Is Reddit the Liberal Tea Party?
First they helped get Stephen Colbert to rally in Washington. Now Reddit.com users are forming a political action committee to advocate net neutrality. Internet commenters may be birthing a sort of lefty Tea Party (God help us).
After reading about likely fallout from the Republican takeover of the House, a 26-year-old Los Angeles comedian named Eddie Geller logged on to Reddit and called for action, writing, "There's a lot more of us than there are of them, we should at least try our best to put pressure on these people no matter what the letter before their name is." Reddit, after all, was an early and influential advocate of convincing Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert to rally in DC (though Colbert said he already had the idea).
The result of Geller's new rallying cry, per the Daily Beast: A lawyer has volunteered to formally create the PAC; users of the social news site contributed ideas for causes beyond net neutrality (campaign finance reform, lower defense spending); a blog and subreddit went up; and the original call to arms netted 450 comments and 1,500 upvotes.
Of course, you can't place campaign ads with upvotes, which is why there's a meeting tonight to flesh things out. Via IRC, naturally. On the internet, no one knows what beverage you're enjoying.