This reminds me of an interview with Reddit's Alexis Ohanian where he said that they started out posting a lot of submissions under fake accounts just to get the content going.
Yep, I had a bunch of different usernames and with the help of a couple friends I browbeat and Steve, made up the majority of the early submissions to reddit. There's nothing sadder than visiting a reddit with no content (or stale content). This only lasted for a few weeks, though, thankfully. The moment neither Steve nor I needed to make a submission was the day we realized we may not have entirely wasted our summer :)