Another post about protest

A while back I got into an argument with a toolbox on the internet, as I am wont to do on occasion. This particular argument was on a Facebook post by a friend of mine regarding a group of Men's Rights Activists who were attempting to drum up support to legalize rape or something. My friend, thankfully, was strongly against this, the other guy... not so much, although he claimed that people getting all angry about it was somehow playing into the MRA's hands and we should simply ignore them until they go away, because apparently people who feel strongly about legalizing one of the most degrading things that a human can do to another are just driving more people into their camp or some bullshit.

The argument ended inconclusively, I ended up calling him a douchelord and stopped responding, but I feel I won the moral victory.

Anyhow, the point is I see this kind of argument a lot, and on many topics, currently I see it regarding protesters at Donald Trump rallies, these (usually) guys always take pains to say they are not a supporter of whatever people are getting mad at, but then go on to talk about how tempted they are to join the other side simply because the protesters are being mad in a fashion they disagree with.

I personally have my own issues with some types of protest, specifically the kind that consists of following a Twitter hashtag or posting in a Tumblr hugbox then congratulating oneself for changing the world. But I got to thinking.

The same people that complain about how people protest in the real world, also routinely condemn online activity for the exact same reasons I look down on it. This forces me to look at myself a bit, which I will get to later, but I also got to thinking about who these people are, I mean, if they condemn internet leftist protest, then they should theoretically support the real world stuff, but they don't, so what do they expect to be done and what exactly do they support?
Then I realized that some people simply don't want to be called conservative, despite that actually being what they are.

I know that might seem obvious to many people, but it was sort of a revelation to me, maybe I am just slow. But with that revelation in mind, I realized that there is something you can ignore when protesting, and it's those tools. Because if they aren't actually allies or even sympathetic to your cause, then nothing you can do will satisfy them anyway and their opinions may safely be disregarded as concern trolling.

So, if we have established that no one who matters will be driven away by whatever methods of protest you use, then it follows that even the methods that aren't terribly effective, such as the lazy internet type, are at worst harmless, and possibly still even helpful to the cause in general, so it seems churlish of me to condemn them simply because it's vaguely annoying.

So fuck it, post on Twitter, scream at your enemies block traffic, inconvenience people, put your voice out however you can, it all helps, and remember, that anyone complaining about how you are protesting isn't really worth listening too in the first place.


Unless you are murderin' folk, don't do that please.