>The goal should be to get users to care about the SOPA issue on their own volition -
Never going to happen. How much money has been spent for how long to get people to care about the millions of things they should care about and they just don't.
What makes people care about something is not being able to do what they want to do. If something gets in the way they rage at that thing first. Then when it won't move they rage at what ever put it there. The rage keeps moving further up the tree of effects until something happens.
"Never going to happen. How much money has been spent for how long to get people to care about the millions of things they should care about and they just don't."
Are you saying, categorically, that it's impossible to get people to care about things? With all due respect, I'm a bit confused by this statement. I agree with you that most people tend to be apathetic, and that it's hard to reach them. But I can name dozens, possibly hundreds, of examples of successful cause-based campaigns that relied on generating positive solidarity with, or good will toward the campaigner; I can name precisely zero successful campaigns that relied on deliberately pissing people off at the campaigner.
"The rage keeps moving further up the tree of effects until something happens."
I just don't see that happening. People don't connect dots as readily as you might assume. Again, see my PETA example. It's not a perfect analogy -- but it gives an indication of how attempts to generate and redirect rage usually just result in the generation of rage, without the redirection.
>Are you saying, categorically, that it's impossible to get people to care about things?
For most people, yes. You're never going to get to them your way because they're not interested in your message. As soon as they detect that you're talking about something that has nothing to do with their goals they'll drop you and move on.
That's why the "pissing people off" method works; because they can't move on. As for examples, I can think of maybe one or two examples where some kind of touchy-feely campaign has made more than an obscure amount of people care, but my success in business often relies on the latter method and I can tell you that it not only works, in a business setting it is the only thing that will.
Never going to happen. How much money has been spent for how long to get people to care about the millions of things they should care about and they just don't.
What makes people care about something is not being able to do what they want to do. If something gets in the way they rage at that thing first. Then when it won't move they rage at what ever put it there. The rage keeps moving further up the tree of effects until something happens.