Anyways, all of you youngsters who get the cat signal are certainly capable of calling or writing your local representative. I'll cheer for anything that raises awareness and reduces apathy among my generation and yours.

This is about engaging young nerds and non-nerds, average citizens and making an impact on main stream media. It's a marketing and PR stunt. It will trigger media coverage and thousands of phone calls... politicians fear at least one of those two things like the plague. And it's probably not the phone calls.

We already have a formal projects such as the EFF. They are the backbone of all this.

The problem is not with old style senators. The problem is with the 95% of the general population that is confused or turned off by it. You're trying to convince the general electorate, which then determines who gets elected.

It does feel like a little club of geeks, which is not effective as a movement that aims to convince/beyond that circle.

Lets hope a majority of people will be fooled into thinking they are part of a special club of l33t interweb freedom f1ght3rs.

I am being both sarcatic ( about how everyone thinks they are a geek these days ) and honest ( about that it could actually work ) here.

Which, coincidentally, is a LOT of what you can see happening these days with "social networking" and "cloud computing" and all those other hypes and trends that basically existed very well in the 90s and before but now the public is "catching up" with technical developments.

They dont care what a small group of nerds and tech companies want and think. They care what average people think they want.

Symbolism, accessable tone of voice .. Thats extremely relevant.

You shouldnt compare it to lobbyist webites. You should compare it those of political movements and politically oriented charities.

The memification of the message is brilliant marketing, because its funny, accesible and honest.

Rescue the lolcats from the evil clutches of the internet hate league! So load up your meme gun and blast these seniors out of congress.

That right there. Tell me GP when youve found someone who can't get behind that. I think you'll be surprised.

The organizational style is very similar to that of other organizations that attempt to motivate constituents like the NRA and AARP and if you really want to spend some time boggling, check out their communications to their constituency.

In other words, the "general public" is not the target here. Neither are representatives, directly. The target is the "Z generation"[2], which are underrepresented in political debates, I think. And if you want them to do something, you probably want to use some memes.

[1] That's hyperbole, but I do suspect that if .01% of the American readers of icanhascheezburger were to call their representatives,

[2] "Z generation"? I prefer to think of it as "Force Z".

Yeah, there's nothing worse than geeks trying to have an impact. What a bunch of ass holes!

I'm curious, what impact do you have on "old style Senators"?

And the problem with educating people isnt the quality of the informational value of the message, its the lack of entertainment value.

Consider the daily show or colbert report, do they make people read less well informed newspapers? Most of their viewers were not reading those. It is however taking attention away from reality shows.

Likewise this is not to replace the EFF, but to widen its reach, and get people actively involved, that wouldnt get involved otherwise.

It's literally the absolute least you could do.

This is what I'm worried about. Who really stopped SOPA? You can bet that anyone who signs up for this will go around touting how they stopped SOPA, just like the guy next to me pretty much single handedly saved Haiti in 2010 with his $5 donation to the Red Cross.

There is a disparity between giving money so that others can continue to do work and being the one doing the work. I want that distinction clear, and to remain clear. The doctor who flew down to Haiti to personally help is infinitely more valuable than someone who donated.

EDIT: I'm not saying that this is useless or dumb. It's a step in the right direction, albeit (IMO) a small one. I just don't want to see "I signed up- I'm going to save the internet!" I think the people who really devote themselves to these causes should be respected on a different level than those that, for instance, sign up for this.

People who aggravated against SOPA certainly did something -- an important thing -- but people who made hard decisions, called or emailed their representatives and really coordinated this effort did more.

Really? Let's say I donate enough money that the Red Cross can afford to send an additional doctor to Haiti. How is that not in the same ballpark as volunteering your time as a doctor to go work there?

We should care about the effects of our actions, and donating money to effective charities (see http://givewell.org) is one of the ways we can have the biggest positive effect.

(I take this seriously; I give about 1/3 of what I earn as a programmer to the most effective charities I can find.)

Going back to the Red Cross example: If I'm a doctor in the US I'm making very good money, I get to see my family every day, and I have a very high standard of living.

It takes one of those doctors (not necessarily from the US, but I imagine most doctors live well) to give all of that up and fly over to a country in ruins to help. Without the people who are willing to really make those sacrifices, we've got a bunch of money and that's it. Money in and of itself is not what is usually needed to rectify situations.

What's wrong with that? Go geeks! Don't you think the first time the "Cat Signal" is activated, it will make the news, and bring attention to the issue?

Also, old senators die. We'll replace them with redditors.

As a marketing strategy - and let me be clear, this is a marketing & people problem, not a technical one - you need to be able to reach the "Joe the Plumber" types. Someone who checks his facebook & email on the weekends, possibly forwarding glurge. Someone who does not own a smartphone, because they are confusing. Someone who will not get troll culture, memes and lulz, seeing them as juvenile foolery.

Put another way: a campaign like this needs to drive on many fronts, including the internet culture drive, the corporate drive, and the blue-collar drive.

Basically they are trying to institutionalize a network of "like-minded" internet activists; which will at least be interesting as a sociology experiment to see how it evolves and what kinds of reaction it gets.

Remember, most of the world are not geeks, and in a representative democracy, that means very few people in power are geeks. Geeks need to be able to communicate these socio-technical issues to non-geeks. I really hope that the Internet defence league works to communicate to the mainstream of the culture - the non-geeks - what's going on, because the mainstream is the primary driver of how we move politically (technically it's a feedback loop with the mass media playing a large part, but mainstream culture carries a large momentum and sway).

Not sure if the cat signal will be involved in this "final-mile" of the distributed protest action or not.

It kind of is though. Also some of these "little club of geeks" have extraordinarily deep pockets and any Senator/representative worth their salt knows how much that matters. I don't want to make demean important movements in the sixties by making comparisons of their oddities but money/power worked then and Senators/Representatives know it.

Besides, just what the hell is wrong with cats? Maybe you're a dog person but a lot of us are not. Elitist.

I for one think he has a point and if you don't please come up with something better than name calling.

To be fair, the following all get a lot of congressional hearing time:

* American League

* National League

* National Football League

* Anti-Defamation League

If shitty internet legislation costs them popularity or makes them look out of touch then they'll stop doing it.

The key is that this is going to be put in place on many sites so that the power can be readily abused to bring the kinds of legislative changes we want to see.

If it works within a few years you should start seeing earmarks for whoever controls the switch.

OK, I don't disagree with the general sentiment of what you're saying... but I think you overstate the extent to which you can generalize the youthfulness of the audience here, and/or the extent to which the Internet is only know nto the young. As a 39 year old "Gen X"er, I'm aware of plenty of people my age who know and use Reddit, Twitter, etc. Plenty of people roughly my age were in college in the 90's when the Internet was first becoming widely available, and are 'net savvy.

I'm sure if they start doing anything in earnest for the general public the campaign materials will change.

After what happened with SOPA and ACTA, they can regard it as a joke at their peril.

Lots of memes are only said out loud. Don't forget the original meme definition.