The Blip

Would you stop working and buying for one week, if about 290 million other people did too?

Nothing happens until enough people say yes. If the count reaches 3.5% of everyone alive, the week gets a date eight weeks out, so there's time to get ready.

Looking after people, medicine, emergencies and food for the day don't count as working or buying. Keep doing those.

0 people have said yes
Us0
The richest 0.1%
Every yes is a blip on this line. 25 mm/s

How far we've got

How it works

  1. Say yes. It costs nothing unless the count gets there.
  2. The count climbs through real places, from a phone box to the whole planet.
  3. At 3.5% of everyone alive, about 290 million people, the week gets its date: the first Monday at least eight weeks later. That's time to save, stock up and arrange care.
  4. Once the date is set, everyone who comes back here is asked if they're still in. That's the number that counts.
  5. After the week, everyone is asked whether they did it. All three numbers get published.

    Why 3.5%

    Political scientist Erica Chenoweth found that national campaigns to remove a government or win independence, from 1945 to 2014, almost always succeeded once their largest single protest involved 3.5% of the country's population. She calls it a rule of thumb with exceptions, and says no one knows whether it holds when people aim for it on purpose, or across the whole world. This is how we find out.

    What we keep

    For each yes: a random ID, the time, and the country the connection came from. No name, no email, no IP address. If the database leaked tomorrow it would show a lot of yeses and nobody's name.

    What the count can't prove

    Someone with a lot of phones can say yes more than once. Every yes passes a bot check and a rate limit, which makes that slow and expensive without making it impossible. That's why everyone is asked again before the week starts.

    Before you say yes

    Saying yes is speech. Stopping work for a political reason generally isn't legally protected, including in the US and the UK. Know where you stand before the week comes.