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What is the point though? Is there a single person who changes their mind on the issue of climate change because some lunatic does a bit of pseudo-vandalism?
by constantcrying 4y ago
What is the point though? Is there a single person who changes their mind on the issue of climate change because some lunatic does a bit of pseudo-vandalism?
- noobermin 4y agoIt garners attention and has people talking about climate change, like in this comment thread, like in the attached article. It has in fact already achieved its goal. Many other tactics have not so far. It's for example why people block traffic, it's an effective manner to gain attention.
- thinkingemote 4y agoThey are playing the attention game now and are beholden to the rules of the game and the organisations that control the playing field. In terms of climate change the media organisations support these activists. However where the media do not support the cause the attention game is the wrong thing to play. It's all spectacle now. No actual change of a person's heart just ideology mediated through images. It does indeed get people thinking about it but only until the next news item is shown.
- selfhoster11 4y agoOK, what are the alternatives? - Bribing the politicians to do something (with what money)? - Having someone run on the political platform of building a greener future, while competing with turbocharged, lobby-backed candidates that want the exact opposite? - Having those companies clean up their conduct (with what effective regulators)? - Having better coverage in the media of matters related to climate change, to raise awareness and convince people that this is an emergency (with what media that's not owned by old pro-fossil billionaires)? Raising awareness in this way may be stupid, but it's an avenue to at least get people talking for a few seconds.
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 4y agoAn alternative is for people to blame themselves, the consumer. Oil companies won't produce oil if no one is using it. Everyone is blaming and pointing fingers at other people to do something.
- svnt 4y agoTry buying food and having a social life without acquiring plastic or burning coal or gas, directly or indirectly. They can control the supply side, and have. Putting the blame on the consumer is what happened in the 90s. The consumer can do nothing but hoard soda bottles to keep them from landfills at this point.
- MandieD 4y agoOr we can drink a lot less soda and other bottle drinks. Tap water is better for your body, bank account, and world.
- svnt 4y agoAgreed — my example was intended to be mildly hyperbolic.
- selfhoster11 4y agoTap water is not safe to drink everywhere, but even if I don’t drink bottled water - that’s still a drop in the bucket next to huge corporations that churn out plastic products by the ton.
- CM30 4y agoProtesting in a way that governments can't ignore? Like imagine if instead of doing this to a random painting or sitting in a road, they blocked the door into congress, the white house, the house of commons, etc? That would get far more attention and press than vandalising a statue or painting or sitting in a road.
- hunterb123 4y agoNoone saw this and said, "you know what I'm going to focus on the climate now". Everyone just sees a person wasting glue, vandalizing art, and acting like a child. It's a selfish act to make them feel better and boast amongst their peers. If anything it hurts the movement they claim to support. I guess picking up trash doesn't give them a good enough high...
- celeritascelery 4y ago> has people talking about climate change, like in this comment thread Who in this thread is talking about climate change? Everyone is focused on the crazy behavior of the vandals.
- deburo 4y ago>and has people talking about climate change Not in this thread so far. Neither in this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33309661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33309661 There's a few comments in this one discussing the climate, but mostly they are puzzled by the activists' method: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268174
- yetihehe 4y agoHacker news is not target audience of that action.
- amelius 4y agoIt is a form of hacking.
- dopidopHN 4y agoIt is some sort of social engineering. The target is the media cycle and the hack is bring your name out there. Did it work? I know they are orange and have a name ala « just say no to oil » or something. And I really don’t care. So it worked on me. The same results with classic ad campaign might have touched a fraction of the people hearing about that now. For a different cost. ( in money as opposed to legal consequence and being in the awkward ass position ) I retain judgement until it became more clear is it’s a endgame, or a first step needed for something else.
- giantg2 4y agoSeems a bold claim to make. Who is, and why?
- yetihehe 4y agoPeople who don't know or don't care about global warming. I still think that such action is stupid.
- notahacker 4y ago
- CM30 4y agoBut does it get attention to what they want to get attention for? At the moment, most responses have been "God these guys are idiots" and "what's the point of this?", not "damn, climate change is a problem we really need to do more about now"
- insanitybit 4y agoI've never once seen people talking about climate change directly as a response to this sort of protest. Like, it gets brought up in terms of how I just brought it up, I said the words "climate change", but we're not having a discussion. Because of course we're not. Climate change doesn't need more attention, everyone knows about it, whether they believe it's a problem or not. This isn't bringing awareness to anyone and it isn't changing anyone's mind.
- eli 4y agoI feel like they should be gluing a poster about climate change to the glass protecting the painting instead of their hand.
- legitster 4y ago> has people talking about climate change Incorrect. None of this has spawned a single conversation about climate change. The only thing it has spawned is debate about how much moral justification one can receive from the existence of climate change.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoI think it's performative. The "activists" do something random and useless, but that lets them feel like they're doing something. So from their perspective, it's worthwhile, because it lets them feel better about themselves.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoOmit the word "else" from your first paragraph. This isn't "doing something about it" either. This is just a different way of pretending to do something about it.
- selfhoster11 4y agoIneffective and ridiculous protest is still a form of protest. In the absence of other options, it's better than doing nothing at all.
- such12 4y agoThere are all kinds of people doing serious climate change research, politics, business, etc. Other options certainly do exist. This ridiculous and ineffective protest only serves to make people fighting climate change look ridiculous. That only hurts the movement. It would be better if these individuals had done nothing at all. Better yet - if they don’t know what to do about climate change, they can do any paying job, and donate their money to someone who does.
- r3trohack3r 4y agoI believe there are two camps in the eco movement. One camp believes humans need to address our impact on the ecosystem. The other believes humans are the problem. You see this split in the movement around extinction. Folks will shame humans for causing an animal to go extinct while simultaneously coming out in opposition to re-introducing extinct animals to their ecosystem through genetic research (I.e the Wholly Mammoth project). I’d sum up the split as: one group wants to do something about it. The other wants humans to “just stop.” Your list of solutions only work for the former group.
- qart 4y agoThis is the third such instance in the recent past. Canned tomato on van Gogh, mashed potato on Monet, and now this. I tend to think none of the multi-million paintings are displayed as originals. I don't know anyone who has worked at a museum, but I'm guessing they are all replicas behind glass.
- ferrocarraiges 4y agoIt's a statement about how we are destroying our heritage, our history, and our future. It makes people think about a world without the famous works of art which tether us to our past, to highlight how far adrift we are now.
- ncr100 4y agoThis makes sense. Is this point made by the activists, in your observation of these events? None of the Headline News articles mention that intention.
- svnt 4y agoThey can’t control what is reported about them. Part of this is education of the readership. Seems like that at least worked once or twice, here.
- falcolas 4y ago"You're destroying our heritage!" proceeds to destroy heritage Idiotic hypocrites.
- jandrese 4y agoThey didn't destroy any heritage. The paintings were behind glass. The whole thing was symbolic.
- throwaway5959 4y agoAt some point they’re going to escalate to hammers and knives.
- delecti 4y agoOkay, then at some point we can get be more concerned about the protest than about the potentially cataclysmic thing they're protesting.
- jandrese 4y agoThe idea is to keep the topic in the news cycle. Climate change is one of those issues that people are quick to forget about because the day to day effects are hard to see.
- Lonestar1440 4y agoThese activists certainly manage to keep themselves in the headlines. I'm not convinced that they actually get anyone incrementally interested in the underlying Global Warming issue, much less induce any change.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoOnly if you are willfully blind. Between crazy heat waves in Europe, the mass die off snowcrabs, unprecedented forest fires and flooding, unending droughts, various Arctic parts not fully freezing, disappearing glaciers etc. etc. it honestly feels like a week doesn't go by where something climate related isn't in the news. Gluing one's self to famous painting isn't going to convince the people who are already ignoring the real stories.
- noobermin 4y agoIf it's so powerful a narrative in the media why isn't anything being done? And of that being done, it being so insignificant in comparison to what is the bare minimum needed?
- luckylion 4y agoIs there really nothing that is being done, at all? No solar + wind farms? No process optimization for energy saving at industrial sites, no highly efficient insulation for buildings etc etc? You could argue that not enough is being done, but nothing? That's ridiculous. Instead of seeking media attention, protesters could also just learn how to install solar panels or build wind turbines. We have a tremendous shortage of skilled labor in those areas, which increases the price of installation and limits the speed of transformation. But it's harder than gluing yourself to something and bringing a photographer, so they won't. Which suggests to me that it's not really about climate change. Climate change is the medium, the message is narcissism.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]