geekosystem

Since the Obama administration launched online petition site We The People in September 2011, the digital team at the White House has learned some valuable lessons about human behavior on the Internet -- namely, that if you offer people a forum for voicing their opinions on the Internet, they are mostly just going to troll you with demands for Death Stars and official state Pokemon and that they be allowed to go start their own country because they really don't like the way most people voted, which is how democracy works. While it's kind of disappointing that the digital team for the White House didn't apparently see this sort of thing coming -- you've seen the Internet before, right digital team? -- it seems like they're starting to get a handle on things, or at least stemming the tide of petitions that will require action. Yesterday, they announced that they are quadrupling the number of electronic signatures a petition needs to get to merit an official response from the government from 25,000 to 100,000.

Next to demolition derbies and monstrously sized hamburgers unfit for human consumption, America can't seem to get enough of the innumerable, money-gauging critters from Japan known across the globe as Pokémon. Demonstrating that there's a clear difference between being a devoted fan and a lunatic who lacks a firm grasp on reality, one overzealous devotee of Pikachu and company felt that it was their patriotic duty to post a petition on the White House's We the People website advocating that the nation stop sitting idly on its hands and have each of the 50 states select their own Pokémon to represent them. With a demand as bizarre as this, it's no wonder that the petition was pulled. Guess the President is more partial to Digimon.