10 ms·

Just Stop Oil protesters charged for tomato soup on 'Sunflowers' painting

17 points by WaitWaitWha 4y ago

raydiatian 4y ago
I know I’ll be downvoted for this. Personally, I get it. The statement is perfect: “what’s the point of beautiful art if there’s no habitable planet to appreciate it in?” I get that the art wasn’t actually damaged, and a large part of me is thankful for that.. But I would love to see a stream of priceless works of art irreparably damaged by Gen Z’s. It’s too poetically perfect. The statement? “Earth is a priceless work of art, damaged by profiteers from the previous generation. So vandalism is fair game, right?” I think Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” would be quite the statement. And I can’t imagine an artist hanging in the Rijks who wouldn’t agree with this sentiment on some level either. Besides, if Banksy can do it and suddenly it’s worth even more money…
- im3w1l 4y ago
  With the same logic maybe your mothers grave should be destroyed? Why should the dead have a resting place when homeless people do not?
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    > With the same logic Ah, because vandalism is fair game? > maybe your mothers grave should be destroyed? Makes sense to me. Maybe we could dig up the dead and use them for fertilizer to plant trees. The crazy thing about the dead is they’re a bunch of a freeloaders. in terms utility experienced by the buried per unit of land occupied to do so, they’re still at zero.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      This sounds like trolling and trying to flame bait the parent.
      - raydiatian 4y ago
        I genuinely think we should all be buried in mushroom fertilizer suits. https://grist.org/living/mushroom-burial-suit-turns-dead-bodies-into-clean-compost/ https://grist.org/living/mushroom-burial-suit-turns-dead-bod... Furthermore how is your criterion for trolling formed such that implying to an absolute stranger that their mother’s grave should be destroyed, is not trolling?
- legitster 4y ago
  What part of making the world a shittier place will actually make people try to save it?
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    I think a lot of people have already been living out this hypothetical for at least a decade, both rich and poor. Why else would we be here? Art is fundamentally about seeing your human experience reflected in a physical medium, and especially a medium other than your own thoughts. How many people are feeling bitter about how untaxed negative externalities (CO2, plastic, deforestation, water&energy security collapse) were traded for decades at the financial gain of the few? How many view ‘art’ as something primarily owned by the few? I know that “destroying art” is an uncomfortable notion, but guess what else is fundamentally uncomfortable at its core?
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      > Why else would we be here? Be where? Here, on this planet? Here, on HN? Here, commenting on this particular article? The third option comes closest to making your question make some kind of sense, but even then it doesn't really work. We might be here commenting on the article because we found the "protest" to be childish vandalism, and given a chance, we want to say so. I'm sure not here (for any value of "here") because "a lot of people have been living out this hypothetical".
      - raydiatian 4y ago
        > What part of making the world a shittier place will actually make people try to save it? > I think a lot of people have already been living out this hypothetical for at least a decade, both rich and poor. I’m saying the proposed hypothetical experiment of “making the world a shittier and seeing who wants to save it” is no hypothetical; it’s day to day reality for billions. > Why else would we be here? “Here” meaning the here and now of world affairs: the brink of nuclear war, environmental collapse, economic collapse, wildly disproportionate wealth inequality. The day to day symptoms of a shitty place for billions. I’m saying that the world is already royally fucked, and I can empathize with the viewpoint of “why should the rich get their fine art while the rest of us choke and starve.”
- aaron695 4y ago
  Paintings are the perfect example of lots of value and use close to zero of the planets resources to create. They are experiences for many people that could last forever. These attacks are on public paintings. This shows you care absolutely nothing about the environment and only about hurting people. And that is 100% the environmentalist movement. You make absolutely ridiculous statements like "there’s no habitable planet" only to justify the fun in cruelty to others. > Banksy can do it and suddenly it’s worth even more money Banksy has made the world a better place. I have never seen him destroy things of large value, even if you think what he does is zero value and has to be painted over his protest doesn't abuse the publics trust and cause large financial harm.
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    > Paintings are the perfect example of lots of value and use close to zero of the planets resources to create. Okay, first of all I genuinely agree with this. > They are experiences for many people that could last forever. These attacks are on public paintings. Absolutely agree again. But you still haven’t addressed my core argument: that climate change is an affront on the public’s ability to view art. Like I said: “what’s the point of art if you don’t have a habitable environment to view it in?” Hell, I’ve been saying this next one since 2013: “what’s the point of WAR if there’s no habitable environment to conduct it in or claim victory over afterward?” > This shows you care absolutely nothing about the environment and only about hurting people. How incredibly rude. > I have never seen him destroy things of large value. I guess $25M isn’t large value. https://youtu.be/DrhHCeRP03Q https://youtu.be/DrhHCeRP03Q > even if you think what he does is zero value Haha. Dude, I love me some Banksy. What?
    - aaron695 4y ago
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    > You make absolutely ridiculous statements like "there’s no habitable planet" 1. I guess you enjoy living under the specter of a looming nuclear apocaypse? 2. Dunno if you noticed, the planet is literally on fire right now. I currently can’t step outside without putting my respiratory system at risk. 3. The snow crab fishing season was called off. Because 90% of the population is gone. 4. Europe in a literal meltdown because of fears over how they’ll stay warm this winter. 5. Texas about to go into the third year of this same exact problem in a row. Ted Cruz will be in Cancun. Ay ay ron
- bergenty 4y ago
  No, vandalize an oil tycoons house or if you don’t mind going to prison shoot him or something. Much more effective and way more publicity. This is just cowardly and destroys irreplaceable works of art.
  - ciupicri 4y ago
    A life is also irreplaceable.
    - raydiatian 4y ago
      But millions are a statistic.
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    Love this too. Maybe destroying some art is just a jumping off point to something much more ambitious. Hey there, CIA! Don’t mind me, just some toothless cathartic venting.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    The art is not destroyed or even damaged, since it was behind a perspex window. But even if it had been destroyed, and even though I quite like Van Gogh, I'm not sure how much sleep I'd lose over it. There are 4 more of them, and when you get down to it it's a still life by an artist with a moving backstory rather than a peak of aesthetic achievement. The loss of a species, which now happens so often that it's not really newsworthy, troubles me far more. To be sure, some species are tiny worms or bugs whose names I can't pronounce or remember, and whose ecological role I only dimly understand, as opposed to 'charismatic megafauna.' And statistically I know there would always be some level of species extinction going on even if humans weren't around. But with so much evidence of the ecological pressure created by humanity and industry in particular, the loss or damage of a cultural artifact seems like a very minor tragedy.
- gaze 4y ago
  I guess I take issue with most climate protests that are meant to “generate awareness” at this point. I think people are largely saturated. People are about as aware as they’re willing to be. The question is “what do you do?” There’s not really a good answer, and without a good answer and with a lot of anger, it will come out somehow. If you have enormously over-pressurized pipes that spring a leak somehow, the leak isn’t really the salient thing. I don’t really blame the protestors. I don’t know that it’s effective, but I don’t know how you protest effectively these days so I appreciate that they’re trying. That said, the only reason anyone cares is because the story “stupid kids throw soup on painting how stupid” generates all kinds of feelings, but this will all blow over in a month or two and we’ll be back where we started. It’s crushing.
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    I do largely agree with this, and I don’t think I did an effective job in the GP post communicating that my desire to see some art actually irreparably damaged is mostly catharsis. I don’t genuinely believe that we’ve had a forcing function experience yet as a species that would push us to take true action. Like billions discarding their vehicles action, despite the personal cost. News outlets do too effective a job of virtualizing and down playing disaster. For instance, I had to join the r/Ukraine subreddit to get around the US version of the reporting that did just enough to give you the details but not enough to where the news outlets had to pick up the thought of whether this will scare viewers away from coming back. The real viscera of war is why we have veterans with PTSD, it’s horrifying enough on your smartphone screen for 8 months. That same “real viscera of climate change” is hard to come by. How many people have actually been to an actual forest fire? Even fewer, how many have been to the collapsing ice sheets? How many took physics and environmental science seriously enough to have faith in the impending apocalyptic predictions of “an inconvenient truth”? And that’s precisely my point. We aren’t “in it” (the real horrors of climate change) as a society yet. I think HN is a selective population that isn’t indicative of the rest. The problem is that I think when it come and scares us to our senses naturally it will be too late. So is throwing soup cans at paintings childish? Ineffective? Yes. But I think it’s indicative of a generation that wants to stimulate action and they’re desperate to find any route.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Well, you got upvoted too. I love art, but I think most of the pearl-clutching over this is laughably insincere, and mostly comes from the same people that normally dismiss art as finger painting and talk shit about artists. Certainly, I don't want to see any art get destroyed, but even less do I want to see art museums become the monuments to a species-level murder-suicide. The scale of the environmental destruction that respectable folk are deploring but (mostly) passively accepting is a monstrous crime, and some vandalism that highlights the misallocation of social priorities an extremely gentle kind of communication.
threads2 4y ago
nothing makes sense anymore
spacedcowboy 4y ago
I think it's worth mentioning that the painting wasn't damaged, they knew the painting itself was covered with glass. This was a statement, not wanton vandalism.
- legitster 4y ago
  Glazed != in glass. The glaze is a thin shellac coating. You still have to strip it and re-glaze, and it's kind of lucky it didn't do more damage than it did.
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    The statement from the national gallery is a bit ambiguous (glazed could mean either thing). The protesters state it was "behind glass".
  - stuaxo 4y ago
    Pretty sure they mean behind glass: glass as in glazing.
- anikom15 4y ago
  It’s still vandalism. The glaze has to be cleaned, removed, and reapplied, all done by a skilled person. It can’t just be thrown in the dishwasher.
  - Nullabillity 4y ago
    So the artwork itself is preserved, while it's annoying and expensive for the museum (arguably coming out of the oil companies' sponsorship budget). Sounds like the mission was accomplished?
    - WaitWaitWha 4y ago
      >Sounds like the mission was accomplished? Did it? Is the general public concentrating on the topics they intended on bringing to the forefront or that vandalized art? Is the general public's sentiment that their act makes sense, or that it was petulant, privileged behavior? In my opinion, they did harm to their cause.
legitster 4y ago
> According to a statement, Just Stop Oil timed Friday's act "to coincide with the planned launch of a new round of oil and gas licensing" in the UK. Europe is in the midst of an energy crisis the likes they have never seen. And a fair part of the issue is they have spent the last decade divesting from oil and gas without lining up any viable alternatives. Europe is now on track to burn more coal this next year than it ever has in the history of the continent. These groups are throwing a hissy fit because they would rather debate things that don't actually matter than to answer hard questions about why they oppose nuclear energy or carbon taxes.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Europe is in the midst of an energy crisis the likes they have never seen. And a fair part of the issue is they have spent the last decade divesting from oil and gas without lining up any viable alternatives. Then stopp blocking the viable alternatives. New oil andgas while banning new solar is the height of insanity
tanseydavid 4y ago
Riding on Van Gogh's coattails for attention is cheap and childish.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  They are literally kids, and managed to get global attention to an issue for the price of a can of soup and two tubes of glue. Pretty effective use of meager resources if you ask me.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
What part of "let me screw up something that other people find valuable in order to make my statement" do they think is going to motivate other people to seriously consider their position? People don't work like that.
googlryas 4y ago
How effective are these protests? Is there any way to quantify that? Certainly it gets news coverage, but does it have any effect on people? My best guess is that most people have formed opinions on climate change at this point, and these types of protests don't really move anyone's opinion - if you believe in climate change, you still believe in climate change, and you probably don't think climate change is more urgent now that someone threw tomato soup on an old painting. If you don't believe in climate change, you still don't believe in climate change, I can't see soup on a painting affecting that. I suspect Putin invading Ukraine did more for climate change action than any amount of protests would do.
- ender341341 4y ago
  > these types of protests don't really move anyone's opinion I think they actually damage the cause they're working towards, it gives opponents of taking action against climate change cheep ammunition for ad hominem attacks against anyone working on climate change similar to how small groups of rioters can be used to paint entire protests as violent.
  - qbrass 4y ago
    It's going to damage the cause they're working towards when people start flooding in to take a selfie with the painting because it was in the news.
  - eskaytwo 4y ago
    It’s like a preachy vegan: makes it far too easy for lazy dismissals of the entire argument. Likely sets back the entire cause by making it too polarising, which really sucks.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    opponents of taking action against climate change cheep ammunition As if they were so principled before, or went out of their way to take other objections so seriously. A more objective measure would be to estimate the cost it would take to get the equivalent level of publicity, rather than trying to estimate the positive or negative impact which is necessarily subjective. We don't know whether pissing people off is really ineffective or actually galvanizes more people to action. I'd contrast actions like this with the worldwide protests against the Iraq war in February 2003. Those are estimated to be the largest single political demonstration in history, involving 6-10 million people in ~600 venues around the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... They were huge protests, close to universal. Subsequents events pretty much validated the protesters' concerns. And what did all that peaceful, dignified, disciplined protest achieve? Fuck all. Protests that don't upset anyone are quite useless.
ohiovr 4y ago
Should have thrown the soup on an Andy Warhol painting.
- raydiatian 4y ago
  genius.

17 points by WaitWaitWha 4y ago

I know I’ll be downvoted for this. Personally, I get it. The statement is perfect: “what’s the point of beautiful art if there’s no habitable planet to appreciate it in?” I get that the art wasn’t actually damaged, and a large part of me is thankful for that.. But I would love to see a stream of priceless works of art irreparably damaged by Gen Z’s. It’s too poetically perfect. The statement? “Earth is a priceless work of art, damaged by profiteers from the previous generation. So vandalism is fair game, right?” I think Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” would be quite the statement. And I can’t imagine an artist hanging in the Rijks who wouldn’t agree with this sentiment on some level either. Besides, if Banksy can do it and suddenly it’s worth even more money…

im3w1l 4y ago
With the same logic maybe your mothers grave should be destroyed? Why should the dead have a resting place when homeless people do not?
- raydiatian 4y ago
  > With the same logic Ah, because vandalism is fair game? > maybe your mothers grave should be destroyed? Makes sense to me. Maybe we could dig up the dead and use them for fertilizer to plant trees. The crazy thing about the dead is they’re a bunch of a freeloaders. in terms utility experienced by the buried per unit of land occupied to do so, they’re still at zero.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    This sounds like trolling and trying to flame bait the parent.
    - raydiatian 4y ago
      I genuinely think we should all be buried in mushroom fertilizer suits. https://grist.org/living/mushroom-burial-suit-turns-dead-bodies-into-clean-compost/ https://grist.org/living/mushroom-burial-suit-turns-dead-bod... Furthermore how is your criterion for trolling formed such that implying to an absolute stranger that their mother’s grave should be destroyed, is not trolling?
legitster 4y ago
What part of making the world a shittier place will actually make people try to save it?
- raydiatian 4y ago
  I think a lot of people have already been living out this hypothetical for at least a decade, both rich and poor. Why else would we be here? Art is fundamentally about seeing your human experience reflected in a physical medium, and especially a medium other than your own thoughts. How many people are feeling bitter about how untaxed negative externalities (CO2, plastic, deforestation, water&energy security collapse) were traded for decades at the financial gain of the few? How many view ‘art’ as something primarily owned by the few? I know that “destroying art” is an uncomfortable notion, but guess what else is fundamentally uncomfortable at its core?
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    > Why else would we be here? Be where? Here, on this planet? Here, on HN? Here, commenting on this particular article? The third option comes closest to making your question make some kind of sense, but even then it doesn't really work. We might be here commenting on the article because we found the "protest" to be childish vandalism, and given a chance, we want to say so. I'm sure not here (for any value of "here") because "a lot of people have been living out this hypothetical".
    - raydiatian 4y ago
      > What part of making the world a shittier place will actually make people try to save it? > I think a lot of people have already been living out this hypothetical for at least a decade, both rich and poor. I’m saying the proposed hypothetical experiment of “making the world a shittier and seeing who wants to save it” is no hypothetical; it’s day to day reality for billions. > Why else would we be here? “Here” meaning the here and now of world affairs: the brink of nuclear war, environmental collapse, economic collapse, wildly disproportionate wealth inequality. The day to day symptoms of a shitty place for billions. I’m saying that the world is already royally fucked, and I can empathize with the viewpoint of “why should the rich get their fine art while the rest of us choke and starve.”
aaron695 4y ago
Paintings are the perfect example of lots of value and use close to zero of the planets resources to create. They are experiences for many people that could last forever. These attacks are on public paintings. This shows you care absolutely nothing about the environment and only about hurting people. And that is 100% the environmentalist movement. You make absolutely ridiculous statements like "there’s no habitable planet" only to justify the fun in cruelty to others. > Banksy can do it and suddenly it’s worth even more money Banksy has made the world a better place. I have never seen him destroy things of large value, even if you think what he does is zero value and has to be painted over his protest doesn't abuse the publics trust and cause large financial harm.
- raydiatian 4y ago
  > Paintings are the perfect example of lots of value and use close to zero of the planets resources to create. Okay, first of all I genuinely agree with this. > They are experiences for many people that could last forever. These attacks are on public paintings. Absolutely agree again. But you still haven’t addressed my core argument: that climate change is an affront on the public’s ability to view art. Like I said: “what’s the point of art if you don’t have a habitable environment to view it in?” Hell, I’ve been saying this next one since 2013: “what’s the point of WAR if there’s no habitable environment to conduct it in or claim victory over afterward?” > This shows you care absolutely nothing about the environment and only about hurting people. How incredibly rude. > I have never seen him destroy things of large value. I guess $25M isn’t large value. https://youtu.be/DrhHCeRP03Q https://youtu.be/DrhHCeRP03Q > even if you think what he does is zero value Haha. Dude, I love me some Banksy. What?
  - aaron695 4y ago
- raydiatian 4y ago
  > You make absolutely ridiculous statements like "there’s no habitable planet" 1. I guess you enjoy living under the specter of a looming nuclear apocaypse? 2. Dunno if you noticed, the planet is literally on fire right now. I currently can’t step outside without putting my respiratory system at risk. 3. The snow crab fishing season was called off. Because 90% of the population is gone. 4. Europe in a literal meltdown because of fears over how they’ll stay warm this winter. 5. Texas about to go into the third year of this same exact problem in a row. Ted Cruz will be in Cancun. Ay ay ron
bergenty 4y ago
No, vandalize an oil tycoons house or if you don’t mind going to prison shoot him or something. Much more effective and way more publicity. This is just cowardly and destroys irreplaceable works of art.
- ciupicri 4y ago
  A life is also irreplaceable.
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    But millions are a statistic.
- raydiatian 4y ago
  Love this too. Maybe destroying some art is just a jumping off point to something much more ambitious. Hey there, CIA! Don’t mind me, just some toothless cathartic venting.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  The art is not destroyed or even damaged, since it was behind a perspex window. But even if it had been destroyed, and even though I quite like Van Gogh, I'm not sure how much sleep I'd lose over it. There are 4 more of them, and when you get down to it it's a still life by an artist with a moving backstory rather than a peak of aesthetic achievement. The loss of a species, which now happens so often that it's not really newsworthy, troubles me far more. To be sure, some species are tiny worms or bugs whose names I can't pronounce or remember, and whose ecological role I only dimly understand, as opposed to 'charismatic megafauna.' And statistically I know there would always be some level of species extinction going on even if humans weren't around. But with so much evidence of the ecological pressure created by humanity and industry in particular, the loss or damage of a cultural artifact seems like a very minor tragedy.
gaze 4y ago
I guess I take issue with most climate protests that are meant to “generate awareness” at this point. I think people are largely saturated. People are about as aware as they’re willing to be. The question is “what do you do?” There’s not really a good answer, and without a good answer and with a lot of anger, it will come out somehow. If you have enormously over-pressurized pipes that spring a leak somehow, the leak isn’t really the salient thing. I don’t really blame the protestors. I don’t know that it’s effective, but I don’t know how you protest effectively these days so I appreciate that they’re trying. That said, the only reason anyone cares is because the story “stupid kids throw soup on painting how stupid” generates all kinds of feelings, but this will all blow over in a month or two and we’ll be back where we started. It’s crushing.
- raydiatian 4y ago
  I do largely agree with this, and I don’t think I did an effective job in the GP post communicating that my desire to see some art actually irreparably damaged is mostly catharsis. I don’t genuinely believe that we’ve had a forcing function experience yet as a species that would push us to take true action. Like billions discarding their vehicles action, despite the personal cost. News outlets do too effective a job of virtualizing and down playing disaster. For instance, I had to join the r/Ukraine subreddit to get around the US version of the reporting that did just enough to give you the details but not enough to where the news outlets had to pick up the thought of whether this will scare viewers away from coming back. The real viscera of war is why we have veterans with PTSD, it’s horrifying enough on your smartphone screen for 8 months. That same “real viscera of climate change” is hard to come by. How many people have actually been to an actual forest fire? Even fewer, how many have been to the collapsing ice sheets? How many took physics and environmental science seriously enough to have faith in the impending apocalyptic predictions of “an inconvenient truth”? And that’s precisely my point. We aren’t “in it” (the real horrors of climate change) as a society yet. I think HN is a selective population that isn’t indicative of the rest. The problem is that I think when it come and scares us to our senses naturally it will be too late. So is throwing soup cans at paintings childish? Ineffective? Yes. But I think it’s indicative of a generation that wants to stimulate action and they’re desperate to find any route.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Well, you got upvoted too. I love art, but I think most of the pearl-clutching over this is laughably insincere, and mostly comes from the same people that normally dismiss art as finger painting and talk shit about artists. Certainly, I don't want to see any art get destroyed, but even less do I want to see art museums become the monuments to a species-level murder-suicide. The scale of the environmental destruction that respectable folk are deploring but (mostly) passively accepting is a monstrous crime, and some vandalism that highlights the misallocation of social priorities an extremely gentle kind of communication.

threads2 4y ago

nothing makes sense anymore

spacedcowboy 4y ago

I think it's worth mentioning that the painting wasn't damaged, they knew the painting itself was covered with glass. This was a statement, not wanton vandalism.

legitster 4y ago
Glazed != in glass. The glaze is a thin shellac coating. You still have to strip it and re-glaze, and it's kind of lucky it didn't do more damage than it did.
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  The statement from the national gallery is a bit ambiguous (glazed could mean either thing). The protesters state it was "behind glass".
- stuaxo 4y ago
  Pretty sure they mean behind glass: glass as in glazing.
anikom15 4y ago
It’s still vandalism. The glaze has to be cleaned, removed, and reapplied, all done by a skilled person. It can’t just be thrown in the dishwasher.
- Nullabillity 4y ago
  So the artwork itself is preserved, while it's annoying and expensive for the museum (arguably coming out of the oil companies' sponsorship budget). Sounds like the mission was accomplished?
  - WaitWaitWha 4y ago
    >Sounds like the mission was accomplished? Did it? Is the general public concentrating on the topics they intended on bringing to the forefront or that vandalized art? Is the general public's sentiment that their act makes sense, or that it was petulant, privileged behavior? In my opinion, they did harm to their cause.

legitster 4y ago

> According to a statement, Just Stop Oil timed Friday's act "to coincide with the planned launch of a new round of oil and gas licensing" in the UK. Europe is in the midst of an energy crisis the likes they have never seen. And a fair part of the issue is they have spent the last decade divesting from oil and gas without lining up any viable alternatives. Europe is now on track to burn more coal this next year than it ever has in the history of the continent. These groups are throwing a hissy fit because they would rather debate things that don't actually matter than to answer hard questions about why they oppose nuclear energy or carbon taxes.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Europe is in the midst of an energy crisis the likes they have never seen. And a fair part of the issue is they have spent the last decade divesting from oil and gas without lining up any viable alternatives. Then stopp blocking the viable alternatives. New oil andgas while banning new solar is the height of insanity

tanseydavid 4y ago

Riding on Van Gogh's coattails for attention is cheap and childish.

anigbrowl 4y ago
They are literally kids, and managed to get global attention to an issue for the price of a can of soup and two tubes of glue. Pretty effective use of meager resources if you ask me.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago

What part of "let me screw up something that other people find valuable in order to make my statement" do they think is going to motivate other people to seriously consider their position? People don't work like that.

googlryas 4y ago

How effective are these protests? Is there any way to quantify that? Certainly it gets news coverage, but does it have any effect on people? My best guess is that most people have formed opinions on climate change at this point, and these types of protests don't really move anyone's opinion - if you believe in climate change, you still believe in climate change, and you probably don't think climate change is more urgent now that someone threw tomato soup on an old painting. If you don't believe in climate change, you still don't believe in climate change, I can't see soup on a painting affecting that. I suspect Putin invading Ukraine did more for climate change action than any amount of protests would do.

ender341341 4y ago
> these types of protests don't really move anyone's opinion I think they actually damage the cause they're working towards, it gives opponents of taking action against climate change cheep ammunition for ad hominem attacks against anyone working on climate change similar to how small groups of rioters can be used to paint entire protests as violent.
- qbrass 4y ago
  It's going to damage the cause they're working towards when people start flooding in to take a selfie with the painting because it was in the news.
- eskaytwo 4y ago
  It’s like a preachy vegan: makes it far too easy for lazy dismissals of the entire argument. Likely sets back the entire cause by making it too polarising, which really sucks.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  opponents of taking action against climate change cheep ammunition As if they were so principled before, or went out of their way to take other objections so seriously. A more objective measure would be to estimate the cost it would take to get the equivalent level of publicity, rather than trying to estimate the positive or negative impact which is necessarily subjective. We don't know whether pissing people off is really ineffective or actually galvanizes more people to action. I'd contrast actions like this with the worldwide protests against the Iraq war in February 2003. Those are estimated to be the largest single political demonstration in history, involving 6-10 million people in ~600 venues around the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... They were huge protests, close to universal. Subsequents events pretty much validated the protesters' concerns. And what did all that peaceful, dignified, disciplined protest achieve? Fuck all. Protests that don't upset anyone are quite useless.

ohiovr 4y ago

Should have thrown the soup on an Andy Warhol painting.

raydiatian 4y ago
genius.