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This comes about because nerds are cowards by default. We're entirely too unwilling to really bother to get the message about this sort of thing out to the layperson, and we're even more unmotivated to actually do something about it. I love to lambast the baby boomers as much as the next neckbeard, but at least some of them actually had the chutzpah to do something.

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This OP works on the front lines at the EFF. Most nerds are smart enough to be disillusioned by the plutocracy we live in. If by "do something" you mean sit-ins, marches, protests, and whatnot, you have only to look at the Occupy movement. I don't think people, or "nerds" specifically, are as passive as you think.

We just know the fight, who it's against, and the apathy of the general public that constitutes the fight before the fight.

I wouldn't call being mass-pepper-sprayed while sitting down at an Occupy movement that much different from being hosed down during the Civil Rights movement. Different cause, different day - same fortitude.

Writing articles like this counts as "get the message about this sort of thing out to the layperson". You complain that he is not doing what he just did.

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