88% there: "Don't Mess With The Internet" billboard in Lamar Smith's district

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/dont-mess-with-the-internet-billboard-in-lamar-smiths-home-district#openinternet

by kn0thing • 14 years ago

274 57 14 years ago

crowdtilt.com

lowglow• 14 years ago

Having been born in Texas, I fully support this design. :D

joshontheweb2• 14 years ago

Me too, go Texas! Although I'll never move back. Too hot!

midas• 14 years ago

I don't normally give to charity, but this is totally awesome.

acav• 14 years ago

Love it - seriously awesome way to use crowdtilt

jjb1238• 14 years ago

As one of the co-founders of crowdtilt, I figure we'd mention that this is our fastest growing campaign to break $10k (2 days) to date. Not saying a _whole_ lot since it's only been about a month since launch, but still cool to see it go from Alexis' idea of "let's toss it up and see what happens" to ~90% funded in that time frame.

brandnewlow• 14 years ago

If you can be "imgur for crowdfunding", i.e. the crowdfunding platform that Redditors use, that's a pretty darn solid place to start from.

redthrowaway2• 14 years ago

Kickstarter's got a pretty solid grasp on the reddit crowd at the moment, though.

rdl• 14 years ago

It would be nice if you could expose the velocity of contributions somehow, at least when that is exciting. And otherwise figure out how to add artificial time pressure to campaigns, which is one thing real life charity fundraising does pretty successfully.

jjb1238• 14 years ago

we actually want to provide a pretty substantial dashboard to admins so they can see (and like us, get obsessed with) things like referral traffic, the referrals with the most value/contributed, the velocity of contributions you've mentioned, etc... But we never thought of providing those kinds of metrics to general visitors actually. That's good feedback rdl, thanks.

(most uses of the site are for a "kickstarter for groups of friends" where instead of a $30,000 documentary, it's a $1,300 party-bus where like an evite, you share the link/campaign with your group instead of strangers just coming across it through a "browse" page)

nkassis2• 14 years ago

Hey I have a small comment. I'm in Canada currently but I have a US credit card, yet I didn't see anyway to get past the non-US user page.

Also I was a little put off by registration page since it at first seems like you need facebook and the non-facebook options is in little print. When you click that link it and the name and email box appear would in my view be a better registration box to put first.

knighthacker2• 14 years ago

It should be fixed now. Could you please try again and let me know? my email is khaled@crowdtilt.com

We are also working on a better login/sign-up flow. I appreciate your feedback.

ax• 14 years ago

I'm curious, what do you do differently from Kickstarter? What makes your product more ideal for small ticket items?

jjb1238• 14 years ago

ax, the link that started this thread is actually a good example of something that is possible through Crowdtilt and not through Kickstarter. groupfunding, as we call it, allows you to pool funds for anything from a $4,100 airbnb house for a bachelor party to a $1,800 campaign for a friend's dog's surgery (two examples of campaigns that tilted today that wouldn't be a use case for Kickstarter). Hope that helps!

davemel372• 14 years ago

I wonder if the Billboard Owners are large pro-SOPA media companies. IT would suck if this money went right back into the Pro-SOPA lobby.

A better strategy might be hacking the billboard system by buying up remnant space and cancelling after a month. Since it costs money to take down Billboards, and remnant boards are remnant for a reason, they will probably stay up for several months without paying for more than a month. (If they get PSA pricing, it will be even cheaper.)

saryant2• 14 years ago

Aren't ClearChannel and Viacom the two big billboard companies? That's just going by the logos I see at the bottom.

If so, you're right. This is money going right back into their pockets.

Though I know area around his San Antonio office might have some private billboards set up by local landowners in the area. He's right off a major highway. Maybe one of those is a possible choice?

davemel372• 14 years ago

Also, CBS, Van Wagner and others... More importantly, the amount of red tape you have to go through to get a billboard up is crazy, so I can't imagine every billboard company isn't in bed with the politicians.

knighthacker2• 14 years ago

I love it :). It is fun watching this campaign move so fast.

uptown2• 14 years ago

Does anybody really think this is going to have an influence on Lamar Smith? Maybe I'm just jaded, but I don't see this as changing anything aside from giving money to a billboard company, and emptying the pockets of donors.

felipemnoa• 14 years ago

What do you suggest could be done? Is not bad to attack an opponent from different directions.

uptown2• 14 years ago

I'm not sure. I just don't think this is it.

bostonvaulter2• 14 years ago

I think it would be a good vector for news articles about the issue.. Especially local ones.

tocomment2• 14 years ago

I think it's a very good start. The internet community needs to do more and more "offline" activities to effect change.

joshontheweb2• 14 years ago

It'll piss him off at least, which is probably enough to justify most donors cost ;)

jasonkester• 14 years ago

Strange that they'd put together a whole page about this without ever mentioning who this person is or what he's doing that messes with the internet.

There seems to be a tendency among people who are really involved with politics to assume that everybody else is also really involved with politics, and therefore don't need any explanation about why we should be so angry about whatever it is we're supposed to be angry about.

But we're not. So if you want us to get behind your cause, you're going to need to tell us what it is. Possibly on your giant billboard itself.

lordgilman• 14 years ago

He was the sponsor of SOPA.

avree• 14 years ago

I think they assumed that most people who'd be donating to the cause already were aware about SOPA, and Lamar Smith (the representative who sponsored SOPA.)

Maybe a faulty assumption!

zinkem• 14 years ago

Hopefully everyone in Lamar Smith's district knows who Lamar Smith is and what he stands for. SOPA triggered a mainstream debate and you don't need to be 'really involved in politics' to know that.

This sentiment that people with political agendas need to inform their potential constituents is what has created our current political problems in America. When people don't pay attention, anyone who can attract eyeballs and make a reasonable sounding argument gets to do as they please. If we were paying attention, we wouldn't let these people wreak havoc in our society.

edit: What does it mean to live in a democracy where nobody knows whats going on? I know we're all familiar with and jaded to the current state of affairs, but I'm asking that we spend more time thinking about that state of affairs and what we expect of ourselves and our politicians.

natrius2• 14 years ago

"Hopefully everyone in Lamar Smith's district knows who Lamar Smith is and what he stands for."

That's some misplaced hope.

saryant2• 14 years ago

I live about ten feet away from his district (literally, I'm on the line) and I can assure you virtually no one in San Antonio knows what he stands for or knows about SOPA.

jjb1238• 14 years ago

I don't want to speak for Alexis, but I think he just thought he'd send it out to friends and people he's gotten through the SOPA ordeal to see if it had a chance of getting funded - wasn't really a "let's rally the internet" kind of thing (I literally think he set the whole thing up in about 10 minutes).

read_wharf• 14 years ago

I see the same thing in open source software. People who are really involved with their project assume that everyone who lands on their site is also really involved with their project and so don't see any need to explain what their project actually does. I've left sites after digging around and never discovering what the project is about. People do this in all areas.

tomkin• 14 years ago

Well, I live in Ontario, Canada, and I don't know who Lamar Smith is exactly, but I do know if I saw that billboard that I'd get the idea. Or I'd go online and look up what it was all about. So now I am more informed than I'd be otherwise.

There is a tendency among some to conclude that a big billboard must have a lot of information. But people are driving by at high speeds and can barely finish 5 words. I think in this case, simplicity works for the cause.

Then there are the apathetic people...

moultano• 14 years ago

Seriously. Why not, "Lamaar Smith tried to Destroy the Internet." Hyperbole, sure, but it's a billboard.

If you want something like this to be effective, you have to take your inspiration from political attack ads. Throw his desaturated face up there on a black background.

howardr• 14 years ago

Completely agree with your assessment on taking a more "shocking" approach, and also with the original comment that many do not know that SOPA and Lamar Smith are connected some how.

It think they are using the current phrase as a parody of the famous anti-litter ad campaign "Don't Mess With Texas" [1]

As a Texan who happens to live in Lamar Smith's district, I think the effectiveness is entirely dependent on where in his district it is bought. His district includes SW Austin and many rural areas such as Kerrville.

Edit:

for some reason the wikipedia page is not linking correctly to wikipedia. using google search

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=dont+mess+with+texas+wiki

meow• 14 years ago

And considering the location (Texas), a slogan of "Lamar sold you out for big government" would have been much more effective and achieved the same goal. We have to remember that we are targeting people who may or may not give a shit about internet (and people who cares will hopefully vote the right way)..

jjb1238• 14 years ago

as bostonvaulter noted below, i don't think it's so much about illumination on the issue (given there is only a billboard to work with). i think the idea is finding whatever will be the best vector for further news articles about the issue, local and national.

plus #dontmesswiththeinternet is a tiny bit shorter than #lamarsoldyououtforbiggovernment

ComputerGuru• 14 years ago

I know all about the Lamar Smith debacle, and even to me, this billboard would be ridiculously vague.

This is more of a gloating-esque billboard, not an effective one. I completely support the idea, but I think this as poor of "an implementation" as possible.

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

I don't think the artwork shown is the actual billboard artwork. They said in the post they want to make sure they have money before spending effort on real art.

draggnar• 14 years ago

Maybe it's just a conversation starter?

seddona• 14 years ago

a very interesting direction for Crowdtilt. I'm interested to see how democratised crowd funding for political intent plays out.

tocomment2• 14 years ago

It his the same thing as the super PAC that was started for this same purpose? Or is this an unrelated group of people doing a second billboard?

plasma• 14 years ago

The billboard should probably be Facebook, Reddit, Twitter etc logos with Lamar Smith holding a gun shooting them with "Stop Lamar Smith from destroying the internet".

zachrose• 14 years ago

The billboard should probably be a computer in cowboy hat.

88% there: "Don't Mess With The Internet" billboard in Lamar Smith's district

Related Stories