Hello. I am Dan Eastman

So Long, SOPA…

As an overweight asthmatic kid I was never picked for sports. Instead, I went home to comic books and video games. Alone. I devoured music and movies. Too much was never enough. Pop culture was a drug to me. You can image my joy when we got the internet at home. Later on, I never fit in at my day jobs. While everyone couldn’t wait to go home and drink beers watching whatever sport was on or go out to the club, I just wanted to go blog snarkily about Nickleback. I didn’t care how played out those jokes were. I still made them and people on the internet thought they were hilarious. Then came SOPA.

SOPA threatened to ruin everything I loved in life and apparently a lot of people felt the same way. Finally, I found a place in the world where I belonged. The bill proposed to stop online piracy but we knew it was about something else. It was about control. They were trying to control our lives and our happiness.

To me, SOPA was nothing more than an extension of the jocks and macho coworkers once again trying to alienate me. Fuck that. Sure, maybe I downloaded a couple hundred thousand songs but I was no pirate. I signed every petition and blogged about it with no end. I emailed it and posted it in every comment section of every website from drunkenstepfather.com to AVClub.com and even What.cd. Everywhere.

Finally, the entire internet had heard about SOPA and signed the petition against it. Reddit and Wikipedia even blacked out for a whole day! With so much backlash Congress decided to shelve the bill. And I was partially responsible. We did it! Yeah!

Soon after everything went back to normal. People went back to using the free information available to them on Wikipedia, they peacefully downloaded Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol from thepiratebay.com, and looked up clips of Foxy Shazam on YouTube. The dust had settled and I was all alone again. I had found a cause to fight for and now that it’s gone, I have nothing. Just fucking videos of shitty stand up comedians to dissect. Don’t think that doesn’t get boring after a minute.

I’m not saying I regreat stopping SOPA, per say. I just miss the fight is all. Sure, I could go get a job as a street activist for stupid fucking Amnesty of SaveTheChildren.org. Yeah, right. Like anyone wants to stand in the fucking bitter cold or sweat their balls off in grueling summertime heat. With SOPA I could protest from the comfort of my own mom’s home while ripping “Watch the Throne”. SOPA made it comfortable. Now I’ve got nothing. Well, almost nothing…

Let’s just hope they never actually legalize gay marriage. Then I’m really fucked.

I need my inhaler.