The Great LJ Strike of 2008, Part 2
I actually didn't manage to log on to LiveJournal during the strike, rendering my refusal to participate moot.
What can I say? I was busy!
I'm tempted to write it off as a familial ethic with regard to strikes, claim that my father growing up in a coal mining town somehow made it impossible for me to cross a picket line-- but that would be taking the easy route. The fact was, and is, that I just had a busy Friday. And as many times as I've been on LiveJournal sixteen times in one day, there's just as many times that I've failed to participate, for a day, two days, a week.
Social networks, especially text-heavy ones like LJ, are semi-sporadic in terms of participation, even among the most addicted.
Which led me to thinking: the real problem with the kind of hybrid work stoppage/boycott that can be one's only recourse in social networking systems has a real problem: the unavailability of a picket line.
I'd always thought of picket lines as a spectacular display on the part of the striking party, as a spectacle of solidarity and protest. But they serve a further function: they serve to create a way that those striking, those most committed to the action, can actually stand up and be counted. A picket line separates group action from a day of spiked absenteeism.
If numbers come from the LJ strike, if one were to numerically assess the efficacy of the action, I would show up as a participant, despite my desire to, if anything, participate despite, to not participate in the group action. Looking at my friends, I actually had a few friends who seem to be posting as a direct response to the action, posting somewhat low-content posts, posts they otherwise would not have made, just to stand up and be counted as non-participants. I frankly just didn't have the time. I made a couple Twitter tweets, but other than that, I was basically just not able to take the time to be online on Friday. My feed reader was likewise neglected.
So-- if one wants to effectively signal the power of a mass action in the virtual world, one needs to create a virtual picket line.
In the future, when people are boycott/striking a particular SNS in order to prove a point, it might be wise for them to create an online picket line, in addition. It could function as a sort of one-day-only petition, and users could sign using their usernames on whatever SNS is under scrutiny-- this would provide the people in charge, who need to be able to gauge the power and efficacy of such a mass action in order to actually evaluate if it should be taken seriously, a data pool for comparison.
Just a thought, but I think it could be beneficial for digital organizing.