{"id":2310,"date":"2010-01-06T09:05:35","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T13:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=2310"},"modified":"2010-01-06T11:11:09","modified_gmt":"2010-01-06T15:11:09","slug":"behold-the-awesome-power-of-facebook-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/01\/06\/behold-the-awesome-power-of-facebook-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"Behold the awesome power of Facebook groups"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The editors at the <a href=\"http:\/\/network.nationalpost.com\/np\/blogs\/fullcomment\/archive\/2010\/01\/06\/national-post-editorial-board-the-toronto-star-discovers-the-interweb.aspx\" target=\"_blank\"><em>National Post<\/em><\/a> poke some fun at their opposite numbers over at the <em>Toronto Star<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>We know about the Star editors\u2019 foray onto the big exciting Interweb because of the newspaper\u2019s front-page headline on Monday: \u201cGrassroots fury greets shuttered Parliament.\u201d The breathless story suggests Canada is on the verge of some kind of violent 1917-style revolution &mdash; a \u201cgrowing public uprising\u201d no less, complete with \u201cprotest rallies\u201d from coast to coast, and young activists full of unhinged, wild-eyed rage. The evidence for all this: 20,000 people joined a Facebook page called \u201cCanadians Against Proroguing Parliament,\u201d which urges Parliament to \u201cGet back to work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>For all we know, that 20,000 figure is up to 50,000 now, thanks to the Star publicity. Or maybe even 100,000. Who knows? But for the sake of context, let\u2019s look at some other causes that also got a six-digit response: Almost 300,000 people have joined a group encouraging rocker John Mellencamp to quit smoking. Another hundred thousand people have joined a group encouraging random people to move to Finland. A whopping half-million people have used the power of Facebook to declare that they enjoy the television program 90210.<\/p>\n<p>And then there\u2019s our personal favourite: A group called \u201cIf 100,000 people join this group, Laura will name her son Megatron\u201d recently met its goal. Congratulations, Laura, on the birth of your Transformer. We bet you didn\u2019t know that he\u2019d become the subject of &mdash; what does the Star call it? &mdash; oh yes, a \u201cgrowing public uprising\u201d!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The editors at the National Post poke some fun at their opposite numbers over at the Toronto Star: We know about the Star editors\u2019 foray onto the big exciting Interweb because of the newspaper\u2019s front-page headline on Monday: \u201cGrassroots fury greets shuttered Parliament.\u201d The breathless story suggests Canada is on the verge of some kind [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,57,53],"tags":[391,458,258],"class_list":["post-2310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-humour","category-politics","tag-facebook","tag-parliament","tag-stephenharper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-Bg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2310"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2311,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions\/2311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}