Rebellion or something.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

We have to buy everything from "Them" anyway, that's why we protest.

I have heard many versions of "pointing out the hypocrisy in protesters" and they all boil down to the same basic message, which is "How dare that slave try to run away wearing trousers the Master gave him".

Actually it's more than just making masks with cheap labor. I mean, that by itself is morally equivalent to broadcasting pirate TV or radio on frequencies owned or licensed by somebody else. What I object to isn't the physical act of making the masks and how that ultimately benefits the same entities who benefit from consumerism, but the fact that Anonymous, like everything else, is just another Brand™ to choose from. Another prepackaged, rebel-based motif with which to decorate your entirely docile, domesticated, non-threatening existence. Like anything that called itself "punk" after 1980.

Anonymous is now a product on the shelf, and though that isn't what it's intended to be and certainly isn't what it started out as, it has been effectively consumerized in record time. The picture sort of illustrates that point, for me at least.

Actually, I think that's nonsense. Saying that it's been "consumerized" because the emblematic mask that was chosen for its symbolic link to the freedom fighter from V for Vendetta is now more recognizable as a symbol of Anonymous protest is blatantly ridiculous. It's like saying that protesting is consumerized because of the recognizable prevalence of red bandanas as protest wear. Red bandanas were already being mass-produced before people started wearing them to protect their airways from teargas, and Guy Fawkes masks were already being mass-produced before they were latched onto by protesters (which happened before Anonymous co-opted them, by the way). Anonymous is a tiny fraction of the market for those masks... and if it's more than a tiny fraction, then they are indeed a movement for the powers-that-be to fear.

Being "Consumerized" is what we call it when products are driven to market by a movement, not what we call it when a movement happens to pick something up that is widely available and cheap.

No, that wasn't what I was saying. It isn't "consumerized" just because it has a symbol, or just because that symbol is co-opted from mass media, or because it is mass-produced. It's consumerized because rebellion in general is now a brand. A subculture. Almost as easily defined and prepared for as it is recognizable. "Down with the system" is the new "Just do it." The net result on society is zero -- not because nothing changes but because those changes are gradual enough for the status quo to adapt to them ahead of time.

Protesters brought down a string of governments across North Africa and the Middle East, but so far their revolutions have failed to accomplish anything very impressive at a cultural level. In the rest of the world, these protesters have done even less. We amass in Free Speech Zones,  wave signs, make a racket with drum circles, get kicked and shot at by the police, choke on tear gas, get knocked over by water cannons, arrested, released, and then we go home and blog about it between community service assignments.

The revolution is a product, another group identity available to anyone who's too jaded to be a Wiccan. It's barely more dangerous than being a Goth kid was when I was in high school, and all the extra danger is to your own reputation and employability.

Tell that to Egypt.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Part of the reason that is that way is because there are no alternatives.

Kids don't want to burn down Starbucks or turn over police cars, they want to go to college, live in a house, and eat food. Go to the movies have a drink.

The only way yo dismantle all of that is to burn it all to the ground, and nobody is willing to do that because they just want the world to be a nice place to.live.

Right, they don't want to burn it down. That might get in the way of enjoying all the benefits of this evil system they hate so much. Nobody wants Asian sweatshops or blood for oil but let's not be hasty. Everybody wants an equitable world where justice is the rule instead of the exception, you know, as long as it doesn't cost too much.

Yeah.

I think my cynicism is bigger than yours. Justice is as illusory and meaty as love, man. It's something we chase but can never catch.

I don't disagree with you, but would ask:
Why should anyone want to burn down their world when a few greedy people are the only thing keeping it from being beautiful?

People want factories to work in. They don't want slavery.

It's like saying it's the fault of the legion of homeless are to blame for fucked up toxic mortgages. Sure they could not pay the bill.

WHY could they not? How did they get there?

Thank you for bringing a little depth of thinking to this thread.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What's to fix? Everything works just fine, or at least better than it does in a lot of places. We have elections. More votes get counted than thrown out. The problem isn't that we're thoroughly fucked by powers too big to overcome, it's that we consistently choose to keep being fucked. I'm less disgusted by the fat cats and useless politicians than by the masses who let them keep calling the shots. And that robs me of my motivation to shake things up, because what am I going to do, declare myself Emperor? Whatever happens, you eventually have to hand the keys over to 300 million ignorant monkeys and hope for the best. The way things are now, at least I have a house and food to eat. So, obviously, I'm not even one to preach at Anonymous for being a toothless subculture based on the superficial appearance of revolutionaries. I'm in the same boat.

So where I am in the process is, I guess, the "more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed" phase.

Awww, you're adorable! 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

they just want the world to be a nice place to.live.

This.

Regardless of the rhetoric involved, all protest damage is intended as symbolic (whether or not it really is purely symbolic), because in the end the point of protest is to make the world a better place, rather than to fuck things up out of spite against a world that isn't equitable enough. A protest says "we could fuck up your shit, but we don't want to", and a riot proves it, but neither one does or should actually cause major economic damage because that isn't the point.

People who don't want to work within the system, and who would rather replace it with some other system, don't buy masks and shout in the streets. They form independent communes and fuck off into the woods. Protests and riots are tools of incremental improvements of existing societies through displays of strength and popular opinion. They achieve fuck-all, but they aren't intended to ever be quite as revolutionary as their rhetoric claims, because otherwise they wouldn't be protests -- they'd be revolutions.

And also this.

I am astonished to find myself agreeing with you, but this was perfectly stated.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Tell that to Egypt.

You mean that country that successfully kicked out a secular tyrant and replaced him with an Islamist, then got tired of him and opted for a military coup instead? Rah, progress!

Or maybe we should talk about Tunisia and its continued unrest, assassinations, and political chaos.

Or Libya. Or Syria, maybe, where things are going so well that they have a full-blown civil war and we are now arming the guys who literally eat their enemies' hearts. I have a hard time being impressed by revolutions that always devolve into sectarian bullshit because nobody can get past the whole "my god vs. your god" thing. Reasonable secular protests give way to religious chaos and violence. That isn't really "accomplishing" anything.

But then I'm not talking about the Arab Spring or any other country where protesters at least make the news. I'm talking mainly about America, where a protest is an overblown barbecue and half the people can't even list the reasons they're there coherently. They're there for a social event.

they just want the world to be a nice place to.live.

This.

Regardless of the rhetoric involved, all protest damage is intended as symbolic (whether or not it really is purely symbolic), because in the end the point of protest is to make the world a better place, rather than to fuck things up out of spite against a world that isn't equitable enough. A protest says "we could fuck up your shit, but we don't want to", and a riot proves it, but neither one does or should actually cause major economic damage because that isn't the point.

People who don't want to work within the system, and who would rather replace it with some other system, don't buy masks and shout in the streets. They form independent communes and fuck off into the woods. Protests and riots are tools of incremental improvements of existing societies through displays of strength and popular opinion. They achieve fuck-all, but they aren't intended to ever be quite as revolutionary as their rhetoric claims, because otherwise they wouldn't be protests -- they'd be revolutions.

And also this.

I am astonished to find myself agreeing with you, but this was perfectly stated.

I guess at this point it's worth stating what exactly I hate about the system, and why I think protesting in Free Speech Zones is completely useless in the first place, even if the people are doing it are fully committed.

I hate that the system empowers the greedy and enables the stupid. That the cardinal sin of any movement, whether you're "conservative" or "liberal" or "vegan" or whatever, is seeing the debate from your opponent's perspective. That it is so easy to settle into an environment where all the inputs reassure you about how right you are and how wrong Those People are, where you can filter opposing views out completely or at least make sure they're always portrayed as ignorant and wrongheaded.

I hate that financial security -- when it's even achievable -- comes at the cost of spending the prime of your life on autopilot making piles of cash for people who don't care if you live or die. I hate that we have the technology and the means of production to raise the global standard of living above what most people will even let themselves dream about, but we just don't. I hate that we still kill each other over imaginary friends and invisible boogey men.

And I hate that we are told the best way to fix these things is to get a protest license, go downtown during appropriate hours, where everyone's expecting us anyway and have shut the drapes and put their blinders on so they don't have to see it, wave flashy signs and chant slogans that make good bumper stickers but terrible policy. Protests have been short-circuited by being cornered into "legal" zones and "permitted" times, and everyone's so gosh-darn sure to make sure nobody feels threatened that the establishment can pretend the protest is just a street fair or something, because what are these asshats going to do? Vote? HA. Plenty of riot police on hand though, just in case anybody starts taking things too seriously.

[Salty]

I chortled the whole way through the occupy thingies.
Like they were going to magically make banking regulation a realty.

Then again, a lot of people talk about banks these days.

As I said, I try to help people, physically. By fix them I mean: help them to stop staring at the distraction supplied by The Machine long enough to look in their own bodies and realize the near limitless value therein.

If not doing this I'd be helping the homeless, disabled, sick, dying, or otherwise helpless.

I mean, we can talk all day long about how useless protests are. We could talk about how useless talking about protests are.

When it comes to making a difference in this world, a healthy, educated population is the only way. And since BUSINESS/GOVERNMENT is not going to help us, we have to help ourselves in whatever way we can.

Hate shitting on Anonyclones, while fun as shit, does not stop The Man from fucking us anymore than using a handcrafted, biodegradable, locally produced Guy Fawkes mask that you received under a bridge from a stranger wearing a trenchcoat to whom you must first give the secret password.

Did that kid that took a rubber bullet to the face look like a poser?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So now you're backpedaling on your statement that protesting doesn't engender change, and changing it to protesting doesn't engender change for the better?


OK.

Even if that's now the point you're defending, history indicates that it can, and does, engender positive change, even in America.

Furthermore, I would argue that protesting is only the surface of a change movement: you SEE people squatting in public parks, and what you DON'T SEE for each of those people are hundreds more who are angry and trying to come up with other ways to push the system to change. So a few years later you end up with this:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324251504578582101593420808.html

I think there's a very good argument to be made for the efficacy of protesting, even when it leads to a coup and the replacement of one bad government with another. The argument is that it alarms policymakers, who are likely to be directly affected by a coup, so they start scrambling for ways to change the system from within, often in fairly radical ways that wouldn't be considered if the regime wasn't threatened.

I also think that the "There's no point in protesting, it won't change anything anyway" rhetoric is designed to get the majority of people to SHUT UP, and it does a very effective job of doing so.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Dear A Mod: is there any way we can get this thread split out of Pics? The reason I ask is that I think it's a good discussion and worth its own thread so it doesn't get lost/buried.

[Salty]

It is interesting to me that protests are often viewed as a social event, and that this view is met with disdain by so many.

It is a clear example of how strongly people desire to be more social in the relatively isolated lives we lead. Without a tribe to call home we band together for what we feel is right.

One thing mentioned recently, there's no alternative.

If we do more than protest, if we dismantle how we do things, how else will we do them? What mechanisim will keep The Human Machine running. People want a clear picture of that before they lay their lives down.

[Salty]

I do not think protests deliver the sort of results required to change the shitstorm of highway robbery that is taking place every day. But I don't really know what to do about that, period.

[Salty]

AND ANOTHER THING:

As far as toothless subcultures go...who the fuck cares. If kids want to put on GF masks and get hit with rubber bullets...or just stand around a mall, not buying things and making people uncomfortable, so be it.

Just like anything punk post 80's.

It is the 21st God damned century. If you want to be a part of a punk/metal/dissatisfied with the value placed upon your self by others for the purposes of control SO FUCKING BE IT.

It is actually, none of your God damned business. If you want to be a part of a subculture that does nothing but bemoan the state of other subcultures, feel free.

But I would have to ask,why? To what end? Are you just waiting for a group to come along you can respect enough to finally become a part of? A timeless, perfect set up philosophy that produces real world results? Let me know when you do.

Meanwhile, I am going to dress and act exactly as I please, using whatever time period hair and clothing style I feel like. That's my chosen subculture, the only one that does not give a fuck about your subculture. Or its questionable authenticity.

It is sort of like kids who read Twilight. Would you rather they watch The Disney Channel? Or is the fact that they read enough to give their humanity the benefit of the doubt?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Dear A Mod:
I request that the thread this is broken into is named "People on the internet repeat minor variations on conversations had in Paris in 1968"

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Dear A Mod:
I request that the thread this is broken into is named "People on the internet repeat minor variations on conversations had in Paris in 1968"

And in Boston in 1773, and countless other times throughout history, yet it appears to be a conversation that needs to happen over and over and over again, because we always seem to forget, even though it was deemed important enough to write it into the US Constitution.

Protest is significant to the political process on a number of psychological levels. It visibly demonstrates to every frustrated person that there are others who have the same frustration. It is a visible expression of discontent. There is a reason governments try to quash protests, and there is a reason corporate-run media avoids reporting on them, and casts them in a negative/pathetic light when they do. It's because they're dangerous to the status quo, and it's unfortunate that so many people buy into the media-fed, politico-fed notion that protesting is meaningless.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

"I will sneer my cynical sneer, call them hipsters, and continue to do nothing". It's exactly what you're supposed to do.

[Salty]

There's a lot frustration involved in this topic because it is born of frustration.

It's not good enough.
It is not fast enough.
It is, GAWD FORBID, not authentic enough.

And that us super understandable. I get mad. We should all get mad.


But, you know, I get a lot more mad when I realize I am not doing my part. Sometimes I look for external factors upon which to project that anger at my own self.

If you don't like the way people protest do it your own way. I do. I also,KYFMS, but I have my fun and hopefully change people's minds, one at a time. Or let them change their own, rather.