The “I do not pay” movement slowly started when drivers refused to pay in advance toll charges for roads that were not yet built, but it seems that lately it has diffused to other public transportations services (such as the metro) as well. It is a very controversial and highly criticised movement and it has gained further publicity these last days because the Ministry of Transport is passing a bill that proposes a serious fine for violators.
This element of behavior – a meme – has very interesting physical properties, as it propagates through our culture. The word meme comes from the ancient Greek word mimeme (μίμημα) that means imitate. And by the force of imitation, the “I do not pay” meme has gained significant momentum. We present here measurements for some of the meme’s physical properties. The measurements were taken on three corpora that cover the period from November 1, 2010 to February 13, 2011 and contain respectively web news from 500 sites, blog posts from 35K blogs and tweets mentioning the meme.
After two “warnings” by the movement in mid-November and mid-December that quickly faded out, a third attempt to gain momentum in the new year has been successful. For three weeks it has built-up mass and has started to spread. It attained a new height around January 20 and slowed down again for a few days. It should have been clear by then that the “I do not pay” movement had a significant public image and what started as a local raising of toll cash-box barriers could replicate through the population as a generalized protest against financial measures. After a few days the meme took off, gained momentum and the effort to take measures in order to reverse its momentum will be orders of magnitude greater.
