post in the /r/HailCorporate subreddit. They wrote, "Netflix pays /u/Gallowboob to advertise on reddit. He locks the comments and removes any mention of it being obvious advertisement." The post received more than 35,000 points (39% upvoted) and 2,400 comments. Additionally, the user wrote about a direct message exchange they shared with Allam (shown below).

An article by Metaflix later clarified that Allam had found the animation on Twitter. It had been shared by a social media manager at Netflix.^[9]

Search Interest

External References