I had an interesting conversation with Scott Carter of the Journal Record the other day. He was doing a story on an online petition that was inspired by the Casey Anthony trial and had gathered more than a million virtual signatures.

My answer to Scott is one I didn’t think he was expecting to hear: “Meh.”

Basically, the spread of web and the huge number of users engaging in social media has through our sense of scale all out of whack. Because of this online petition, Oklahoma legislators are thinking about creating a law that makes not reporting a missing child a felony.

Let’s not talk about Casey Anthony at this point (PLEASE!) but instead focus on what prompted the action.

More than a million clicks equals real legislative action? My feeling is that a general misunderstanding of the web by those in public office makes them still think that a million is an actionable number. I disagree.

The web is so vast and the act of clicking an online petition is so easy (See the link, click “to sign” in, what, two seconds?) that is really is a terribly hollow gesture. Reaching a million clicks, views or visits really isn’t what it used to be (or ever was).

This video of Justin Beiber crashing someone’s wedding has 950,000 views and it’s barely a blip on the national scene.

With 700 million Facebook users and billions of people on the web, this is really the long tail in action. Yes, businesses and websites can be very successful with a loyal tribe of 1,000 fans but that also means we shouldn’t mistake a million of something for something as serious as public outcry. A million people can do a lot of different actions on the web. Creating laws, especially reactive ones, is a little scary to put on that list.