Funny: A life online: God likes a laugh

Subject: Funny: A life online: God likes a laugh Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:13 pm

The Westboro Baptist Church is well known in America for staging noisy anti-Semitic and homophobic protests with its unique brand of banners. The extremist church, which runs a website called godhatesfags.com, tours the country, picketing institutions that it sees as promoting homosexuality by holding up signs carrying variations on its “God Hates” slogan. The group picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, who died after being attacked for being gay. It has also targeted military funerals and late last month turned its eye to the San Francisco offices of Twitter.

As part of a seven-hour whirlwind hate-a-thon across the city, church members had planned to meet outside the offices at 4.30pm, brandishing their vicious signs. But they had underestimated the might — and sense of humour — of the Web 2.0 generation.

If there was ever a vehicle suited to mobilising a counter-protest, Twitter is it. Soon after the church posted its protest schedule on its website, a blogger, EDW Lynch, reposted it on the Laughing Squid blog and invited fellow web-users to join him outside the Twitter offices. Readers of the blog tweeted his post outlining the plan for the counter-protest. It was re-tweeted many times and soon a team was mobilised.

Lynch’s plan was so successful that on the day of the protests, the group of anti-Westboro protesters outnumbered the small group of church followers. As the protesters assembled with their assorted “fags can’t marry” signs, Twitter protesters mingled with them, carrying their own absurd placards bearing the words “I have a sign”, “Me”, “I’m tired”, “Build prisons on the Moon”, “God hates flags” and even “God hates re-tweets”.

Another sign, “I was promised donuts”, was so popular with the police that officers asked the counter-protesters if they could borrow it to show to their boss. Images of the protest have now gone viral across the internet after being included in the humour website B3ta’s newsletter.

This could run and run. Laughing Squid (www.tinyurl.com/laughsquid) has now created an absurd sign generator “to help you prank the Westboro Baptist Church when they come to your town”.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article7019594.ece

Funny: A life online: God likes a laugh

Funny: A life online: God likes a laugh

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