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Comment by sampli | Hacker News Reader

These people are idiots who do nothing but hurt their own cause

While this may be true, it's also something that eventually gets said about all protesters.

I get the feeling that you read the headline without even clicking through to see the picture of the bulletproof glass, but I'm not sure if I would call them idiots. They simply tricked you into engaging with their cause, along with a flood of global viral reposts just like this one, about it for just the price of a can of pumpkin soup and a misdemeanor mischief charge. No court in their right mind would try to conclude that they intended any harm, since it would be impossible, based on the photo alone. It sounds like the opposite of idiots to me. There are idiots in this scenario, but it's us, creating engagement on the viral reposts.

> These people are idiots who do nothing but hurt their own cause

Maybe.

Why do you think activists trying to raise awareness about food safety are idiots?

How does barely having any time before barriers surrounded them and the MSM not explaining who they are or what they're about hurt their cause? I can see those things not helping, but lack of attention can't hurt, can it?

There's no damage done to the painting, there's a glass protecting it, how exactly sending a non-destructive message hurts their own cause?

Because it’s an implicit admission by the protestors that people don’t care about their message/cause. So the destruction is now the message because will people will focus on that instead of the original cause.

This is not a value judgment on reason why they are protesting. I can understand their frustration at yelling at the top of their lungs and no one cares. It would feel like you’re taking crazy pills.

Most people either don't know there's glass or would assume the protesters don't know. And yet, even assuming universal knowledge of the glass, it's still easy to understand why people would consider this act disgusting/hateable. The message of the protesters requires digging, and even if you do the digging, the connection seems tenuous. Meanwhile, the act itself stands on its own as easily observed, and appears juvenile and pointless on its face. Regardless of opinion, it seems unrealistic to argue that people in general should feel differently about it.

The same way any out of context attention seeking hurts your cause; by showing arrogance, and a disregard for others. People generally stop listening to whatever you have to say when you treat them with disregard.

When a law doesn't work, you don't go around breaking it, you work with the system we have to change it. Similarly, when people aren't listening to your message, you work within the system to get it heard.

> When a law doesn't work, you don't go around breaking it, you work with the system we have to change it.

In this world there wouldn't be a USA, nor Gandhi, and Mandela; segregation in the USA would still exist, and labour laws would have never been discussed.

That's never how bigger changes have been made.

Environmentalists seem to have a penchant for terrorism. Look at the Weather Underground for example.

Also worth remembering that Mandela seems to have been big on "necklacing" which is the practice of throwing people (one of the first victims being a woman) in a stack of tires and lighting the tires on fire, suffocating them in the process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing

Gandhi and Mandela are interesting cases, that I think serve my point. Both highlighted the injustice of current laws with _relative_ civil disobedience. Think how differently their message would have been taken were they to conduct unrelated civil disobedience, such as throwing soup on a work of art.

I actually find it a little offensive to compare these people to Gandhi and Mandela.

> When a law doesn't work, you don't go around breaking it, you work with the system we have to change it. Similarly, when people aren't listening to your message, you work within the system to get it heard.

These don't seem comparable. Breaking the law shouldn't be your first option, but it absolutely sometimes becomes a necessary option. Conversely, I agree that essentially yelling louder at people doesn't make them "hear" your message any better, therefore I don't think the two things make a good comparison with each other.

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