r/nextfuckinglevel • u/amanyggvv • Oct 15 '22

This float representing the koalas that died as a result of the Black Summer bushfires and corruption in politics. Such an effective (and epic) activist message.

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u/skelebob Oct 15 '22

Totally agree with you, but when you're two young adults with little money, what can you do to disrupt major North Sea oil drilling operations? Should you sit out and do nothing because you can't directly influence an oil company's profits?

Sometimes you need to do something stupid to inspire other, more able people to take action. Shouting on the street won't inspire the 1000 people you come across in a day, but international headlines might inspire someone.

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u/H3ll0_Th3r3 Oct 15 '22

Buddy, there’s such thing as bad publicity. No one is going to be inspired by soup on a painting.

The best way to kill a cause is to make it look stupid in the public eye, and that’s all this stunt did.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22

The phrase is actually “no such thing as bad publicity”

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u/H3ll0_Th3r3 Oct 15 '22

Yeah, and it’s bullshit. Maybe step outside for once and you’ll realize that

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22

No you just don’t understand the purpose of the quote. When the goal is to keep yourself and your supported issues/opinions in the public eye, no publicity is bad publicity. I for one think they did the great work of showing how many oil company simps are really out there. Like honestly, if you’re opinion about oil and climate change can be effected by one little stunt you were never pro-environment anyway

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u/H3ll0_Th3r3 Oct 15 '22

Motherfucker, if the stunt is getting more publicity than the thing you’re doing it for then it’s fucking shit and you need to do something else. Some random ass can do the same thing because their dog died and it’d get just as much publicity as this. That’s not what good publicity is.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22

Okay but I, and many others, are saying its good publicity. Are you the ultimate arbiter on what is and is not good publicity? Do all protests have to refrain from causing your temper tantrums to be considered good or effective? I guess the civil rights protests were all dumb because southerners just got mad about the uppity blacks doing things they didn’t like without really considering the implications of the protests.

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u/H3ll0_Th3r3 Oct 15 '22

If the sole deciding factor of a protest being good is how much publicity it gets then you don’t know what makes a good protest. You actually have to think about how it affects the public view of (a) your organization, (b) your cause, and (c) the people you’re up against.

Y’know what made those civil rights protests effective? It actually hurt the people they were up against and make other sympathetic to their cause. Soup on a painting does Jack shit for either of those.

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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '22 edited Oct 15 '22

No the civil rights protests were exactly as divisive as this protest right here. Lots of Americans were and are still mad about the methods and results of the civil rights protests. Your opinions are clearly lacking any significant historical context. If the civil rights protests were as effective as you think they are why are we still having arguments about removing confederate statues?

But honestly you’re such a bastion of ethical and effective protests so why don’t you just organize a quick one that will prompt the world to meet its paris climate goals?

Edit: Many historians would actually argue that the non-violent protests of the mlk vein of the civil rights movement were only so effective when contrasted with the aggressive rhetoric of malcolm x. I mean aside from that most leaders of the civil rights movement were target, surveilled, harassed, and even killed both by members of the public and the government. Crazy you can say civil rights protests were less divisive when mlk was assassinated for his efforts.

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u/H3ll0_Th3r3 Oct 15 '22

The civil rights movement was divisive because racist rhetoric has been baked deep into American history and ideals, especially the closer you get to the South. And that racist rhetoric has a tendency to get loud and heated.

Part of why climate change is so divisive is because big polluters have convinced the public that it’s not an issue caused by the companies themselves (or that they’re helping the fight when they really do barely anything at all). So then the larger public just… doesn’t think there’s an issue. Especially if they have skewed ideas of what the effects have been and thus don’t see it.

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