February 27, 2015

One Perfect Tweet Explains the Ultimate Lesson of #TheDress


Twitter erupted into craziness Thursday night after a dress went viral. What color was the dress? Some thought it was gold and white; some thought it was blue and black. People had fun. Fun was had! Had was fun! It was a good time and times were good. But this being the world we live in some Serious Cops had to flash their lights and start ticketing people for having fun.

There are a lot of cops on the internet. Everyone’s got a set of cuffs and a gun—and whatever crime they think you’ve committed, well, they’re ready to slap those cuffs on you and sentence you to 20 years hard internet. A lot of commenters on this site are cops. Journalism Cops. I’m sure a bunch of people will comment on this post saying, “why is this news?”

Anyway, no one likes Internet Cops. Internet Cops is probably the only police procedural CBS has ever passed on.

The lesson of #TheDress? Put your gun down, Barney Fife. Your services aren’t needed.

P.S. The dress is blue. 

Disclaimer: Nick Baumann is a Senior Editor at Mother Jones. I gave him fair warning I was about to blog his tweet.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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