Earlier this summer, the guys who draw Cyanide & Happiness came to the Internet with a problem: they were all trying to move to the same place to facilitate the further development of their comic, but one of them, Dave, lived in Ireland and was having problems with American immigration. See, it's difficult to come to this country if you're planning on getting a job when you arrive. There happens to be an exception for successful artists, but it seems the U.S. government didn't consider Internet fame to be "real" fame. So the Cy&H guys put up a blog post and submitted it to reddit, asking for fans to sign a petition stating that Dave should qualify as renowned.There were some skeptics (just read through the comment thread), but believe it or not, it worked! With the help of their own readers, the /r/comics crew, and the rest of the Internet, here's what happened:
Hey guys!
Just wanted to say Dave got his O1 visa, and the bulk of our "supplemental evidence" was a bigass stack of names on an Internet petition. This may very well mark the first time in history that an online petition has changed something, even if it was just getting a guy into the United States to make silly stick figure animations.
I know a lot of you Redditors signed it, so I just wanted to let you know that it worked. And to say thanks.
Thanks.
The Drill DownIn other news, Chris and I were on a live podcast last night. It's called The Drill Down. We had fun and talked about a lot of stuff.
You can download a recording here, or just search for "the drill down" on your podcast-listening device and look for episode #151.
