Comment by qdog
11 hours ago
IMHO, the value of the protest is to demonstrate a portion of the electorate does not agree with whatever they are protesting. There are a lot of people in a bubble that seem to think the majority always views things exactly the same as they do. Maybe you will always default do doubling down on the status quo, but some people will eventually inquire as to why someone is willing to inconvenience themselves to protest. Once someone starts to be curious about other people's motivations and reasoning, it often does impact their own opinions, for good or bad.
Assuming critics are just reflexively resistant is a convenient way to avoid asking whether the criticism has merit. "They'd get it if they were more curious" is unfalsifiable.
Everyone already knows dissent exists. Polls, social media, elections make that clear. The question is whether street protests add anything to that awareness, and whether the way they're conducted generates curiosity or just irritation. For a lot of people it's the latter, and waving that off doesn't make the problem disappear.
> Assuming critics are just reflexively resistant is a convenient way to avoid asking whether the criticism has merit. "They'd get it if they were more curious" is unfalsifiable.
I don't know if it can be proven or whatever, but I do know it has changed me.
There have been many events where I thought "hey, why is everybody whining about X thing?". "things are fine the way they are". Until I read more about it and changed my mind.
If it was purely online, I wouldn't take it so seriously.
So whether it can proven empirically or not, I know it changed me.
I think protests are good since it requires you to go outside and interact with other people, it requires a higher level of commitment than the slacktivism of the 2010s that was so prominent in online spaces. Polls are gamed all the time and social media is dominated by bots, but you cannot fake a large crowd in a protest. If a protest is large enough it creates a force that cannot be easily ignored.
Agreed on the slacktivism point. Physical presence means something that bots and polls can't fake. My issue isn't with protesting itself, it's that the assumed impact often seems out of proportion with what's actually being achieved. A crowd showing up doesn't automatically translate to minds changed or policy moved. And crowd sizes can be just as ambiguous as poll numbers when it comes to representing broader sentiment. If the tactics alienate more people than they persuade, visibility alone isn't doing much.
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Yes, protests are fertile recruitment grounds. I have inducted many a liberal into leftist thinking after they experience the shocking violence the State is willing to deploy against them for executing what they thought was a guaranteed right.
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Of course you can fake a small/large crowd in a protest.
From the top of my head I can think of news reporting both "few (tens of) thousands" vs "hundreds of thousands" (different news reporting different numbers/estimates/etc) in 2025 protests in Serbia/Belgrade, as well as those comparisons of Obama vs Trump inauguration news/photos.
Meanwhile to you as an individual there on the spot - both crowds of say 50K-100K and 1M+ look basically the same = "huge amounts of people in every direction that you look".
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> Everyone already knows dissent exists. Polls, social media, elections make that clear.
No, they really don’t. Have you never heard someone say that they have never met anyone who is X so it can’t be that popular? My own sister thought 2000 was going to be a landslide for Gore because she “hadn’t met anyone who was going to vote for Bush”.
> Assuming critics are just reflexively resistant
This is not an accurate or thoughtful characterization of what you're responding to; it's not even in the same ballpark.
> is a convenient way to avoid asking whether the criticism has merit.
Pure projection.
Don't underestimate the importance of the other reason protests are effective: as a politician, it's very, very scary to look out your window and see thousands of people that are mad enough at you to forgoe their day and instead come yell at you about it. It tends to make them a bit more amenable unless they have enough military power to guaranteed squash mass resistance (which is the case for any American politician).
This, and for politicians who actually agree without fear, it creates credibility, my constituents are up in arms about this and I will be supported if I champion it.
Exactly. Piercing the bubble is the most important purpose of peacefully protesting in a day of internet silos and media monopolies.