‘Freedom’ goes digital

Jason Talley works at a public policy institute on Connecticut Avenue, but his job looks nothing like the jobs of most other 20- and 30-somethings in Washington.

He wears jeans and a sweat shirt to work, and not just on Fridays.

His office is decorated like a college student’s room, with deep red walls and shelving units holding carefully marked bins of T-shirts. A sleek desk, black slipcovered couch and green screen for videography complete the decor.

Not jealous yet? Check out his job title: crasher in chief.

Mr. Talley, 32, leads the Bureaucrash Activist Network, which aims to encourage young people to fight increases in government control — a stance Mr. Talley calls being “pro-freedom.”

“Big government is bad, and personal, individual responsibility is good,” Mr. Talley said, summing up Bureaucrash’s message.

Mr. Talley said Bureaucrash, which joined the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) think tank in March, aims to influence young people for the cause of liberty by “marketing our ideas in a way that would be more interesting than your standard think-tank white paper.” The group swears by viral marketing, a tactic designed to infiltrate markets with a message until it spreads from person to person like a virus.

The Bureaucrash Web site, www.bureaucrash.com, forms the home base for both Web surfers who make 2 million unique visits each year and the 5,000 “crashers” from around the world who have joined the online community. The Web site contains passionate blogs, free, pro-freedom graphics and an online store selling T-shirts, buttons and the like.

In order to use viral marketing, Mr. Talley said, Bureaucrash also makes its graphics available on Facebook, Flickr and the Second Life virtual world and has countless YouTube videos.

“We try to hit whatever is hot,” he said.

Mr. Talley, a graphic artist, helps create the graphics so they appeal to Bureaucrash’s young audience. His designs are bold and simple, making them prime fodder for the teenage and 20-something culture that eats up retro-style message tees.

“I think T-shirts are the best way because, for one thing, people pay you to advertise your ideas,” Mr. Talley said.

He hopes the T-shirts’ appeal will show young activists that they have alternatives to left-wing organizations.

“If I were a college student in 2006 and I wanted to get active and I didn’t know where I was politically, the left would be very attractive,” he said. “What they do is sexy. You feel like you’re making a difference.”

Gabriel Heller Sahlgren, a Bureaucrash intern from Stockholm, added that the romanticism of socialist ideology appeals to college students. “It’s about change, I guess,” he said. “It’s about revolution.”

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