When cartoonist Zach Weiner discovered that the NOM (an anti-gay marriage organisation) had appropriated one of his comics as a hotlink on its website, he fired back in the simplest, cleverest way he could. He changed the image to this.
Weiner managed to turn yesterday’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal panel into a rainbow flag and the following quote from the Declaration of Independence, but only on NOM’s website:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
The SMBC homepage still showed the original comic:
Before NOM was able to remove the post, the change sent enough traffic to take down the entire site.
Was Weiner able to effect much change in the brief time his troops invaded NOM’s shores? It’s easy to say no, of course not, this was just a silly prank. But Weiner believes otherwise:
There seems to be this idea out there that action through the Internet has no important effect… Well, today, I probably got a message of equality to over 100,000 people, among them members of the other side. This generation fights in a new way, but we fight just as hard.
The takeaway? The internet’s not just for kittehs and memes (although those are great to!). It’s a powerful tool, where a simple prank can carry a lot of power. [TWW via TDW]