Most people on Daily Kos are (painfully) aware of Free Republic, the bottomless digital repository of bigotry, authoritarianism and hatred for most other Americans, all wrapped in 90's-era HTML. Usually, sane people who stop by there to check it out, find something utterly appalling within a few minutes of browsing, and close the page, never to return. Thus, there isn't a lot of detailed knowledge of Free Republic on Daily Kos.
One important feature of the site is that it is community-supported through donation drives called "Freepathons." In 2008, Jim Robinson, the site founder, seems to have decided to purge the archives of all but the current and most-recent Freepathon threads. This is a wise decision on his part because you don't have to go back very far to see that Free Republic is struggling to meet its modest fundraising goals.
[UPDATE: Thanks for the recs, everybody. I went to see Star Trek (it was really fun) and come back to all these comments to read.
Maybe someone has mentioned this below, but in my rush to get out the door to see the movie, I forgot to mention something rather significant: Two weeks into this abysmal Freepathon the much-heralded "Tea Parties" occurred. Wasn't this an Earth-shaking conservative uprisg that galvanized the wingnuts into an unstoppable force? Obviously, it didn't get them fired up enough to donate to one of their favorite web sites. Not to repeat the obvious, but I think the Teabagger movement has pretty much demonstrated its uselessness.
UPDATE2: I can't believe I didn't think to check the Internet archives for the old articles, but the real news here is the catastrophic failure of the last two Freepathons. An excellent summary of the steady decline leading up to this was published by teedz two years ago. This crash has been a long time coming.]
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Anatomy of a Freepathon
Freepathons happen once a quarter. During a Freepathon, people are encouraged to donate money directly, or to pledge recurring monthly donations. A banner at the top of the screen shows the target amount along with a progress bar. The bar starts red, turns yellow at 90% and finally green when the target is reached.
All pages also have a rotating advertisement with a freeper-friendly graphic or YouTube video. Along with eagles and US flags, are pictures of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Dan Rather to whip up freepers' favorite emotions: fear, anger and hate.
Obviously, the progress bar starts at 0% and proceeds as donations come in. The Freepathon starts gaining momentum as the eager early donors start filling the coffers. Donations average about $30 a piece.
After a while, the momentum slows down and Jim Robinson pulls a trick to pick it back up: he takes the monthly pledges, multiplies by 3 (the number of months in the quarter), and adds that amount to the total. When I first started following Freepathons, this would put them over the top, usually by 10%-15% of the target.
At some point things changed and the "adding in the monthlies" event merely put the bar into the yellow. Was it a loss of enthusiasm stemming from the electoral trouncing of 2006? Was it the fact that the target amount for each Freepathon was increasing as Bush's faltering economy drove up costs? Maybe it was both?
So, these days, there is a third phase where the Freepathon tries to coast to 100% on the momentum created by adding in the cumulative effect of the monthly donations.
The Gradual Decline from 2004 to 2007
Unfortunately, due to the purge of the archives, I have to do this from memory; the events are correct, but my chronology may be off. I guess I could have taken notes, but since Free Republic had archives going back the better part of a decade, I didn't think of it; c'est la vie.
I began following the Freepathons in 2004, and Free Republic was going strong. The Republican "base" was fired up. After all, they'd gotten not just one, but two fabulous wars where brown non-Christian people were being needlessly slaughtered, tax cuts for the rich, and were generally destroying the country with their ideological agenda — aided by a feckless minority party. While most of the citizens wanted change, slimy attacks on the Democratic nominee, John Kerry had managed to sufficiently taint the opposition brand.
We also can't forget — as much as we'd want to — the "Rathergate" fiasco. It was Free Republic posters who first noticed that Rather's memos appeared to be documents produced by modern technology. In fact, several of the images displayed to encourage donations during Freepathons highlight this event.
At this time, the quarterly target was $50,000, and monthly pledges totalling around $11,000 a month already guaranteed two thirds of that goal. Freepathons at this time exceeded the fundraising target in a little over a week. I watched half a dozen Freepathons looking for signs of weakness; although some would take longer than others, it never took more than about two weeks to hit the target.
The duration of the Freepathons began to get longer over 2006 and 2007, but it wasn't clear whether this was a waning of support, or just the same level of support spread thinner across higher fundraising targets. The amount first jumped to $66,000, then $70,000 (I think) and finally $80,000, where it is today.
During this time, the monthly donations declined to under $10,000 a month. This wasn't a good sign for Free Republic, but I haven't seen any indication that the monthly rate corresponds strongly with the overall support.
Freepathon Stumbles in 2008
2008 should have been another 2004 for Free Republic, and it certainly started off that way. The Freepathons started taking less time and monthly donations reversed their steady decline and began increasing a little. The first quarter Freepathon was relatively strong.
During that first quarter, the Republican Presidential Primary heated up. While a brawl was erupting between Clinton and Obama supporters on the left, a series of hissy fits were breaking out on Free Republic. All were welcome — well, all but the Giulliani supporters.
Remember when "America's Mayor" was the only Republican candidate anyone thought would had a chance of winning? He was the tough-talking mayor who guided his city through a major disaster (was it Hurricane Katrina? I can't recall). Sure, he had cheated on his wife, but IOKIYAR. Sure, he had gay friends, but they went under the bus at the first sign of trouble. Still, Jim Robinson felt that Rudy Giulliani was such a betrayal of his wingnut values, that he conducted a purge that would have made Joe Stalin proud. Anyone defending Rudy on the pages of Free Republic was instantly banned. Zero tolerance.
The subsequent Freepathon appears to show the self-inflicted damage. For the first time (if I recall correctly), the Freepathon took until the end of the month. It was noticeably slower than previous Freepathons. Unfortunately, the wound healed, and the third quarter 2008 Freepathon was roughly the same as the third quarter 2007 Frepathon.
2009: The Year Free Republic starts sporting banner ads?
According to Alexa, Free Republic is currently more popular than Daily Kos. In fact, during a massive post-election slump, which recently ended abruptly, Daily Kos had way less traffic than Free Republic. Jim Robinson is leaving ad revenue on the table — and now he might start needing it. (I don't know if Alexa's relative numbers are accurate, it takes many more page views to read Free Republic than it does Daily Kos.)
The first quarter 2009 Freepathon was nothing short of embarrassing. On the last day of January, the Freepathon had amassed slightly less than 50% of its target. On this day, they rolled the monthly pledges into the tally and it shot up — to 70%. This information was made available in a post on a thread called Woo hoo!! Record breaking FReepathon STILL underway!! (Thread VIII). If by "record breaking," they meant "worst ever" the title was accurate.
By the way, one of the reasons that "adding in the monthlies" didn't have quite the impact it had in the past was that the monthly donations for January had already been collected and added to the "collected" tally. Only two months worth of anticipated receipts were added to go from 49% to 70%. They still had $24,000 left to raise.
Over a week later, they had $11,000 left, and Jim Robinson began posting nagging reminders to donate. On February 12th, an anonymous donation from New York of a whopping $5,000 (a little more than 6% of the target amount) mercifully ended the first quarter Freepathon.
I thought about writing this diary at that time, but I thought that it might be a post-election fluke. Then came this quarter's Freepathon, and it's worse.
At this point in the Q1 Freepathon, they had raised about $55,000. As of now, the Q2 Freepathon has raise around $42,500. Then: 84% (with monthlies). Now: 75% (with monthlies).
It's going to take a lot more than $5,000 to wrap this disaster up by the 12th. And, in the new conservative tradition of shooting themselves in the foot, Jim Robinson has announced that they will be purging everyone who supports Mitt Romney and the National Council for a New America. Good luck with that, Jim.
I'm pretty sure that this Kos diary will be appearing on Free Republic as Jim Robinson uses it to inspire more donations from his flock. After all, he's got to do something, and short of resorting to banner ads, waving this insult around is one of his better options to save the site.
To quote Rush Limbaugh: "I hope he fails."