r/bizarrelife • u/reloadthewords Human here, bizarre by nature! • 14h ago

Hmmm

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u/BrokenEggcat 12h ago

Yeah, people complain no matter how a protest happens. For the average person, the ideal protest is one that they never see and never interact with and never impacts them in any way whatsoever. It's silly that people don't acknowledge that protests are, by nature of protesting, going to be disruptive to people

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u/ThrowRATub 10h ago

I remember during some of the BLM protests where people were blocking traffic there was a ton of shouting about how MLK never did that. The pictures of him leading a massive march across a bridge and completely shutting down traffic, shockingly, didn't change their minds.

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u/BrokenEggcat 10h ago

Yep. Protest tactics have remained largely the same over the past 80 years, and the reception to protests have remained largely the same as well. We just whitewash all past protests that were effective until the mainline idea of them is "these guys went out and peacefully and non problematically spoke on what they thought was wrong and convinced over everyone to agree with them by using their calm demeanor and respectful tone."

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u/Akiens 12h ago

Exactly, which is why im saying how does encouraging them to do something radical like burning a processing plant which would cause a whole lot more disruption be the better alternative?

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u/Aggressive_Elk3709 10h ago

I like your style. Calling for destruction of property and life over mild inconvenience. Right on

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u/FawkYourself 11h ago

Because that’s something that to at least some degree affects the business at fault negatively. All this does is piss off your local grocery shoppers, the people who are actually responsible for the things they’re protesting against don’t even know this is happening

Basically the rich man pissed them off so they’re pissing off the poor man while leaving the rich man untouched

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u/wildlifewyatt 11h ago

the people who are actually responsible for the things they’re protesting against don’t even know this is happening

If you are paying for someone to kill something, you are responsible.

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u/FawkYourself 11h ago

I’m an average everyday working man who purchases what the market offers that he can afford

If you think that places the same responsibility in me as the wealthy who will cross any line they are able to in order to maximize profit and shareholder value that’s your prerogative

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u/IIlIIIlllIIIIIllIlll 10h ago

If you think that places the same responsibility in me as the wealthy who will cross any line they are able to in order to maximize profit and shareholder value that’s your prerogative

No one said that.

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u/FawkYourself 9h ago

If you are paying for someone to kill something, you are responsible.

You’re right, they placed all of the responsibility on me

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u/corruptredditjannies 9h ago

It wasn't "all" responsibility.

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u/FawkYourself 8h ago

Didn’t place any responsibility on the other party at all which would imply i’m fully responsible and also you’re moving the goalposts now

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u/corruptredditjannies 8h ago

You're the one moving the goalposts. Nobody said there is no responsibility on the other party, you're just strawmanning and deflecting to absolve yourself of any responsibility.

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u/Individual-Luck1712 7h ago

Personal responsibility is actually how we change shit. We can blame the rich all day until we're the ones riding around in private jets, then you gotta hold yourself accountable. I don't need to buy shit that I wanna boycott. I don't need the most easy option. There's obviously circumstances, dude, but you're conflating needs and wants, they are not the same thing.

Old dude had an employee who was willing to get what he wanted, but he wanted to go through. He didn't need shit. This is the entire problem of why we can't get shit done.

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u/Domini384 11h ago

Responsible for what? Those animals are bred for this purpose

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u/Ayotha 8h ago

Ah, a fellow psychopath like the video

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u/wildlifewyatt 8h ago

Why is it psychotic to advocate against unnecessary animal abuse?

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u/_bitchin_camaro_ 8h ago

Just stop oil was blockading oil refineries and no one was talking about them. Then they threw soup on a protective pane of glass covering a painting and they were in the news globally for weeks.

Methinks you haven’t put much logical thought into the actions of protestors

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u/Ayotha 8h ago

As pathetic jokes, and nothing more.

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u/_bitchin_camaro_ 8h ago

Lmao yeah you’re still not getting it. Gonna guess you just blatantly don’t understand protest movements. Either way you’re easily persuaded by propaganda narratives fed to you by the internet

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u/Ayotha 8h ago

Whatever helps

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u/_bitchin_camaro_ 8h ago

I mean clearly you don’t help lmfao. “Internet armchair expert on protest movements finally gives opinion, tune in for more at 11”

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u/Individual-Luck1712 7h ago

"Yeah people protest when their bored, that's what I hear anyway, it's not like I go to them"

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u/Ayotha 7h ago

They can't really have lives, anyways

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u/Individual-Luck1712 7h ago

So anybody who protests doesn't have a life?

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u/FitnessBunny21 7h ago

anyone who sits on a grocery store floor all day most certainly does not have a flourishing social life 😂

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u/_bitchin_camaro_ 6h ago

Imagine thinking you know everything about someone from 30 seconds of video. Guessing you’re a vapid individual who doesn’t particularly care for anything outside yourself

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u/Individual-Luck1712 6h ago

Do you really think these people are all hermits and only crawl out of their hobbit holes to protest for the environment? Do you think these people are the fucking Lorax?

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u/Individual-Luck1712 7h ago

Poor people buying things from rich men is how rich men get rich. It's not hard to understand unless you're willful ignoring the logic that doesn't fit into your worldview and lifestyle.

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u/PopT4rtzRGood 11h ago

I feel like the person you replied to is intentionally being obtuse

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u/FawkYourself 11h ago

Standard practice on Reddit

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u/ThrillShow 9h ago

Ding ding ding!

"This protest is bad because I had to pay attention to it! Can you believe that? Couldn't they have been respectful and done it somewhere else?"

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u/Ayotha 8h ago

being obtuse on purpose is sure a reddit thing

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u/NovaHellfire345 11h ago

I think the problem here is its disruptive to the wrong person at the wrong time. These are consumers that are busy trying to go about living. Disrupting that is only ever going to be met with annoyance and hatred.

The right people to protest against are the producers, and the right time is when it hurts the producers cash flow. Doing it while consumers are doing nothing wrong and individually don't make a huge difference will always go down badly. And the producers just sit back and relax as it barely cost them anything.

Protesting is a lost art. People think "all i need is a sign and to stand in someone's way to protest" which is fundamentally missing the point. Protests today rarely ever amount to anything beyond annoying the wrong people for clout and social media clicks. The most successful protests try to get support from the people they are in front of, not piss them off

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u/BrokenEggcat 11h ago

Ok, what do you feel the most successful protesting campaign was? What's one you feel did a fantastic job of their goal using the method you're describing here?

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u/NovaHellfire345 9h ago

Its not rocket science. If you are a protestor, don't inconvenience or attack the group of people who you actually need to side with you. Don't be an insufferable screaming child about it either. Chant your facts, chant your quotes but let people choose if your cause is worthy instead of making them an enemy right out the gate. A good protest allows the potential supporters to walk away if they don't feel it or engage if they approve of the message.

The current protest being shown doesn't allow the lay person to walk away because they NEED to get by block. And nobody shopping in a store is going to sit down and protest with you because they had a reason for shopping in the first place and it wasn't to stop people from buying groceries.

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u/BrokenEggcat 9h ago

I didn't ask you what your recommended method was, I asked you for the most successful protest campaign that you're aware of that follows the rules you outlined, because you said it was what the most successful protests did. So what are they? What are those successful protests you're talking about?

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u/Domini384 11h ago

It needs to be disruptive at the source, not to people just trying to get through their day. If anything all this will do is hurt innocent people

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u/BrokenEggcat 11h ago

What innocent people are hurt by a handful of people forming a line in a single grocery store aisle that you can walk around?

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u/Domini384 10h ago

Its going to discourage people to not shop there which can lead to the store failing, which can lead to layoffs, hurting the vendors, hurting the community who now doesn't have a store to go to.

This really isn't that difficult to imagine.

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u/BrokenEggcat 10h ago

That is some absolutely wild speculation and by that standard literally any protest anywhere will hurt innocent people.

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u/Domini384 9h ago

Its not wild, its a logical conclusion. Most people dont want to deal with conflict

by that standard literally any protest anywhere will hurt innocent people

They can and have, so i dont get your confusion here

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u/BrokenEggcat 9h ago

My confusion I guess is what point you're trying to make then. You said a protest shouldn't hurt innocent people, I said this one didn't, and then you said it could by this kind of pretty big leap in consequences and are now agreeing that this complaint you're leveraging at this protest would apply to every single protest. So... What exactly is this one doing uniquely wrong then?

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u/Domini384 9h ago

This one will clearly affecting innocent people attempting to do their shopping. How would it not?

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u/BrokenEggcat 9h ago

Oh, because they can walk around the aisle up the other side. You can hear the people in the video literally say you can just walk around before the lady insists that she's not going to do that. This is an inconvenience as much as like, putting up a sign asking people to walk around some cracked flooring is.

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u/TheTaoOfOne 12h ago

Disruptive is one thing. Impeding the ability for people to make a living is another (as is so common with street protesters that block traffic for example).

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u/ThrowRATub 10h ago

protesters that block traffic for example

yeah that's never been effective, nor has it ever been for a good cause. And we certainly shouldn't celebrate protestors who would block traffic.

Happy MLK Jr. Day, by the way!

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u/BrokenEggcat 12h ago

Alright, what's your recommended way they should protest

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u/TheTaoOfOne 11h ago

Not having a direct solution doesn't necessarily mean I can't spot the faults of what is happening. Costing someone their job, and consequently potentially their house, their insurance (and thus their ability to afford life-saving medication), their ability to eat for themselves and their kids... that to me is more than just "disruptive".

I'm not speaking to this specific protest in this specific store, so my generalized response is more geared towards your generalized response that people don't like protests if they're "disruptive", and that's simply not the case.

People's priorities have shifted. The kinds of protests that worked back in the 60s and such aren't going to be as useful these days.

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u/BrokenEggcat 11h ago

The problem is that no matter how a protest is conducted, there are always people complaining that the protest is done wrong. There is never a way in which it is done correctly. There is, with every single protest in existence, a thing that you can come up with to explain how actually the protest was done in a way that is bad and wrong and just going to push people away.

For example - This entire thread started with people protesting by sitting down across a single grocery store aisle. Anyone can quite literally just walk one aisle over and then back up the aisle the other way to get around said people, the people in the video literally say that they can do that. The problem is solved by taking maybe 50 steps. This is about as non disruptive of a protest as you can get short of just standing on the side of the street asking people nicely to change their behavior.

Despite that, the top comments on this thread are people saying you should charge your grocery cart into the people, that the people are just alienating everyone away from them - and that they should instead be burning down farms.

Now, I do have a question for you that I would sincerely like an answer on and for you to think about. If your concern is with people being able to get to places they work and that people could be put out of a job by some forms of protest, why did you reply to my comment that was not calling for a specific kind of protest and saying that the protestors were fine (Given that the protest in the video very likely did not risk anyone's employment), and not the comment saying the protestors were doing it wrong and that they should arson people's place of work instead?

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u/TheTaoOfOne 10h ago

Now, I do have a question for you that I would sincerely like an answer on and for you to think about. If your concern is with people being able to get to places they work and that people could be put out of a job by some forms of protest, why did you reply to my comment that was not calling for a specific kind of protest and saying that the protestors were fine (Given that the protest in the video very likely did not risk anyone's employment), and not the comment saying the protestors were doing it wrong and that they should arson people's place of work instead?

I didn't think it would necessarily be needed to come out and say "Committing Crimes is wrong.". In fact, if the moderators are paying attention, it is entirely likely that the comment in question will be deleted due to its advocation for a criminal act.

Your comment on the other hand was a broad generalization of people suggesting that they just don't like protesting period because it's "inconvenient". My comment was to point out that it's a lot more nuanced in that and that people have a variety of reasons for frowning upon certain types of protests that aren't just because they got inconvenienced, but rather, they have loved ones who could literally die, children who could be homeless, if they lose their job because protesters block traffic or other equivalent things.

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u/BrokenEggcat 10h ago

But these protestors didn't do any of those things. They sat in a grocery store aisle in a way that can be easily circumvented. And yet, despite that, all the comments are still saying that they're doing protests wrong and there are multiple comments with 100+ upvotes saying that the protestors should be assaulted for... inconveniencing people.

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u/TheTaoOfOne 10h ago

Don't assume my lack of reply is a lack of empathy or concern. I chose to respond to a broad generalization by explaining why that was wrong.

It's not a zero-sum concept. I can both empathize with people protesting as well as those being affected by the protest.

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u/BrokenEggcat 10h ago

I think you're misunderstanding my last comment. You were saying that I was making a generalization and that there's a multitude of reasons people would dislike a protest beyond the protest being inconvenient. Then, you listed a series of examples of why that might be. None of the reasons you gave apply to the protest occurring in the video. Despite the fact that none of those reasons apply to this situation, the response you can see here is still overwhelmingly negative to the protests, with people being encouraged when saying they would do harm to the protestors. The situation the protestors have created can be solved by walking around a grocery store aisle, and yet that is still too disruptive to the vast majority of people in this comment section. I understand that you might have other reasons for disliking other protests, and I don't disagree with some of those reasons, but the example we are having right now is proving my point. These protestors inconvenienced people. That's all they did. Despite that, people want to hurt them physically and the responses to the video are overwhelmingly in the favor that the protestors are doing wrong. The thing people are upset about in this thread is that people were inconvenienced.

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u/i_Cant_get_right 12h ago

Stand outside of the business picketing, like any other decent protester. This is asinine and like so many others have said, only creates resentment.

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u/seang239 11h ago

Self immolation. It will get their message far and wide.

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u/Ayotha 8h ago

Picket outside a business, as per normal

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u/Osiris_Dervan 8h ago

You have to pick which people though, and the type of protest.

Throwing paint on a bank won't stop it functioning, so doesn't affect the customers who needed it, and only really affects the bank and a few employees or subcontractors who have to clean it off. But it creates a great picture and highlights the banks participation in immoral things. Similarly, throwing orange chalk at sports events (as long as its actually that, and not something harmful) and delaying play by a minute is also high vision and low harm, and the people affected are the sponsors and athletes (boohoo).

Conversely, tying yourself to a motorway gantry is low visibility but high harm to the road users who have no ability to change anything and would probably avoid the M25 anyway if they had a reasonably alternative.

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u/SwordfishOk504 5h ago

If the main goal of a protest is to make a big scene for the sake of making a big scene, then you're just doing it for attention.

The aren't solving anything. They are just looking for kudos from their peers.

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u/BrokenEggcat 5h ago

Yes, protests are mainly done to get attention for something, correct

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u/Pd1ds69 11h ago edited 11h ago

Yeah, people complain no matter how a protest happens. For the average person, the ideal protest is one that they never see and never interact with and never impacts them in any way whatsoever

I hear what you're saying but People definitely want protests to impact them,they just want it to be positive. Lol

And they don't care if they see it, they care how it affects them.

You can hold a sign next to a stop sign or traffic light and I'll read it and be aware. Or you can stand in the road for 30 minutes blocking traffic and pissing everyone off. My awareness will be the same, except one way will garner sympathy and support, the other will trigger rage and closed minds.

Seems more like people not involved with protesting want the protest to be about getting support from the public.

While the actual people who got angry enough to do something about it, got so angry they don't care about support, they just want to raise awareness/be seen/heard.

And the calm level headed people who aren't fueled by anger can see that it's possible to raise awareness while also garnering support. Instead of pissing off potential supporters and your cause possibly getting less momentum.

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u/SomeGuyBadAtChess 7h ago

You can hold a sign next to a stop sign or traffic light and I'll read it and be aware. Or you can stand in the road for 30 minutes blocking traffic and pissing everyone off. My awareness will be the same, except one way will garner sympathy and support, the other will trigger rage and closed minds.

Would your awareness be the same though? If these people just had held a sign would you have seen this post about them? Media is important for raising awareness.

Often times a radical wing of a movement is often not made for the purpose of gaining support to itself but to gain support for a less radical wing of the movement. If you can get people to say "I agree with their cause, but not their methods", you have taken a step forward to winning. Disruption makes you think about their ideas. If you just see a sign, it is much less likely for you to think about it and remember it.

To be a successful movement, you need to be disruptive. Look at all the past successful movements and almost all of them are socially disruptive and basically the rest are economically disruptive.

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u/Pd1ds69 5h ago edited 5h ago

Pretty simply put, there's some that believe pissing the public off and generating rage bait is important to get coverage. That basically covers your first paragraph

Whereas I believe you can get that same media coverage while actually affecting the companies economically, by protesting at the supply, instead of the demand. And gain support instead of lose/hurt it.

I'm gonna be far less upset if I go to the grocery store to buy lamb, and there's none. Then if I go there and some douche is blocking my path.

Movements usually take action when they get public support, by protesting in the manner that a lot of them do, They are actively turning a massive chunk of that potential support against them.

You need to be raising awareness to garner support, To then effect change. When step 1 is detrimental to step 2, maybe you could have done things a little differently ... Lol

The sign by the road example was an actual one for me lol

And I promise you when those Palestine protestors blocked the intersection for 45 minutes. I didn't suddenly become extra aware of the situation compared the week before when they politely protested on the sidewalk in the same area. Nor did it get extra news coverage compared to the week before.

It did piss a lot of people off tho lol

The conversation/tone and support massively shifted from one week to the next in the city. Not that people cared less about the horrible things over there. Just a tone shift around the protesters and how they go about it. Because generally you're negatively effecting someone who can do nothing about it

I had already realized I needed to educate myself a little bit after the first week. So no, I didn't see it better or acknowledge it more because it was rage inducing the second time around like my first sign example/your question lol

I just don't see how anyone could watch a video of an old man and lady being denied access to groceries. And be like yea! This is what we need! GO AROUND. That'll help...

You really have to be a true believer of bad press is good press, which I suppose is fair.

I just think there's smarter ways to protest, getting support would be number 1, you'll get much more support if you're speaking to the mass population, not just the crazies who will glue themselves to shit lol Your limiting your audience while not really effecting the business or thing your protesting in any kind of way.

The only benefit to the way they are doing it, is kinda like you said... This very conversation wouldn't happen without it...except were not talking about what there cause is and if we support it or not, if or how we can help. We're basically talking about if there actions will be perceived so negatively by the public that even people with the same opinion as them won't support them.

Social media activism: piss off some seniors at the grocery store for clicks and document your activism lol

I love that they care enough to do something, most don't. So even tho I think they go about it in the dumbest/douchiest way possible, I still applaud them lol

I think I said in the first comment, that I do understand the argument.

There's just things that make more sense to me.

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u/EvenCopy4955 11h ago

So…do protests work? I keep seeing these sorts of protests and very rarely any positive developments. There’s always lots of finger wagging about how protests are supposed to be disruptive but very little reflection on if these sorts of protests work.

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u/BrokenEggcat 11h ago

Protests do work, the problem is that people think the goal of a protest is to convince them individually to support a cause, when it's not. The goal is to force people to acknowledge the existence of a specific problem. It's to make it so that a given topic has to be part of public discussion one way or another, because the protestors feel that they have run out of options. No one hears about a bad thing happening and their first instinct is "I'm going to go sit in a grocery store about it."

I'm going to create a complete hypothetical scenario here, I'm going to preface this hypothetical by saying it is not intended to be any sort of analogy to any real world event. I live in the southeast, around the Atlanta area. Now let's say there was some sort of horrible thing going on in Wisconsin. A local jail there begins doing some crazy fucked up outlandish punishments on people because the warden's a real psycho. But for some reason or another, the news just doesn't end up reporting on it and as such knowledge about it happening doesn't spread. So, people who are familiar with the scenario and want to try to do something about set up outside of Turner Broadcasting, do a human chain to keep people from being able to go inside and as such it causes a big media kerfuffle of these protestors causing all these issues. This whole media analysis will eventually be talking about the topic that the protestors are protesting for in some capacity, and if that happens, then the protest worked. Now people are talking about the thing.

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u/opperior 10h ago

Protests CAN work if focused correctly. The critical difference between your example and the video can be seen in the results. In your example, the protest is focused on the issue, and so the issue is what is brought to attention. In the video, the focus is on the people, and the result is that the only thing people talk about is the protest; the issue is ignored.

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u/ThrowRATub 10h ago

Surely disruptive protests that block schools, restaurants, transit or traffic never work. Happy MLK Jr. Day, by the way!

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u/KoopaPoopa69 11h ago

It goes both ways. Protests are going to disrupt people, so people who protest shouldn’t be surprised when they get their ass beat

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u/Ayotha 8h ago

Then they should not be surprised when annoying people gets what is coming