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> Imagine if even 5% or 10% of the 61,179 people who signed that petition instead organized rallies in their cities, or a kind of Leave The Internet Alone rally

> Imagine if even 5% or 10% of the 61,179 people who signed that petition instead organized rallies in their cities, or a kind of Leave The Internet Alone rally in DC. Because the truth is that people generally don't care enough to do anything worth while ("signing" a petition is pretty minimal in terms of effort). There will always be the activists that are local to the cause who will do everything they can to fight, but everyone else, living their own lives, working, being parents, having hobbies or what have you have their own personal problems to take care of. It's just routine. With the added regular news from the regular sources, who knows how manipulated they are, they're just so removed from what's actually going on. Not to mention, many people won't ask "What can the people do?" but "What can I do?" and their answer will be: "Nothing!" We live in a world where people are told to live their lives, handle their business and the rest will be taken care of. Maybe that's just common in Canada. I don't like this situation, but this is what I'm seeing.

res0nat0r 12y ago
Exactly. This is called slacktivism. Which is also a major reason why none of these online petitions which require a simple mouse click and nothing more are not taken seriously by most folks.
- atmosx 12y ago
  Hm, we can all agree then that making an app for this and that won't change the world? Just don't tell Silicon Valley..
  - Retra 12y ago
    You can make money selling activism just as well as you can selling entrepreneurism.
    - jarcane 12y ago
      Indeed. It took me over a year to get off Credo's mailing list. They even followed me to other addresses. I only stopped getting their ads in the mail after I moved overseas. No sense selling cut-rate "libwashed" cellphones to foreigners who can't use them, I guess.
    - justizin 12y ago
      But the people selling activism are not doing activism. Sorry. The good news is, being an activist and being employed are not mutually exclusive! Activism is a way of life.
- EC1 12y ago
  As long as we have internet, we will be complacent. I believe the internet has fragmented our minds so far and wide that with it, nothing will ever get done. The internet is the worst invention of the 20th century. I wish the internet was regulated purely for education, not gaming, not buzzfeed, or facebook, or any such bullshit distractions. If interests were kept local, issues would become local, and communities form. The internet allows us to pick and choose our own communities, so while we're together, we're further apart than ever. We'll never have a common localized goal. If we live on the internet, we do our "activism" on the internet, our communications, our entertainment, everything. Until either the internet dissolves or becomes regulated/boring, and/or the governments policies physically affect us, nothing will ever happen. I remember as a young boy my Grandmothers only wishes her entire life was to dip her feet in the ocean and see a mountain in person. Our desires became more contrived with the endless information stream we experience every day. There's no communities. There's no real passion or ideology anymore. Just cynicism, ego, competition, and sarcasm. The internet lets you vicariously live through every body, and we lose that essence of what it means to be human, the passion to discover what is unknown. Once you are exposed to how truly chaotic everything really is, that everything operates under the illusion of a master plan but is really just one headless blunder, you realize you are completely helpless and stop caring, You seek to drown out that underlying passion for something with bullshit because you don't know what it is, because you haven't given yourself the time of day to try until one day you're nothing but a sum of your plugs, like a swiss cheese without the cheese, just the holes, just a skeleton of who you should have otherwise been.
  - Robot1000 12y ago
    This is a very extreme point of view. Asserting that education is the only worthwhile use of the Internet is dogmatic and an unfair generalisation. Is entertainment and pleasure not a worthwhile and fundamentally human thing to pursue? While I agree with your point of view that there is a lot of "bullshit", I don't believe it's for any one individual to control. You have to trust people to regulate their use. Your post also states that all forms of entertainment are Internet-based, but this is simply untrue. What of people who read, cook, rock climb, play instruments. The list goes on. Perhaps if your Grandmother had access to the Internet, she may be have been inspired by a "pointless bullshit" YouTube video to actually a climb a mountain, not just see one? Additionally, you say that there aren't communities, but there are. Reddit, HN and many other sites connect thousands (and more) of people with similar interests, possibly more than could ever hope to meet in real life. As I mentioned earlier, you have to trust people to regulate the balance of online and "offline" activity.
razster 12y ago
I'm content with life, my ways have not been changed and I do not feel a threat, so I continue on with life. Only when my rights or way of life is altered will I voice or take action. This is pretty much how the world is working.
Retric 12y ago
On the other side of things picture what happens if 100 million people sign a petition. Realistically if < 1 million people sign something like this it's a political non issue that can be safely ignored.
- thaumaturgy 12y ago
  There are only around 300 million people in the U.S., around 230 million of which are of voting age, fewer still being actually eligible voters, and far fewer still who would understand or agree with the importance of this particular issue. I can't quickly find the all-time most popular petition on the site, but I'd wager it's well under 1 million signatures, which is probably at least partly due to how quickly the uselessness of the petitions site became obvious.
  - Retric 12y ago
    True enough, but 300+ thousand people have physically traveled to DC for some protests. Getting ~3x as many people to just sign a petition is a much smaller hurdle. Granted, these are just focused on getting a response so people don't waste a lot of effort 'running up the numbers'. Still, I suspect if you combine similar petitions you will see large numbers of people supporting things like legalizing pot.
thaumaturgy 12y ago
A slightly more charitable argument would be that people do care, but are currently under too much financial and day-to-day stress to simply drop everything and participate meaningfully in lots of political causes. And in this particular case, there are ancillary issues too. The Aaron Swartz case doesn't immediately sound important to non-hackers, and there are no shortage of people who will helpfully point out, over and over and over again, that, "Aaron actually did break the law, and if he didn't want to go to jail, he shouldn't've broken the law, and he had a mental illness besides so the outcome is nobody's fault but his own." I disagree with those people, but they're still able to move the discussion away from where it should be: federal prosecutors acted absurdly. Gay rights have only recently made serious political progress, obnoxious drug enforcement is being fought against, people are talking about the NSA in light of Snowden's leaks (and, fortunately, the law-worshippers' "Snowden is a traitor and a coward" position didn't stick). People aren't totally inactive. They're just broke and stressed-out and overwhelmed by a relentless tide of political issues.
- protonfish 12y ago
  An even more charitable argument would be that people who care might happily put effort behind their convictions if a solution presented itself that had half a chance of working. There always seems to be at least one Gandhi/hippie wannabe in a discussion who thinks that a demonstration can magically solve any problem. This is foolishly simplistic and unconstructive. And if you use the phrase "Take to the streets!" please be quiet while the big people are talking.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- unclebucknasty 12y ago
  >people do care, but are currently under too much financial and day-to-day stress to simply drop everything and participate meaningfully in lots of political causes I used to believe this was the case, but now I wrestle with it. I'm not sure what people think any more, but I find that a core problem is that too many don't tend to think critically or independently and are thus far too easily led. It's partly implicit in the other points of your comment (e.g. the way the narrative around Mr. Swartz redirected away from the relevant discussion), but the whole of it is difficult to explain. It's very Matrix-like in that they seem to want to be misled, bury their heads in the sand, and pretend that everything is OK. Maybe this is why people spend an inordinate amount of time on utter distraction, and seem to prefer that to addressing real matters, even when those matters directly affect them.
mgbmtl 12y ago
> Maybe that's just common in Canada. You should visit Montreal :-) The next "Earth day" (April 22nd) should probably be an interesting festive day. c.f. student strikes, petrol pipeline opposition, charter protests, mining projects opposition, urban cyclists, mesh networks, etc. There is a very big disconnect electorally, and with the rest of the province, but under the rug a lot of changes are happening.
awt 12y ago
> Because the truth is that people generally don't care enough to do anything worth while ("signing" a petition is pretty minimal in terms of effort). Isn't the truth not that people don't care, but actually don't have the power to do anything? Democracy in Athens came about at a time when it was dependent upon its navy and thus its thousands of rowers. Unions (for example) are destroyed, not by union busting, but by industry disappearing. When the government is the largest employer, the people depend on the government and not the other way around. The US no longer depends on the majority of it's voting population. The right to vote of any adult in the US at this point is largely vestigial, as is evidenced by the divergence of actual government policy from the interests of the voting public.
- chris_wot 12y ago
  The majority of the voting population are voting one way it appears. I'm an outsider, but it seems that the issue is that not enough people are voting. Apologies if this is ill-informed, I'm an Australian so I'm quite possibly wrong.
  - awt 12y ago
    They are voting the way they are meant to vote. PACs exist for a reason. Also, why vote? When democracy emerged in the U.S., the voting population was about 800,000. The current voting population is 206,000,000. The power of an individual's vote has decreased immensely. I use federal numbers because the federal government has most of the power now, as opposed to the states, in which an individual's vote is worth relatively more, but still massively less than it was at the time the constitution was written.
    - hackuser 12y ago
      > why vote? When democracy emerged in the U.S., the voting population was about 800,000. The current voting population is 206,000,000. The power of an individual's vote has decreased immensely. I agree that the power to change the outcome of an election is minimal, roughly equal to every other voter. Voting does much more than change election outcomes; it signals the electorate's priorities. Win or lose, every vote from your neighborhood, district, town, county, etc. signals that people there care, and pressures elected officials to pay attention to them. Every vote for your issues, win or lose, signals your priorities. Your representatives' jobs depend on pleasing voters. Democrats elected in districts where people vote for gun rights are not going to push gun control in Congress (and vice versa for Republicans). Counties where 75% vote will get politicians' attention and have their issues addressed; those where 30% vote will be overlooked. And every non-vote in your neighborhood, district, town, county, etc. tells your elected officials that you don't care and that they can safely ignore you.

res0nat0r 12y ago

Exactly. This is called slacktivism. Which is also a major reason why none of these online petitions which require a simple mouse click and nothing more are not taken seriously by most folks.

atmosx 12y ago
Hm, we can all agree then that making an app for this and that won't change the world? Just don't tell Silicon Valley..
- Retra 12y ago
  You can make money selling activism just as well as you can selling entrepreneurism.
  - jarcane 12y ago
    Indeed. It took me over a year to get off Credo's mailing list. They even followed me to other addresses. I only stopped getting their ads in the mail after I moved overseas. No sense selling cut-rate "libwashed" cellphones to foreigners who can't use them, I guess.
  - justizin 12y ago
    But the people selling activism are not doing activism. Sorry. The good news is, being an activist and being employed are not mutually exclusive! Activism is a way of life.
EC1 12y ago
As long as we have internet, we will be complacent. I believe the internet has fragmented our minds so far and wide that with it, nothing will ever get done. The internet is the worst invention of the 20th century. I wish the internet was regulated purely for education, not gaming, not buzzfeed, or facebook, or any such bullshit distractions. If interests were kept local, issues would become local, and communities form. The internet allows us to pick and choose our own communities, so while we're together, we're further apart than ever. We'll never have a common localized goal. If we live on the internet, we do our "activism" on the internet, our communications, our entertainment, everything. Until either the internet dissolves or becomes regulated/boring, and/or the governments policies physically affect us, nothing will ever happen. I remember as a young boy my Grandmothers only wishes her entire life was to dip her feet in the ocean and see a mountain in person. Our desires became more contrived with the endless information stream we experience every day. There's no communities. There's no real passion or ideology anymore. Just cynicism, ego, competition, and sarcasm. The internet lets you vicariously live through every body, and we lose that essence of what it means to be human, the passion to discover what is unknown. Once you are exposed to how truly chaotic everything really is, that everything operates under the illusion of a master plan but is really just one headless blunder, you realize you are completely helpless and stop caring, You seek to drown out that underlying passion for something with bullshit because you don't know what it is, because you haven't given yourself the time of day to try until one day you're nothing but a sum of your plugs, like a swiss cheese without the cheese, just the holes, just a skeleton of who you should have otherwise been.
- Robot1000 12y ago
  This is a very extreme point of view. Asserting that education is the only worthwhile use of the Internet is dogmatic and an unfair generalisation. Is entertainment and pleasure not a worthwhile and fundamentally human thing to pursue? While I agree with your point of view that there is a lot of "bullshit", I don't believe it's for any one individual to control. You have to trust people to regulate their use. Your post also states that all forms of entertainment are Internet-based, but this is simply untrue. What of people who read, cook, rock climb, play instruments. The list goes on. Perhaps if your Grandmother had access to the Internet, she may be have been inspired by a "pointless bullshit" YouTube video to actually a climb a mountain, not just see one? Additionally, you say that there aren't communities, but there are. Reddit, HN and many other sites connect thousands (and more) of people with similar interests, possibly more than could ever hope to meet in real life. As I mentioned earlier, you have to trust people to regulate the balance of online and "offline" activity.

razster 12y ago

I'm content with life, my ways have not been changed and I do not feel a threat, so I continue on with life. Only when my rights or way of life is altered will I voice or take action. This is pretty much how the world is working.

Retric 12y ago

On the other side of things picture what happens if 100 million people sign a petition. Realistically if < 1 million people sign something like this it's a political non issue that can be safely ignored.

thaumaturgy 12y ago
There are only around 300 million people in the U.S., around 230 million of which are of voting age, fewer still being actually eligible voters, and far fewer still who would understand or agree with the importance of this particular issue. I can't quickly find the all-time most popular petition on the site, but I'd wager it's well under 1 million signatures, which is probably at least partly due to how quickly the uselessness of the petitions site became obvious.
- Retric 12y ago
  True enough, but 300+ thousand people have physically traveled to DC for some protests. Getting ~3x as many people to just sign a petition is a much smaller hurdle. Granted, these are just focused on getting a response so people don't waste a lot of effort 'running up the numbers'. Still, I suspect if you combine similar petitions you will see large numbers of people supporting things like legalizing pot.

thaumaturgy 12y ago

A slightly more charitable argument would be that people do care, but are currently under too much financial and day-to-day stress to simply drop everything and participate meaningfully in lots of political causes. And in this particular case, there are ancillary issues too. The Aaron Swartz case doesn't immediately sound important to non-hackers, and there are no shortage of people who will helpfully point out, over and over and over again, that, "Aaron actually did break the law, and if he didn't want to go to jail, he shouldn't've broken the law, and he had a mental illness besides so the outcome is nobody's fault but his own." I disagree with those people, but they're still able to move the discussion away from where it should be: federal prosecutors acted absurdly. Gay rights have only recently made serious political progress, obnoxious drug enforcement is being fought against, people are talking about the NSA in light of Snowden's leaks (and, fortunately, the law-worshippers' "Snowden is a traitor and a coward" position didn't stick). People aren't totally inactive. They're just broke and stressed-out and overwhelmed by a relentless tide of political issues.

protonfish 12y ago
An even more charitable argument would be that people who care might happily put effort behind their convictions if a solution presented itself that had half a chance of working. There always seems to be at least one Gandhi/hippie wannabe in a discussion who thinks that a demonstration can magically solve any problem. This is foolishly simplistic and unconstructive. And if you use the phrase "Take to the streets!" please be quiet while the big people are talking.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
unclebucknasty 12y ago
>people do care, but are currently under too much financial and day-to-day stress to simply drop everything and participate meaningfully in lots of political causes I used to believe this was the case, but now I wrestle with it. I'm not sure what people think any more, but I find that a core problem is that too many don't tend to think critically or independently and are thus far too easily led. It's partly implicit in the other points of your comment (e.g. the way the narrative around Mr. Swartz redirected away from the relevant discussion), but the whole of it is difficult to explain. It's very Matrix-like in that they seem to want to be misled, bury their heads in the sand, and pretend that everything is OK. Maybe this is why people spend an inordinate amount of time on utter distraction, and seem to prefer that to addressing real matters, even when those matters directly affect them.

mgbmtl 12y ago

> Maybe that's just common in Canada. You should visit Montreal :-) The next "Earth day" (April 22nd) should probably be an interesting festive day. c.f. student strikes, petrol pipeline opposition, charter protests, mining projects opposition, urban cyclists, mesh networks, etc. There is a very big disconnect electorally, and with the rest of the province, but under the rug a lot of changes are happening.

awt 12y ago

> Because the truth is that people generally don't care enough to do anything worth while ("signing" a petition is pretty minimal in terms of effort). Isn't the truth not that people don't care, but actually don't have the power to do anything? Democracy in Athens came about at a time when it was dependent upon its navy and thus its thousands of rowers. Unions (for example) are destroyed, not by union busting, but by industry disappearing. When the government is the largest employer, the people depend on the government and not the other way around. The US no longer depends on the majority of it's voting population. The right to vote of any adult in the US at this point is largely vestigial, as is evidenced by the divergence of actual government policy from the interests of the voting public.

chris_wot 12y ago
The majority of the voting population are voting one way it appears. I'm an outsider, but it seems that the issue is that not enough people are voting. Apologies if this is ill-informed, I'm an Australian so I'm quite possibly wrong.
- awt 12y ago
  They are voting the way they are meant to vote. PACs exist for a reason. Also, why vote? When democracy emerged in the U.S., the voting population was about 800,000. The current voting population is 206,000,000. The power of an individual's vote has decreased immensely. I use federal numbers because the federal government has most of the power now, as opposed to the states, in which an individual's vote is worth relatively more, but still massively less than it was at the time the constitution was written.
  - hackuser 12y ago
    > why vote? When democracy emerged in the U.S., the voting population was about 800,000. The current voting population is 206,000,000. The power of an individual's vote has decreased immensely. I agree that the power to change the outcome of an election is minimal, roughly equal to every other voter. Voting does much more than change election outcomes; it signals the electorate's priorities. Win or lose, every vote from your neighborhood, district, town, county, etc. signals that people there care, and pressures elected officials to pay attention to them. Every vote for your issues, win or lose, signals your priorities. Your representatives' jobs depend on pleasing voters. Democrats elected in districts where people vote for gun rights are not going to push gun control in Congress (and vice versa for Republicans). Counties where 75% vote will get politicians' attention and have their issues addressed; those where 30% vote will be overlooked. And every non-vote in your neighborhood, district, town, county, etc. tells your elected officials that you don't care and that they can safely ignore you.