How To Get People To Support Your Cause

Or at least make it look like they do.

I was already having "one of those" afternoons.

I was going to make a few call before I left to pick my wife up at work. At that point, the world seemed to start turning backwards.

I could not connect to Gmail.

Still not sure what was up with that. It is fine now. All of a sudden, all my sites seemed to have lost their CSS styling (seems to have been a cache problem in Firefox) and I was having trouble with my Internet connection. It seemed to work like dial up - not the 100 times faster than whatever Time Warner claims.

All this had me leaving late to pick up my wife.

A road near my house I usually take is under construction (totally gone at the moment - this is how they like to "fix roads" in Wisconsin). This meant I would have to take an even longer route to pick up my wife.

For some reason, my cell phone would not work.

I could not call my wife and let her know I was a bit late. I did get it to work after shutting it off for a bit.

Anyway, I did finally pick up my wife.

We had decided to stop for dinner at Milwaukee's Grand Avenue Mall. Traffic was worse than usual for Milwaukee at 10 after 5pm on a Friday. As we approached Wisconsin Ave. we discovered why.

Some "peace protesters" were slowing up traffic at one of the main intersections with Wisconsin Ave.

Now, these protesters were not protesting the war against terrorists in Iraq. They were not even the "Bush is stupid" variety.

They were protesting against a company that makes bulldozers.

Yes, bulldozers. Somehow, they believed that bulldozers must be the primary means of killing Palestinians. They were protesting the company that made the bulldozers. I have no idea if the company even has in office near where they were protesting.

They had a unique way of slowing the traffic.

Three women were kind of tied together in plastic bags (which had slogans denouncing the bulldozer as the weapons of evil. All they had to do was wait for a walk signal and try to cross legally. Because of the way they were connected, they could not walk fast. They probably were not in a hurry either. It also seemed that their intelligences were not developed to the point that they stopped drooling, which also impeded their speed naturally. They were loosely spaced, so the three of them were equal in size to a large group.

Wisconsin Avenue is one of the main streets in downtown Milwaukee.

Now, Milwaukee is not that big of a city. With the nearly constant construction around, many of the streets are nearly just 2 way streets with parking. At many intersections, you cannot make turns during busy traffic hours because it would hold up traffic too much.

The three women made it nearly impossible for more than one car to make a turn during a green light.

All they did was go around the intersection. They would start to cross on a walk signal. By the time they were across, the light would be red. They got completely around the intersection before I snuck through, making a right turn on red (which fortunately was OK at this intersection.

It was really annoying!

It was rush hour (which is not really an hour in Milwaukee - one of Milwaukee's strong points). It was Friday night and everyone wanted to get home or at least away from there. They were really tying up traffic. You can't get around cars that are stuck waiting to make a turn at that intersection.

I do not usually honk the car horn unless it is an emergency.

But I really wanted to beep that horn and let them know I was annoyed! It was then I noticed a few other people standing around holding very small signs.

"Honk for peace"

Yep, I am sure that most of the people honking did not even see the signs. My wife could not even read them properly (not being a native English speaker, she could not guess what all the words were and misread them). There were a lot of people honking horns.

Now, if you were close to the sign and could read it, you might think people were agreeing with them.

Actually, who would not support peace? But bulldozers as the greatest threat to mankind? (This did not appear to be a save the rainforest thing for those environmentalists out there thinking that might be the cause.)

It would look that way on a video also.

A nice close up of the sign for cause in the foreground, horns honking in the background. If you were there, you would know what the horns were for (the three green lights you sat through waiting for the women to get across). Unless you were one of the people there with their mouth open, tongue part way out, drool coming down your chin. You might think that you had a lot of support for the cause you were instructed was so important.

Once in a while, you see a deceptive tactic like this used in business.

Statistics showing popular support for a product or company. Yet, when you really look at the situation, it is something else that really had the attention, and the product or company just happened to be around for the ride.

In those health affiliate ads you will often see the latest medical discoveries proclaiming one of the ingredients advantages.

Never mind that the ingredient is not in the recommended doses or in a form that is of use to the body. Think I am making this up? Not too long ago, it was shown that a popular garlic supplement contained little or no garlic. A lot of horn blowing about garlic, but the product did not have it.

I am sure this analogy is true in many different industries.

I'd bet that more than one paycheck shown for Internet marketing products contained income that did not come primarily from the product being sold. I also believe many of those incomes are gross and not net. They fail to show that 2/3rds of the income was used to pay for the marketing.