Slashdot Mirror
Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted
An anonymous reader writes "Social media is ill-suited to promoting real social change, argues Malcolm Gladwell in this article from The New Yorker magazine. He deftly debunks conventional wisdom surrounding the impact of Twitter, Facebook and other social media in driving systemic social change, comparing them to the organizational strategies of the 1960s civil rights movement. For example, the Montgomery bus boycott, he argues, was successful because it was driven by the disciplined and hierarchically organized NAACP. In contrast, a loose, social-media style network wouldn't have sustained the year long campaign. He concludes that social media promote social 'weak ties' which are not strong enough to motivate people to take big risks, such as imprisonment or attack, for social change."
I can haz revolution?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
On the more subtle side, social media does influence the electorate, therefore affecting votes and possibly politicians. So even if it may not bring about drastic, almost revolutionary change, it will certainly influence politics.
Developers: We can use your help.
Article posts 'October 4 2010' as the publication date... Unless I pulled a Rip Van Winkle at my desk just now, we're looking at news FROM THE FUTURE!!! :)
Which revolution did those protests successfully pull off? Did the 1999 protests in Seattle even meaningfully slow down the WTO, much less kill it?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I know a lot of iranian protestors who seemed convinced otherwise.
"He concludes that social media promote social 'weak ties' which are not strong enough to motivate people to take big risks, such as imprisonment or attack, for social change."
Call me a cynic (-: cheap flattery works :-), but I can't imagine anything that would motivate me for that much of social change. Mostly because most other societal systems are more or less as good/bad (inside a factor of two) as the where I live.
And if I did get motivated to change society, I would support (or maybe even join!) a political party and try to get into the parliament. Since that is allowed where I live.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Just as soon as there is something similar in other countries...
expect governments to impose censorship measures against websites that host these types of services.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Just social media doesn't promote anything. It is a tool. I will bet the NAACP used the phone when promoting the boycott. It may take an organizational structure to promote social change. But, that organization can use social media as a tool to communicate with and motivate its base.
No sigs in BETA. Beta SUCKS.
The primary benefit of these sites is not in organizing (as in administration) such movements, but in organizing (as is bringing together) large numbers of like-minded individuals. Of course a rudderless anarchistic model would not last year long campaigns; any "organization" that is left as a disorganized amorphous blob will collapse as soon as the initial catalystic spark dies off. On the other hand, if those same Montgomery bus boycotters had a Facebook presence available to them, the movement could have gone national or beyond. These modern tools are just that: Tools. A serious movement would still need serious leadership.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
You apparently didn't read this correctly. Slashdot is referencing/paraphrasing a Malcolm Galdwell article—which is then linked to for you to read the whole argument. Maybe you should comment on the new yorker story, not just the summary here. Also, the free spreading of dissent isn't really the same as actually creating revolutionary change. While it could lead to such, it is still just someone talking (or typing), not necessarily acting.
If you actually made it to the bottom of page #1 of the Gladwell article, you might have read this(emphasis mine):
That when the revolution does come, Mark Zuckerburg is the first against the wall.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Because protests actually affect anything in the slightest anymore?
In the heyday of protesting the huge protest was new, rare, impressive, and scary. News media outlets were limited and protests were big new(s), which amplified their impression, excitement, and scary nature (scary to those being protested against). And they protested things that actually, really mattered. War and peace, freedom and oppression.
But today?
At least in the US protests are a dime a dozen. Huge protests maybe a quarter a dozen. Decades of ever increasing protests for every single cause from global threats against humanity to legalizing pet ferrets, protests have lost their bite. They've lost it because protesting never had any real bite. The huge over use of protesting taught The Man that protests really don't mean anything...they don't really don't hurt...they are mostly all bark, no bite. In the flood of 24/7 news outlets, protests rarely get much if any attention. There's just too many for too stupid of causes for anyone to care to pay attention when real ones for real causes happen.
Social media "protests" may be too weak to have any real effect...but neither are actual, feet on the ground, protests.
My
While ad-hoc organization may not work, comparing it to the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the 50's, if they had Twitter, Facebook etc. the NAACP could've gotten their message out faster and in a more efficient way.
I mean, it did work well for the Obama Campaign.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Activism from the left is dead in the US. There's no significant, effective opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the concentration of wealth, the crushing of unions, the decline in wages, or the tax benefits enjoyed by Wall Street. (All of which would have been unacceptable to the Eisenhower administration, an indication of how far to the Right the US has moved.)
The activist organizations that accomplish anything are either on the Right, funded by big business, or church-based. Or they're purely self-interested, like gun owners and gays.
Much of '60s activism was powered by music. That's over. Today's musicians have near zero political effect.
The same argument could have been made against the civil rights movement in the 60s. The author would have argued that as the NCAAP was using the telephone to organize rather than meeting always face to face drinking pints at the local as the Sons of Liberty did, that Dr. King was doomed to fail because his network relied on telephone calls and so was too loose.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
If a group like the NAACP had tried the same stunts in a more dictatorial country, say Iran or Cuba, how long would they have lasted? How long would an actual organization survive with their leaders constantly arrested, tried and executed with in a week of founding the organization?
Twitter, Facebook and the like have the advantage of anonymity when organizing and implementing plans.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. " -Voltaire
Here's the relevant bit of the article:
In the Iranian case, meanwhile, the people tweeting about the demonstrations were almost all in the West. “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events in Iran right,” Golnaz Esfandiari wrote, this past summer, in Foreign Policy. “Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.” The cadre of prominent bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, who championed the role of social media in Iran, Esfandiari continued, misunderstood the situation. “Western journalists who couldn’t reach—or didn’t bother reaching?—people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection,” she wrote. “Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi.”
So to summarize, the actual protests in Iran were being organized locally, whereas Twitter was simply used by Western media to cover the event because, well, Westerners don't live in Iran. I know it's not typical MOD for 'dotters to RTFA, but in this case, the article was well written and very thorough. I would highly suggest taking the time to read through the entire thing.
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No. Clearly they didn't light enough cars on fire.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No, I don't think they have. I am currently in Barcelona and got to see the protests here first hand a couple of nights ago; up close and personal with camera in hand, both from within the ranks of the rioters and those of the police and fire brigade, dodging riot batons and thrown bottles and masonry accordingly. It's not the first riot I've witnessed like this, and it probably won't be the last, but the organization has been pretty much the same every time.
The initial setup, performed by a trade union here in Barcelona, does indeed take organization, but the vandalism, thrown rocks, burning barricades and all the other mindless acts that occur is always totally anarchic. You might get a few people come together to build a barricade, trash a police car, set fire to garbage cans etc., but there is absolutely no organization and absolutely no overall strategy other than to cause mayhem. The rioters build on each others daring and gain confidence from each other to do ever more destructive feats of violence but that's about it. Eventually, they have the capability and numbers to overwhelm the police - they probably outnumbered them 10:1 in Barcelona - but they can't. They can't do it because they have no overall strategy and leadership; just anarchy. Even if they did have the leadership, riots are extremely fluid situations that no not allow for much prior planning and there is no ready way to co-ordinate that kind of mob mentality into an effective force.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
And what happened? Prop 8 passed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prop_8#Results
Best car analogy explanation so far.
This was a very good article and I would recommend reading the whole thing to anyone interested in the topic. It was well thought out and I want to give props to the author first and foremost.
Now, that said, I think something that is missing from the article is a discussion of the 'action' factor that is used in protests and social movements today. Something I've noticed with a lot of online social movements is that they are very good at giving every member a means to voice their thoughts on a particular issue. This has granted a lot of people a large audience for their thoughts regarding any particular matter. As such, anyone can get up on their digital soap box (as I am doing now) and spout their claims to get a series of 'likes' or 'dislikes' from their large online audience. This has a very nice effect on the speaker, making them feel like they are taking part in something important and big. However, the reason many of these online causes do not effect as much change as someone might initially think is because that seems to be where all of the action stops. Social media has given folks a means to express their opinion without backing anything up with action (I do draw an arbitrary line here that distinguishes talk from action).
The author of this article makes a fine summary of the American Civil Rights movement back in the 60's. Something that he fails to address when summarizing these movements, however, is that they had long lasting consequences on society as a whole. The bus boycott actually damaged the economic stance of the bus company being boycotted. The Southern sit-ins prevented the businesses where they took place from earning much cash off of white customers. The action taken by those who participated in the Civil Rights movement went beyond mere words. They actually cost their opponents something valuable. This is something that online social media movements do not do. The folks pillaging Darfur and its inhabitants don't give a damn about the 1.2 million Facebook users that want to help Darfur. Those Facebook users aren't damaging their opponents in any way. They are passively sitting around, voicing their dissent through words or micro-donations, and patting themselves on the back for a job well done. Meanwhile, those that are committing atrocities in Darfur are being allowed to work, as normal, without any outside interference. Thus, nothing will change. There is no perturbation to the status quo.
The reason the Iranian case was somewhat different is because there really were protesters in Tehran marching and having rallies. That's great. However, those rallies did not cost the Iranian politicians anything of value. Standing around and complaining, even in large numbers, did not prevent the vote-smearing that was going on. Thus, nothing changed. the Iranian protesters came closer to afflicting change that the Darfur FB users because they actually organized and tried to do something. However, they did not damage anything of value to those in favor of the status quo.
So I would say that if anyone really wants a revolution over a particular issue, not only is hierarchical organization important (as discussed in the fine article), but also, those organizing the protest (be it through social media or any other medium) must, necessarily, find a way to deprive their opponents of something valuable over a long span of time. That said, for issues close to us 'dotters, I would say that simply commenting on related stories is not enough. If we really want the MAFIAA to fall for good, we need to deprive them of something they value. If we want politicians to stop acting like corrupt douchebags, we need to go beyond writing letters to them and complaining. We need to organize and cost them something of value. If we want net neutrality to be implemented, we need to find a way to deprive all throttling ISPs from getting something of value (customers, money, new technology, something).
At least, that's my two cents.
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Whatever else you may think about the Tea Party, their initial protests were organized through the blogosphere (and mostly still are), and it would be foolish to deny that they've had some effect politics. Because of this, they lack a centralized leadership structure, and it will be curious to see if they can survive their own success.
Not a typewriter
Social media led revolution works swimingly...
http://i.imgur.com/abXW9.png
~Syberz
Very true.
The last protest I took part in was the worldwide march against the Iraq War. There were literally millions of people marching across the world. Most major cities globally had at least a few hundred thousand people all protesting against it. But the war happened anyway, and by and large the protests achieved absolutely nothing. Most politicians and pundits didn't even comment on them, at the time or since.
So forget popular protest. If you want to make a difference or change the world, buy a newspaper.
May the Maths Be with you!
Today he can't appear in public in the UK (the security would be too expensive) and his protégé David Miliband has just narrowly lost the chance of being the next Prime Minister, with many people thinking that his support for the war tipped the balance. Protests change public opinion, perhaps only a little, but sometimes decisively. You appear to be falling into the trap of so many USA citizens, of despising "soft power". But the values of your Founding Fathers are today being more undermined by the "soft power" of lobbyists and journalists than by any display of force.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It seems to me that the quality of the social link of facebook and twitter are dependent on the quality of the social unit involved in the link. If the social unit is strong, effective and determined then the use of these tools will necessarily augment their effect. If the social unit is weak and transitory then the effect of the tools will be weak and transitory.
Today is an ephemeron, doomed to the crypt of yesterday.
That's a very good point. The main reason for "democratic" popuplation to be manipulated to elect a certain establishment is to guarantee subsequent consent: "did not you _freely_ elected this?"
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Revolution/mass movement/polictical action and social media aren't particularly related. Social media is a tool, not a goal, and not a method. There's nothing inherent to Twitter that prevents it from being used by well organized groups as another (and easier to use) tool to get the word out.
The internet has the effect of lowering the bar to entry in to a lot of things. It is cheaper and easier to start up a company with a world wide market, it is cheaper and easier to rant incoherently on your pet peeve to lots of people, and it's easier to communicate political ideas to people who share them.
That means that more people will do all those things. One can self-publish a book through Amazon without a real publisher. One can get one's fifteen minutes (or even more) with a free blog. And one can start a political movement. And most of the people doing all those things because the internet makes it so easy will do it poorly. That is the nature of lowering the bar.
However, none of that will interfere with the efforts of those who know what they're doing in the first place. Those who would have succeeded in the pre-internet age will succeed now, not because the new tools exist, but because they're smart enough to figure out how to use them. And those who were too incompetent and clueless in the pre-internet world to get in to the game at all will fail now, not because the new tools are flawed, but because they don't know what to do with them.
Having a paint brush doesn't make you Michaelangelo, even if it's a computer controlled pneumatic hammer, and having a ball point pen, or even a word processor and printer, doesn't make you Shakespeare. But if you are Michaelangelo or Shakespeare, having that pneumatic hammer or word processer won't make you any less a genius.
Yeah, last I checked, twitter still lacks the ability to project bullets.
At least in America, there will be no bloodless revolution, and anything that pretends to be such is clearly a sham.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I agree that social media like facebook, twitter, and even blogs promotes weak social ties.
Anybody remember BBSs? Back before the Internet got big?
Most of the boards back in the day had close-nit groups. The kinds of people who met on the board, then got to know each other well enough to trust each other and possibly meet in real life.
Fast forward to today, and the old style message boards have been replaced by a "wall" and "pokes." There are tons of content, but it's all shallow and breezy. Maybe modern social media just sucks.
When the revolution comes, you'll be the second group against the wall.
There is one thing that has been proven time and time again. People do not get along. They do not agree. And despite any opinions that they may have, they are easily swayed with promises, bribes, threats and coercion. They are impossible to satisfy.
People fall into 3 groups.
1) Those who lead.
2) Those who follow.
3) Those who get the fuck out of the way.
I suggest that you fall into group #3 very rapidly.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Because protests actually affect anything in the slightest anymore?
Tea Party is having quite an impact I would say. Or do you not count is as a protest unless windows get broken and cars burned?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Meh, what's the point to life without freedom? Why bother getting out of the way if it will just lead to a world where those who lead (via lying, cheating, coercion, and so on) prey upon those who follow? See, the way I see it, there are three types of people in the world:
1) Those who recognize problems and run away from them.
2) Those who recognize problems and fix them.
3) Those who don't recognize problems.
They world's always been a rough place. That hasn't stopped our species from doing some absolutely amazing things. Keeping your head down and hiding in a hole while those around you are beaten down is just pathetic.
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TeaParty
Q.E.D
I'm not commenting on the validity of the TeaParty movement at all, I'm just saying that it seems to be counter to what the author just said. It is shunned by the MSM and derogatorily referred to as "teabaggers" by many. Yet in spite of the vitriol against it, has sustained for well over a year. And even if you don't like it, you need to admit it is a juggernaut that is completely changing the political landscape. Even (R) people are running scared.
On a side note, thank you California voters for choosing two complete dumb turds for Governor and two more twits for Senate. I'm sure glad I vote third party.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It would be nice if you remembered that in the same wave of protests the Free Trade Area of Americas got abandoned, and the role of the WTO got totally toned down. Obviously the government doesn't recognize that, because the rule #1 is to "never surrender to violence", and they pretended that the reorientation of the WTO priorities was in the air, somehow.
If you read actual documents on the riots that happened in Gothenborg and Prague around those time, the governement feels definitely threatened by widespread resistance to itself, and even more by the black blocs tactics that are considered by governement as decentralized cell-based potentially terrorist organizations. How do you think the cops got 1,2 billion dollar Canadian to protect Toronto in June ?
Also remember that north-american countries are directly relying on cheap labour in most of the "third-world" countries to keep on top of the imperialist food chain. Challenging such systems of oppression, when your benefiting from it, is surprising form altruism.
Overall I'd like if you would acknowledge the role of the government in decentralizing jobs to the southern hemisphere instead of eating their racist bullshit of: "immigrants are stealing our jobs".
"Perhaps you are confusing the difference between a RIOT and a PROTEST."
Perhaps that's exactly the point.
That now you have riots and protests when in the past any protest could easily end up in a riot.
Think of "the father of all riots", the French revolution. Don't you think that France would still be a monarchy if all that happened were mere "protests"?
It is said that war is diplomacy by other means. Heck, the only power of diplomacy is that everybody knows that if it fails it will end up in a war.
Just the same, those in power have no interest on anything that doesn't endanger their own heads (if they did, probably a protest wouldn't be needed to start with). And now, those in power know that current "first world" societies are too apathetic or well positioned for a protest to mean a real danger for them so, who cares?
An old teacher of mine said that "it is very dificult to make the revolution on a full stomach". Two days ago there were a general strike in Spain that won't make any difference. On the other hand, you can bet the president of Ecuador will pay big attention to his country's situation now.
No, not confusing it - just using the OP's parallel with the WTO protests, which all mutated into riots a good deal quicker than the Austerity protests in Barcelona which were peaceful until well into the afternoon. In both cases, protest and riot, the net result is effectively nil, and if anything will have made the situation worse in the case of Barcelona et al. The WTO continues to operate as it always has, and the Spanish government will enact austerity measures because like every other nation in Spain's situation no one has yet come up with a better solution to the problem of burgeoning national debts. Being able to mount an effective protest, or riot for that matter, is kind of moot when no one is listening.
As for things getting worse, at dawn yesterday many of the streets around Placa Catalunya and La Ramblas still bore extensive graffiti, residue from fires, vandalized ATMs, broken windows and strewn litter. Today, apart from a few bits of graffiti, it's all gone and it's business as usual; the 29th might as well never have happened, with one exception. There's going to be a bill for all that extra policing, fire fighting and maintenance work (possibly at overtime rates since much of it seems to have been done overnight), and ultimately it's getting added onto the Spanish national debt.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
What I'm about to claim is a fairly subtle distinction, but bear with me as it makes a big difference.
Overuse of protests has not made protests weaker. You might say it has produced an increasing proportion of examples in which protests are ineffective. The distinction is in the causal relationships.
It isn't that using protests as an everyday tactic leads to weak protests. It's that protests are effective for certain types of cause. Use of protests against other types of causes will lead simultaniously to two symptoms: many protests, and weak protests. So yes, you see a correlation between frequency and weakness, but it is not because one causes the other.
The difference is, even today if 60's-style protest tactics were used against an appropriate opponent for an appropriate cause, they would work as they did then. A nonviolent sit-in draws much of its strength by painting a salient moral picture in the public eye. It creates a confrontation, and observers see one side peacefully asserting their position and being bullied by the other side. This can be used to mobilize public opinion.
But when you use the same tactics to oppose 'the man' not because he's the kind of person that would turn a fire hose on you, but because that's how you want to perceive him... well, then you have a problem. He never attacks you, never cedes the moral high ground, and the whole incident goes unnoticed.
The risk faced by the 60's activists was a key factor in their success, because their function was to shed light on exactly that risk as a symptom of the social status quo. Take that risk element away (by applying the tactics to the wrong kind of adversary) and you increase the number of protests - because it's easier to get people to join in - while reducing their effectiveness.
In part, this implies that the effectiveness of a protest is related to the character of the group being protested. Could the pro-segregation establishment have ignored the sit-ins to cause them to go away? Well, no, because of the alignment of those protests as a defiance of "the rules" - not just a statement of dissent. For four black students to sit at a "whites only" lunch counter, they were assured an aggressive response at some level because their protest, unchallenged, was not harmless to the status quo. For the establishment not to respond would be to concede - "you really can sit here".
But by contrast if a group stands outside an abortion clinic with picket signs, how does that force any response at all? Such a protest is usually ineffective not merely because it is perceived as a lesser threat to the establishment do to overexposure, but because it is a lesser threat by its own nature. Unlike a lunch counter sit-in, the only way for either side to "lose" in this confrontation is to be the first one to turn violent.
The amazing thing is that only one statement in your post is remotely accurate.
If it's the same group of unemployed twits
Most attendees at protests in the developed world are either employed or students. Unemployed people generally are too busy scraping pennies and trying to find work to go protest anything.
Protesters these days are mostly on the wrong side of history and only effect fantasy land (where they reside).
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - protesters were generally against them, both have turned into quagmires, and neither have achieved their stated aims (Iraq, because the WMDs we were after didn't exist, Afghanistan, because Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora). Explain how the protesters were on the wrong side of that one.
You can find .25% of the population to protest just about anything (e.g. WTO etc).
0.25% of the population is approximately 15 million people worldwide, or 750,000 people in the United States. If it's that easy, prove it by organizing 750,000 people to protest stupid protests.
The fact that .25% is still a large number of people should not give their opinions any more weight.
Who's opinions should we give weight to? People who bother to get out and protest, people who answer public opinion polls, rich people, politically connected people, or some other group of people? No matter how you slice it, you're going to get a subset of the population.
Making real change is hard work that starts by understanding reality.
The one true statement in your entire post.
Most protesters just want to break things and/or find a nice slutty protester girl.
I'll make an assumption here: at least 5% of protesters who break things are caught by the police. In a typical major protest, there are about 100,000 protesters and about 300 arrests. That means that at most 6% of the protesters could even remotely be considered to be interested in breaking things.
As far as finding a nice slutty protester girl, if you've actually been to a protest you'll figure out pretty rapidly that a large number of protesters are married, often with children, a lot of them are elderly, and that the public image of a bunch of rowdy college kids hasn't been true since at least 1975 or so.
I am officially gone from
Malcolm Gladwell is wrong. The 4000 civilian protesters who gathered outside of the Police Hospital in Quito where President Correa was being held hostage by rioting Police were at least partially organized through twitter. When your national media all shut down or provide no information, twitter, as it did in Iran, and Honduras, became one of the few viable sources of outside information and coordination. Twitter and SMS messages are what brought those 4000 protesters into confrontation with the rioting police. They most certainly did put their lives on the line, and one of them was killed by the police, and at least 37 injured.
I think the problem is that by tweeting about something people think they've done their job. It's the equivalent of sticking all those ribbons on cars.
"I've devoted 30 seconds between fun and games to think about something important."
But honestly, I think it's more of a symptom of larger problems. Despite everything people piss and moan about Americans, and the developed world in general, by and large have it pretty good. There's a constant stream of entertainment and shiny toys. This stuff is the adult equivalent of a pacifier. And a lot of what seems to get people upset is the fact that they can't have more of it, or more time to enjoy it. I'm convinced we're living in an era where people don't want to be responsible for anything. They'll happily go to the government for all their needs, be it giving up rights for security or expecting handouts of every kind. So why expend any effort on actually doing something for yourself?
I also suspect that politics have gotten so polarized and fear-mongering so rampant because that's the only way people will pay any attention at all.
protests would be bigger news if people were allowed to mass protest on whatever public land they wanted to, none of this permit-only or free-speech zone bullshit.
...
No, Fox News is having quite an impact. If they didn't want the Tea Party to achieve its aims, not only would it be totally ineffective, it probably wouldn't even exist. Of course, it's in their interests to portray the Tea Party movement rather than themselves as the important ones because that's easier to sell, but without Fox they'd be nothing.
In fact, there's a good argument that Fox News in effect created the Tea Parties.
To the contrary, nothing like it. There is no top-down organization. Anyone claiming or imputed to be a leader thereof assuredly isn't. Insofar as big names, leadership, and funding occurs, that is only because there is such a groundswell of resentment toward the federal government that some will inevitably make use thereof.
I've been following, and part of, the movement for well before any alleged organization started. The "Tax Day Tea Party" was in fact a viral meme, a very popular idea that many were looking for. Many people suggested marching on Washington DC 4/15/09 - not because of some top-down organization, but because like-minded people could contact each other and say "hey, wouldn't it be great to march on Washington DC 4/15/09" - "yeah, I'm there if you are". Deep pockets participated because it was obvious participation was worthwhile. Outsiders saw those deep pockets as organizers because they want to find and vilify organizers of such a movement. It has sustained for way over a year (longer than you realize) not because it's a fad, but because millions of like-minded people were finally able to contact and coordinate each other thru social media networking - people who really do believe in Tea Party type views, and won't be giving up on their opinions any time soon.
The Tea Party is the kind of grassroots, high-tech, anarchistic, viral-meme, spontaneous-organization happening /. & Wired types have been predicting for some time. Just pisses a lot of 'em off that it was the "right wing" that actually did it.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
See, the way I see it, there are three types of people in the world:
1) Those who recognize problems and run away from them.
2) Those who recognize problems and fix them.
3) Those who don't recognize problems.
You're completely ignoring the fourth group.
4) Those who recognize problems as an opportunity to gain more power for themselves.
Sadly, most politicians fall into that last category.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
No. Clearly they didn't light enough cars on fire.
Who, the protesters or the cops masquerading as protesters? :P