Our aim is to change their perspective.
We want to change their cost-benefit analysis so it doesn’t one-sidedly favor siding with fascists.
We can do that by imposing costs on them for siding with fascism –
not by siccing the government on them, but with good old-fashioned all-American consumer activism.
No one knows whether fascism will win or lose.
We’ll show them that, either way, they’ll pay a price right now for siding with fascism.

The game is intended to do that.
The bigger the cost we impose (the bigger the dollar sign in the upper right box below), the more we open them up to the alternative: not siding with fascism.
(We also hope that if they open up to that for financial reasons, they might discover that it also feels good because it arouses feelings of conscience, compassion, decency, and patriotism they’ve been suppressing.)

That’s the theory behind the game.

Here’s how it works.

First of all, there is a requirement on playing:

                   You must pledge not to buy anything from Home Depot in March.

(A sincere pledge to yourself is enough; no need to sign anything.)

That pledge is the ‘entry fee’ unlocking the rest of the game for you.
But we want to emphasize that, in our eyes, the pledge alone already makes you a winner – even if you do nothing more.
In a charity race, anyone who participates at all is a winner – even if they walk the whole way.
It’s the same here.
We honor the significance of the pledge by awarding everyone who makes it an immediate bonus of one million points.

Boycotting is either/or: either you do it or you don’t.
You either buy from Home Depot in March or you don’t.
That’s not much of a game!
Where things get interesting is in all the ways you can strengthen the boycott.

The boycott’s aim is to put financial and reputational pressure on Home Depot.
Not buying from them is a crucial first step, but it’s just one step.
To create the game we considered all the further things you can do:
all the ways activists can increase the pressure on Home Depot, beyond just not buying from them.

What’s exciting – what makes the game possible – is that it turns out there’s a lot more you can do.
Moreover, there’s a lot you can do that’s really easy to do, and doesn’t cost anything.
Like the boycott itself, these further actions get their strength from numbers.
Doing them by yourself won’t have much impact.
But when many of us do them together they can be really powerful.
It’s the age-old lesson: acting alone we are weak, acting together we are strong.
Playing the game = acting together.

Broadly speaking, boycotts are strengthened by four different kinds of activism.
They are the centerpiece of the game.
We call them…

Spreading The Word (about the boycott, and about why Home Depot sucks)
Deepening Your Goodbye (cutting ties with Home Depot beyond just not buying from them)
Expressing Your Creativity (sharing your boycott-promoting creations: images, memes, narratives, etc.)
Supporting The Team (helping other boycotters)

We’ve turned each of these four kinds of activism into an arena of competition.
So the game involves five competitions, not just one – all going on at the same time.
There’s a competition within each arena of activism:
          Who can spread the word the most?
          Who can cut their ties most fully?
          Who can come up with most compelling creations?
          Who can be most helpful to the boycott team?  
And there’s an overall competition:
           Who can strengthen the boycott the most?  
(Your overall score is just the combined total of your arena scores plus the million you start with.)

Gameplay is simple.
For each of the four arenas, we created a list of specific actions you can perform:
specific ways you can spread the word, deepen your goodbye, express your creativity, or support the team.
And we assigned point values to those actions, guided by a single principle:
the more it strengthens the boycott, the more points you get for it.
You play by performing the relevant actions and getting points for them.
Those points are added to your score in the relevant arena.
The game ends when April starts.
At that point we’ll update the scoreboards for the last time and announce winners.

You can compete in as many or as few arenas as you like, including none.
If you want to be active in all four, great!
But we encourage you to focus on improving your score in just one or two arenas.
(We hope everyone spreads the word, as that is both easy and crucial.)
We think it’s really important to focus on just one or two arenas, and we want to explain why.

It’s because we want this boycott to be a juggernaut.
We want Home Depot to pay a steep and unmistakable price for siding with MAGA cruelty.
We want to send a message loud enough to be heard in every boardroom and corner office in corporate America.
We want them to know that activists who care about justice and democracy in America have a new tool.
The tool is the boycott game itself, which can easily be adapted to target any company.
(We’re using it on Home Depot partly as a test case, to see how well it works and to find out what needs improvement. You can get Supporting The Team points by giving us feedback or ideas.)
We want to show that, with this new tool, we can quickly mobilize and coordinate mass consumer activism against any company.
We can use it to impose severe financial pain on any of them.
Our message to all of them:

Go along with the horrific MAGA/Republican assault on America and we just might use it on you!

Sending that message requires a massive division of labor: many activists doing many different things all at once.
We can’t do it by ourselves and you can’t do it by yourself.
We have to work together, each doing our part, secure in the knowledge that others are doing theirs.
That’s what the game enables.

And that’s why we want you to feel comfortable focusing on just one or two arenas.
Making this boycott a juggernaut will require activism in all four arenas.
But our guess is that you’ll probably contribute most if you focus on just one or two.
And you can rest assured that others are doing what you’re not.
It’s not a matter of faith.
Every scoreboard will be constantly updating.
You can see for yourself what others are doing.

Here’s what you can do now:

[Heroic American or #ResistTrump folks: to sign up you need to be an Airtable collaborator. Click here then confirm your email. Of course this requirement will be omitted before the game is deployed.]  

Make the pledge, get your million points, and unlock arena play.
[This link will take you to the sign up page. When you sign up, you will receive links to the arena pages.]

See the overall scoreboard.

Go to the forum [fake link].