Jen McCreight is a liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted, atheist feminist trapped in Indiana (her words - thanks Jen). She writes a blog < http://www.blaghag.com > and has just become an internet star in a little over a week.

What she has done is create a massive amount of traffic to her blogsite and brought attention to a situation she felt needed to be commented on, and in turn created an event (Boobquake Day) of epic proportions - this is the power of one person on the internet right now. We can all learn from this and think outside the square when it comes to promoting ourselves, our websites or our business online.

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.

Jen's response was to post a blog about this on her site and suggest that everyone dress immodestly and see if an earthquake happened as a result. Very tongue in cheek, and done in abit of a rush as she wanted to watch the start of a show on TV. Just a blog, just one person's thoughts.

It is what she did next that shows the true power of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and brought her to the forefront of the world's traditional media for her 15 minutes of fame.

Boobquake - the global event!

Jen really started off something she didn't intend. Here is her first blog on the subject, at 8.02pm, 2 minutes after her show had started........

I have a modest proposal.

Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically.

Time for a Boobquake.
On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I'm sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn't rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it'll be one involving plate tectonics.

So, who's with me? I may be a D cup, but that will probably only produce a slight tremor on its own. If you'll be joining me on twitter, use the tag #boobquake! Or join the facebook event!

Just a quick entry, but with an attached Facebook Event. This is where it gets clever and the guerilla marketing takes over, whether she liked it or not......

If you have a Facebook account check it out. There is an event and now an official page < click here >, where members can upload pictures - you can only imagine what is there - a teenage boys dream come true!!! (Footnote: Facebook has now disabled this as perhaps it got out of hand for them...)

Having just checked the event now < click here > there are 172,000 confirmed attendees, 550,000 awaiting a reply, and 240,000 not attending.

So in just under a week she has affected close to 1 million people enough to go to the event page and click on something, let alone all of the millions that will have viewed the page and the event.

How does this affect us? Well it doesn't really unless you want to get involved, but what it illustrates is what one person can achieve out there with a great idea, and abit of luck.
Jen admits on her site last Wednesday (the 21st) that it has all gotten out of hand:

Holy crap.

So what started as a joke and somewhat sarcastic reply to the ludicrous notion that women's immodesty causes earthquakes has now exploded.

Seriously, internet, you scare and amaze me sometimes. The Facebook event already has almost 14,000 attendees (and 60,000 invited) in just over 24 hours. The wall is getting comments so quickly that I had to disable Facebook email notifications because my inbox was getting flooded. The twitter stream for #boobquake is updating so quickly that I can't keep up.
To top that off, I just got interviewed by the largest newspaper in Canada and some radio station in Ireland wants to interview me.

Because I made a boob joke.

Since this is probably only going to get crazier in the next couple of days, I want to make a quick clarification. This post is going to be far shorter than it should be since I am a student and I'm trying to finish homework and such, but I wanted to at least acknowledge what people are saying.

I just want to apologize if this comes off as demeaning toward women. To be honest, it started as silly joke that I hurriedly fired off since I was about to miss the beginning of House. I never thought it would get the attention it did. If I would have known, I would have spent more time being careful about my wording.

That being said, I don't think the event is completely contrary to feminist ideals. I'm asking women to wear their most "immodest" outfit that they already would wear, but to coordinate it all on the same day for the sake of the experiment. Heck, just showing an ankle would be considered immodest by some people. I don't want to force people out of their comfort zones, because I believe women have the right to choose how they want to dress. Please don't pressure women to participate if they don't want to. If men ogle, that's the fault of the men, not me for dressing how I like. If I want to a show a little cleavage or joke about my boobs, that's my prerogative.

I also hate the ideal of "big boobs are always better!" The cleavage joke was just a result of me personally having cleavage, and that being my choice of immodesty. And I thought "boobquake" just sounded funny. Really, it's not supposed to be serious activism that is going to revolutionize women's rights, but just a bit of fun juvenile humor. I'm a firm believer that when someone says something so stupid and hateful, serious discourse isn't going to accomplish anything - sometimes light-hearted mockery is worthwhile.

Anyway, I'm not forcing anyone to agree with me. Maybe I am failing at Feminism 101, or maybe I'm just taking a different approach.

And to the scientists who are concerned with my methods - don't worry, I fully plan on doing some statistics after the event. I know many earthquakes happen on a daily basis, so we're looking to see if Boobquake significantly increases the number or severity of earthquakes. Or if an earthquake strikes West Lafayette, IN and only kills me, that may be good evidence of God's wrath as well (I'm not too concerned). And yes, I know I need a larger sample size to make this good science. Maybe I'll include Mardi gras in my calculations.

There you have it. Wonder how she is coping with it all now? She has been on CNN, BBC and Canada AM to name a few media outlets, as well as a load more. Today is the day here, and with a group set up in Australia I am sure as the day progresses more noise will be made around the world. She jumped onto it early enough and brought out her own range of t-shirts. Clever. Logistically a nightmare with only a week to the event but good one her for giving it a crack. Hope she sells loads of them.

All of this in response to a cause she felt strongly about. Cool. She has also now catapulted herself into a new media echelon and I for one have saved her link to check back on when I get a moment.

Nice to meet you Jen. I love the internet!