In case no one has yet told you about it, you need to check out @herpderpedia, a collection of excellent tweets from Wednesday’s Wikipedia Blackout in protestation of SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act proposed in the House of Representatives. Personally, I think Wikipedia’s decision was a bold, dramatic move that not only worked, but effectively communicated a position I strongly support, because I photoshop the hell out of a fuckton of copyrighted images, and I’d prefer for Hipster Jew not be shut down because of it.
For instance, this sleepy Nazi Puppy I made would probably get me five years in prison. On the other hand, funniest court proceedings ever!
Now, Wikipedia’s blackout just involved putting a black layer over the site that talked about SOPA and PIPA (the Protect Intellectual Property Act, the Senate’s version of the bill) and how you should send a letter to your congressional delegation. It was actually extremely easy to circumvent: for one thing, you could just disable javascript while using Wikipedia, and (if unchecking that box in your browser’s options was too tech heavy for you) then you could’ve just hit the “Escape” button while the page was loading. Nonetheless, while a bunch of people are intelligent enough to master the fairly complex protocols of Twitter’s “retweets” and “hashtags” (which, to this day, elude me), they couldn’t figure out how to find a workaround or even what the hell was going on. So, below are some of my favorite tweets, as retweeted by @herpderpedia. I’ve blurred the names and faces, so as to protect the guilty.
I didn’t hear that, but I do know that one sofa does have a pretty strong lobbying arm.
ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE! ALL OF IT! Somewhere, the editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica are jumping off a bridge in sadness.
It’s well known that commies are anti-regulation and government interference. That’s what was so scary about the Soviet Union–no regulation coupled with an “anything goes” approach to economic management. Also, you can’t really make it out, but he’s holding a Jets’ cap in his picture, so screw him.
SOPA and PIPA are perhaps the only pieces of bipartisan legislation we’ve seen for the past decade (outside of the PATRIOT Act), but the one person in Washington who is undeniably against them is President Obama. Still, if a website is down, it must be the President’s fault. Because, fuck that guy.
Firstly, hopefully, now that the blackout is over, you can visit Wikipedia’s sister site, Wiktionary, which will tell you how to spell “accessible.” Also, I believe most browsers supply a spell-check feature and I don’t believe that was blacked out. Secondly, apparently, in stark contrast to the tweet above this one, Obama also serves as the nation’s IT guy, who we can call in if the web isn’t working properly.
Well, he is friends with Spider-Man, after all.
The most confusing part of any blackout is when it fails to work.
Girl’s got books to read, dammit. Wikipedia is the worst. There is literally no other way to make a book go from being something you haven’t read to something you have read.
I hate all those fucking four year-olds who blackout their websites in order to protest overreaching acts of the US Congress. They are so immature. Also, Wikipedia got called “cunt” a lot. A lot. Especially for Americans, for whom that word is to women what the n-word is to black people.
Now, I was a little confused at this until I learned that some porn websites had also done a “Stop SOPA” blackout. I also love the wording here: “canceling.” As if the government basically calls up its internet provider and says “yeah, here’s a list of the services I’d like taken off my account…”
There were a lot of “oh no, I’m gonna fail school” posts, but for a bunch I just assumed it was middle school or high school. You know, not something that would let you have a degree that might allow you access to jobs where you would have control over other people’s jobs. I’m not saying that I was ignorant of the fact that lots of people use Wikipedia in college (I certainly did) and grad school, just that I never really believed there were people out there who were so dependent on Wikipedia that it was literally the difference between passing and failing. I also love the “#notfair” hashtag. I guess I’ve never really considered all the horrible inequalities slackers must face on a daily basis. Walk two miles, amiright?
Can’t wait for the next blackout! See you there.
