Forgetting Sarah Thompson

“Nearly half a million Facebook users last week joined a group dedicated to avoiding the gas pump on Thursday, March 10.”

Shockingly, national gas prices did not decline in the wake of No Gas Day. Round 2 is taking place March 31st and promises to enlighten gasoline retailers the nation over of the power of reactionary Facebook users with a tenuous grasp of economics and a penchant towards symbolic wastes of time. The March 31st boycott has over 970,000 Facebookers on board with over two weeks to recruit. Sarah Thompson, creator of the No Gas Day Facebook event page, has increased the scope of her anti-petrol crusade beyond the confines of the continental United States to include “all gas stations across the planet.” The purpose of the boycott, according to Thompson, is to let “oil companies know we aren’t going to stand for these prices!” Several paragraphs later, Thompson confesses she does not think the 24-hour boycott will cause gas prices to plummet. She punctuates her manifesto with a reminder to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and inserts an obligatory colon-parentheses smiley face.

To recap: The revolutionary godmother of No Gas Day has digitally collected roughly one million armchair warriors on a planet with over six billion people to spend twenty-four hours not purchasing one commodity whose price is set on the global market.

In her defense, Thompson admits, in a backhanded sort of way, that No Gas Day is an act of pointless symbolism championed by a few hundred thousand people whose generation is helpless to mount any meaningful opposition to consolidated corporate power and believes that ‘attending’ a Facebook non-event is more or less equivalent to fomenting a revolution.

If toothless acts of symbolism are your bag, I suggest spinning your wheels somewhere else. Maybe war or taxes.

The price of a barrel of oil is set on the global market. It is as much the result of speculation as supply and demand. Prior to the 1990s commodities speculation was a big no-no, mostly due to the fact that people tend to die when they can’t afford food. The government apparently changed its stance in the mid-90s and allowed a select few banks and investment firms to speculate on the price of commodities. The beauty of commodities speculation is that simply purchasing a large amount of futures can illicit a price increase. Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi believes the spike in gas prices in 2008 was the direct result of speculation, largely due to the fact that no significant disruptions to supply or demand occurred.

In the end, gas prices are subject to manipulation from Wall Street goons that will go to any lengths to fistfuck every last dollar from us Shmoes. But Sarah Thompson and her Revolutionary Vanguard of Recycle-istas refuse to go down quietly. They’re mad as hell, and they aren’t going to let these godless Earth-rapers profit from our suffering. Only they are, just like the rest of us, because America isn’t putting down the pump anytime soon. Sarah Thompson’s revolution, just like every piece of legislation that serves up a blowjob to corporate ringleaders and masters of high finance, will go down not with a bang but with a whimper, and just as quickly disappear from public memory.