May 15, 2007: Don't Buy Gasoline Day

Recently while logging on to Facebook and Myspace, a bulletin and event have caught my attention. Apparently people are a bit sick and tired of the spike in prices of gasoline, with the average price being somewhere around three dollars a gallon. Its been called an early spike before the summer traveling season, and is only expected to go higher when summer officially arrives. Well in response and protest to this, a few groups have posted events on these networking sites stating that in 1997, there was a "gas out" where millions of Americans decided not to buy gas on one day, and supposedly, gas prices dropped $.30 over night, because of the huge profit lost by the fuel companies. This idea has been proposed again, stating that if on May 15th, everyone, at least on Myspace and Facebook, should not buy any gasoline at all. If its successful, then hopefully it will cost the fuel giants a profit of somewhere around $2,163,302,190.00. This gigantic loss of profit in the course of one day should prompt them to lower gas prices, if only temporarily. This logic is based on the assumption of course, that we all fill up everyday, and I feel it won't have the exact desired effect, but I will do my part to not fill up that day, unless I absolutely have to, like if its an emergency. I do find it disgusting the kind of profits these companies incur over the year, considering how we are all bitching about the price of gas, but I have my doubts as to whether this "gas out" will work. But I was glad to see these networking sites being used for a reason with depth for once, and not to superficially boost one's self image based on the number of friends they have.