The young comedians behind a satirical website with an unprintable name — ahem, “Stuff” Harper Did — are bridging the gap between comedy and political activism with a new campaign.

The Vancouver-based group is raising money to air a TV ad that mocks the federal Conservatives’ slick Economic Action Plan spots. In three weeks, they’ve raised more than $50,000, enough to air eight prime-time ads.

But this time the band of Harper-hating pranksters has more on their minds than making people laugh. They hope instead to amass their thousands of social media followers to create real change.

“We’ve always taken issues that are hard to think about and tried to make them more accessible — to have a laugh before the sadness sinks in,” said Sean Devlin, the 29-year-old standup comic who founded the website (which is actually called S--- Harper Did). “Now we’re trying to engage the community we’ve created around this comedy content in a more meaningful way.”

Devlin said he never expected the website — a collection of pithy criticisms of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s policies — to attract 4.1 million page views in the first 72 hours it was posted.

It was created during the lead-up to the 2011 federal election, and Devlin and some friends wanted to draw attention to missteps by Harper that they thought had been either forgotten or largely ignored.

“We didn’t quite know what to do with all the attention and most of us had to go back to work,” he said. “It took us two years to get our stuff together to be able to relaunch the site.”

Joined by Brigette DePape, the “rogue page” who made headlines in 2011 for holding a “Stop Harper” sign in the Senate during the throne speech, the group has filmed a new ad to counter Harper’s rosy picture of the economy.

In the ad, cheering Canadians in red-and-white face paint gather in front of a TV. The screen reads, “The number of Canadians who need food banks is at an all-time high,” and “The average household debt is also at an all-time high.”

DePape, 23, said she hopes to negate the “myth” that the Harper government is good at managing the economy, which she sees as integral to its ability to hold power.

“The Conservatives are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on the ads to try to convince us the Economic Action Plan is working for us. Why are they spending so much money to tell us this?” she said. “Clearly, it is not working.”

The campaign on the crowd-funding website Indiegogo attracted endorsements from high-profile figures including Margaret Atwood. If the group raises $95,000, it will be able to buy a spot during an NHL playoff game.

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DePape has also toured universities with the group to teach workshops about activism. It’s not that young people don’t care: it’s more often that politics are depressing and they feel like they can’t make a difference, she said.

“It’s really exciting to be working with a group that uses humour to make politics fun and draw attention to some critical issues,” she said.

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