Do people think Micah White takes too much credit for Occupy?
Critics do grumble that I over-claim credit, yet the grumble itself reveals a deeper misunderstanding of how uprisings germinate. Occupy was a swarm intelligence: no single brain, only a meme that leapt from Adbusters’ brainstorming table into global streets. I helped coin the spark, then the crowd oxygenated it. That origin story disrupts the romantic myth that movements are leaderless accidents; they are designed, then surrendered to collective improvisation. Giving authorship to a name unsettles people who need their revolutions immaculate, unbranded. Fine. What matters is not whose fingerprint smudges the matchbook, but whether the next fire we strike learns from the last.
So ask yourself: how will you engineer the meme while staying humble enough to release control once it hits the air? When the moment comes, will you cling to authorship or let the crowd rename the storm?