Rude People, Idiots In the Comments Section, and Yes, You Are In Fact, Responsible for What Happens At The Protest
And Other Possible Fall Out Boy Song Titles
Maybe it’s just age. Or maybe it’s the water. Or the Wi-Fi. But is it me, or are people just becoming… ruder?
The other day I’m in the grocery store, minding my own cart, stacking the conveyor with my proud little assembly of healthful lies (organic kale, low-fat yogurt, a bottle of red so cheap it apologizes when you pick it up).
The checkout girl maybe 23, maybe sentient, maybe not—scans my items with the enthusiasm of a medieval scribe copying out the phone book. I say, very simply, very politely:
“Thank you.” She looks up like I’ve barked “Viva la revolution!” and pulled out a kazoo.
This look part confusion, part disgust, part “is this man about to explain the blockchain to me?” lasts about two seconds. Then, back to scanning, like nothing happened. But it did happen. It happened to me, and I’ve been replaying it ever since, like a cursed gif.
Now, I’m trying to be reasonable here. I get that not everyone was raised in the ancient, mystical era of "please" and "thank you" and not stabbing strangers in the neck for eye contact. But honestly, how did basic politeness get rebranded as either creepy, sarcastic, or a form of microaggression?
And yes, yes, I know civility is dying, the empire is crumbling… Look who’s in power. It’s not so much a government as it is a group therapy session where nobody listens and everyone’s allergic to consequences.
But, the question remains: how do we fix this?
I may have a slight evolutionary edge here, a rare neurological condition I like to call Anti-Bullshiticusitus.
Latin for: I can smell empty rhetoric like a bloodhound at a politician's convention.
This isn’t to say I hate lies. No, no. I love lies. Lies are the jazz of language. As someone growing up in the 2000s and 90s I love a good lie! I grew up with them.,
“WMDs in Iraq.” “Read my lips.” “I did not have sex with that intern.” And my personal favourite: “Nothing is going to change after the merger.” A classic! Lies are deliberate. Lies have structure. Lies wear suits.
But bullshit? Bullshit is worse.
Bullshit is the verbal equivalent of a screensaver. Bullshit is when someone assembles a sentence from a box of leftover syllables and still expects a gold star. It’s the boardroom PowerPoint with twelve slides of nothing, and a concluding phrase like “synergistic outcomes,” which translates loosely to “I’m not listening and neither should you.”
And the thing is and here’s the kicker the longer we’re exposed to this cultural soup of bullshit, the more allergic we all become.
Not just me with my fancy Latin condition. Everyone. It’s like some mass psycho-social hay fever. The more meaningless the chatter, the more inflamed the social sinuses. Sneezing out sarcasm. Wheezing out snark.
Rudeness isn’t the disease it’s the symptom.
Which brings me, with the reluctant dread of a man discovering his favourite book store has been converted into a vape-themed escape room, to
Exhibit A in the Global Bullshit Epidemic: internet comments
Now, the internet has given us many things most of them awful but among the worst is the idea that every single human being, regardless of skill, knowledge, temperament, or even basic sentence structure, should have a platform.
Particularly on Substack, where the illusion of intellectual sophistication is often draped over comments that would make a particularly uncurious turnip blush.
In recent weeks though “recent” here is doing the heavy lifting of “since always”, I’ve seen a rise in what I can only call weaponized pedantry and performative outrage. Not just aimed at me, mind you though I do seem to attract a certain type of person who thinks “critical thinking” means typing in all caps, but at anyone daring to voice an unpopular opinion. Or even a popular opinion phrased in a slightly cheeky way. Or, in some cases, just existing.
Consider, if you will, the brilliant Mia Sharin, a writer of clarity and nuance whose Substack, titled “Railed”, because subtlety is overrated, focuses on female sexual empowerment. She recently wrote a piece with the title “Hundreds Of Substack Users Called Me A Whore,” which, in a just world, would be satire, but instead functions as grimly accurate reportage.
The piece meticulously documented the kind of comments that make you long for a celestial “delete all” button. One male reader, in particular, seemed to believe that women who enjoy sex are essentially unfit for society like expired milk, but with opinions.
Now, I have a rule. A simple one. And I enforce it with the rigidity of a drill instructor brandishing a riding crop of unresolved trauma: if you have never written anything longer than a birthday card, shut the fuck up. Not gently. Not with kindness.
With the firmness of a bouncer at a Mensa meeting asking you to leave because your conversational contribution is “boobies r bad.”
Writing is, you see, the great sieve through which bullshit cannot pass. Because when you write something, and then God forbid read it aloud, you hear it.
Bullshit has a sound. It’s subtle, but once tuned to the frequency, you can detect it. It’s like hearing a kazoo in a symphony, or noticing that a man who claims to be “a free thinker” always seems to think the exact same things as the worst people on Twitter.
So, yes, Mia wrote something thoughtful. And her critic, if we can dignify him with that term,responded with what amounted to: “Woman like sex. Bad. Man angry!” I’ve read more nuanced arguments scrawled in bathroom stalls, usually next to a drawing of something phallic and deeply anatomically confused.
And here’s a non-bullshit thought: perhaps we should collectively agree to stop sleeping with rude people. Just cut them off entirely. Imagine the societal transformation. The economy would shift overnight. Dating apps would implode. Tinder would become a silent void filled only with pictures of people holding fish.
But alas, things get even more ridiculous because what’s worse than misogyny in the comments? Oh yes: politics in the comments. A sandbox that should, by all rights, be sealed off and declared a disaster zone.
Now, I loathe homogenized thought. It’s the intellectual equivalent of plain oatmeal served with a side of shrug. It’s thought that has been smoothed and blended and filtered so thoroughly that it arrives at your doorstep like a beige envelope containing a letter of complaint about your tone.
Enter a man let’s call him “Trevor” because he feels like a Trevor who objected to a piece I wrote in which I (correctly, if I may toot my own historically literate trumpet) noted that a significant portion of left-leaning German society turned a blind eye to the Holocaust.
Not out of evil necessarily, but out of that most dependable of human traits: willful apathy when things get awkward.
This caused Trevor to investigate. And by “investigate,” I mean he clicked on my profile, saw that I support the existence of Israel not every military action, not every policy, just the basic idea that a country can exist without a universal veto and promptly flew into a self-righteous tizzy.
He accused me of “supporting genocide” and, for good measure, called me a narcissist. Which, I’ll be honest, was flattering. Narcissists seem to be having a great time. They wake up every day believing the world awaits their next Instagram story. Me? I wake up wondering if I locked the door and, whether anyone noticed I wore the same jumper three days in a row.
This blog, this entire absurd corner of the internet, is for me. If others enjoy it, wonderful. But I’d be writing it even if my only subscriber was a Russian bot named “Linda_Bot3000” who sends me heart emojis and phishing links. I have 28 subscribers. I don’t think anyone is running into the streets, screaming, “You must read this man’s work!” If they are, their friends are likely calling the authorities.
Now, Trevor’s rant, aside from being entirely unoriginal, was predictable to the point of parody. Self-described socialist? Naturally. Into empathy? Of course though seemingly allergic to demonstrating any. And the pièce de résistance: never written anything. Not a blog, not an article, not even a heartfelt Yelp review. Just a void of echoing opinions formed entirely from whatever Twitter argument he last read.
So let me be clear: I do not take feedback from people who do not think for themselves. That’s why I’m here, on Substack, alone typing in my little corner of the internet like a My Chemical Romance song subject with broadband. I don’t have fake friends. Not the kind who nod along because they’re scared of upsetting the group chat’s emotional ecosystem.
Real friends challenge you. They argue with you. They call you out when you’ve been an ass, and then offer to hang out. If you, Trevor, had even one of those friends, they might have pointed out that constructing your entire identity around angrily regurgitating slogans in the comments section at strangers, for the approval of others, on topics you clearly don’t understand and have never read a full book about, isn’t activism it’s just digital diarrhea.
And IS… Narcissistic as fuck.
And lastly, just to really nail it to the internet’s particularly cursed wall: the ability to vomit rhetoric on demand does not constitute thought. It’s not brave, it’s not smart, and it’s not edgy. It’s what an iPhone would sound like if it spent two weeks in a philosophy seminar and came out convinced it understood Nietzsche.
A Note On: Performative Bullshit
Let’s start with the gentle disclaimer, the required overture, the small bow of respect one must do before offending half the readership like some sort of exasperated Victorian butler who’s just been asked to pour a fourth cup of tea at the anarchists’ picnic: I support the right to protest.
In fact, I cherish it. I romanticize it. I think it’s one of the finest expressions of human dignity we’ve managed to cobble together over the millennia of stabbing each other over oxen and borders. It’s a sacred right. A right so important that when it is infringed upon, I too feel the weight of that injustice and I have marched.
I’ve shown up. I’ve stood in streets. I’ve taken photographs. I’ve shouted. I’ve listened. I’ve sweated under the hot judgmental glare of the sun and the even hotter glare of someone who thinks I’m not angry enough.
So yes, I’m not standing outside the house of protest like some moralizing ghost wagging my finger. I’m inside. I’m in the room. I’ve been there. But unlike many people currently waving their fists with great enthusiasm and limited critical reflection, I’ve also taken notes.
And here’s what I’ve noticed: protesting has become a bit of a… performance… Bullshit as it was… Not for everyone. Not always. But often enough that we need to talk about it.
Because in an era of Instagram carousels, TikTok megaphones, and blue-check ideologues shouting half-formed history lessons in the comment sections, we’ve become rather enamored with the look of resistance. We’ve fetishized protest not as a tactical maneuver in a long, brutal, incremental war for justice, but as a kind of flashmob for self-affirmation.
“Look! I’m doing something!” we cry, as we raise our signs and wave our flags and pose meaningfully in front of cop cars we absolutely don’t want to interact with unless there’s a live feed.
So let me put it bluntly: protesting is not therapy. It’s not a group hug. It’s not your diary. And it is certainly not an excuse to absolve yourself of all responsibility for what happens around you.
And here’s the terrifying bit for those who thought protesting was all vibes and collective catharsis: you are responsible for who you stand next to at the protest.
Yes. You are. Even if they’re a stranger. Even if you didn’t invite them. Even if you don’t technically agree with them. Because protesting is not done in a vacuum. It’s done in public. And once you are in public, once you are part of that crowd, your individual message fuses with the messages of those around you. It becomes a kind of ideological soup. And if someone pisses in that soup, you can’t just ladle your bowl out and say, “Mine’s clean!”
That’s right, Timmy. You don’t get to stand next to the guy with the swastika scrubbed out and replaced with the Star of David and go, “Well, I didn’t know he was antisemitic!” No, Timmy. You’re in the photo. You’re part of the ensemble. When the curtain falls, you’re in the cast list.
Let’s get into some specifics.
The Myth of the Harmless Protest
There is this persistent fantasy, peddled primarily by people whose last real encounter with danger was a passive-aggressive Slack message, that protests are these pure, beautiful expressions of democracy where no one gets hurt, and everyone links arms and sings while the State quietly folds in the face of their collective moral superiority. This is, to put it delicately, bullshit.
Real protests are messy. They’re chaotic. They’re uncomfortable. That’s why they work sometimes. But they’re also unpredictable. And just like fire, if you play with them without understanding how they work, you’re going to get burned.
Or worse: someone else in the crowd does something reckless throws a bottle, starts a fire, shouts something threatening and an hour later, you’re on Twitter, eyes wide, frantically quote-tweeting the local news with, “I swear it was peaceful when I left!”
And maybe it was. For you. But here’s the thing: the moment you gathered in public, someone was watching. Because someone has to.
That’s not dystopian. That’s just... logistics.
Protests, by their very nature, attract attention some supportive, some hostile, and some wearing utility belts and radios. I can not tell you how many times I have seen protests where the message was “fuck the cops” only to have people screaming “Where are the cops?” When things went sideways.
It doesn’t make the protest wrong. And it doesn’t make law enforcement evil. It just means that when thousands of people gather to express deeply felt political emotions sometimes in the middle of traffic or on public property, somebody has to be tasked with making sure nobody gets hurt.
Or at least, that fewer people do. You can believe in the right to protest and still understand that the city doesn’t want a bonfire in the Whole Foods parking lot.
So yes, the authorities are watching. Not because they’re rooting against you, but because if a crowd turns chaotic, they’re the ones who have to explain to the mayor, the press, and probably someone’s very angry mom why it all went sideways.
So before you cry foul about your peaceful protest being reclassified as a “riot,” ask yourself: was everyone there actually peaceful? And did the people tasked with public safety maybe see something you didn’t?
Protest is a right. So is caution. The two are not enemies. They’re just in an awkward relationship where one’s always nervously holding the fire extinguisher while the other insists everything is under control.
And let's not kid ourselves into thinking that protests, especially the large, public ones, are always civil, orderly affairs. There’s a darker side to collective action, something we prefer not to dwell on, because it’s inconvenient, messy, and not at all in keeping with the narrative of noble resistance.
Take the Great Terror in Russia, for example. It started, as many revolutions do, with lofty ideals and grand speeches. But what followed was a brutal, paranoid crackdown that saw thousands executed, the promise of a better world replaced by widespread fear and violence.
The Los Angeles Riots in 1992, likewise, were a tragic reminder of how quickly legitimate frustration can mutate into an uncontrollable fury. It’s easy to romanticize the idea of protest as a righteous movement for justice, but it’s much harder to explain away the destruction and loss of life that sometimes follow. And yes, even what we think of as "celebrations" can take a similarly grim turn.
Take the Chicago Bulls Victory Riot, where what was supposed to be a joyful celebration of athletic achievement morphed into chaos. What was supposed to be a jubilant occasion, filled with cheers, quickly escalated into violence and mayhem.
The reason? It turns out that crowds whether they’re angry or exuberant are a lot like a tinderbox, just waiting for the right spark to set off an explosion.
The uncomfortable truth is that revolutions, protests, and celebrations alike can all too easily slip from the jubilant to the tragic. The line between righteous anger and mindless violence is thin, and more often than not, history has shown us that it’s tragically easy to cross.
Let’s take a historical detour, shall we? Prague. 1968.
A peaceful protest against the Soviet regime. What does the KGB do? They leave a pile of bricks near a sensitive building. That’s it. They didn’t even throw them. They just left them. Then one person one bored, possibly slightly drunk person lobs a brick through a window. And the crowd, hypnotized by its own momentum, follows suit.
Why? Because crowds don’t think. That’s not an insult. It’s just biology. We are social animals.
When we’re in a pack, we stop thinking like individuals and start responding like schools of fish being chased by a shark except the fish, in this case, are chanting slogans they saw on Tumblr and the shark is either The Man or their own unresolved personal rage.
“But This One Was Peaceful!” The Selective Amnesia of the Modern Protester
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Or, more accurately, the thousand elephants that stampeded through university campuses, city halls, and public streets this past year, all with a very specific flag and an increasingly unhinged manifesto.
Yes, I am referring to the 2024 Free Palestine protests. Or, as they became known in certain circles: the Great Spectacle of Pretending Nothing Sinister Is Happening While Actively Hosting an IRGC Fan Club on American Soil. I have written about this at length.
Now, before anyone hurls a shoe or a hashtag at me, let’s be clear: criticizing the Israeli government is not antisemitism. Demanding basic rights for Palestinians is not antisemitism. Holding a sign that says “Ceasefire Now” does not make you an antisemite.
But and this is the hill I will die on standing next to someone calling for intifada, flying the flag of a designated terrorist regime, or chanting slogans that make 1930s Berlin sound like a TED Talk? That makes you, at the very least, deeply suspect, and likely an antisemite.
The protests in question those massive, highly organized “Free Palestine” demonstrations that erupted on college campuses across the country were not just chaotic and confrontational. They were illegal.
Not in the “oh no we accidentally jaywalked” kind of way, but in the full-blown trespassing, detaining Jewish students, occupying buildings, intimidating faculty, refusing dispersal orders, and in some cases outright assault kind of way.
And when I say “illegal,” I don’t mean “controversial.” I don’t mean “morally complex.” I mean violation of the actual criminal code, complete with police reports, arrests, and brace yourself foreign funding.
Because, yes, it came out (as it always does, buried on page 9 of some newspaper after the splashy headlines have moved on) that elements of these protests were directly supported by groups with ties to the Iranian regime.
You know, the one currently busy enriching uranium and imprisoning dissidents and torturing women for showing their wrists. That one. The regime that doesn’t want a two-state solution it wants a no-Jews solution.
So when you stand shoulder to shoulder with people waving Hezbollah flags and shrieking about “river to the sea,” you don’t get to pull the innocence card. You don’t get to say, “I was just there for the humanitarian message.”
You might believe that’s what you were there for but in practice, you showed up to a rally whose sponsors would happily see the entire democratic order of the West crumble into the sea if it meant one more inch of strategic leverage.
This is not a fringe conspiracy theory. This is on the record. Intelligence reports. Video evidence. Admissions. Hell, some of the organizers themselves bragged about it.
And yet, when the arrests began and the building clear-outs commenced, what did we get on the evening news?
Crying students in hoodies being escorted out by cops, clutching their notebooks and muttering about fascism. We got headlines like “Police Crack Down on Peaceful Protesters,” as though what had just happened wasn’t days of criminal occupation, vandalism, hate speech, and the open harassment of Jewish students on campuses they had every legal and moral right to be on.
The media, as ever, missed the forest, the trees, and the entire fucking ecosystem. And let me just take a moment here to speak to the well-meaning liberal in the back the one clutching their NPR tote bag and whispering, “But those were just a few bad apples.”
A few bad apples? Let me stop you right there, my friend. If your orchard is full of apples painted with “Death to America” slogans and lovingly fertilized with funding from Tehran, the problem isn’t a few rogue fruits. The problem is your entire fucking supply chain.
If I stood next to a clan member and said “look I don’t agree with him on everything…” you would be well within your rights to assume I am just fine with the majority of things he or she says.
If someone at your protest is calling for the death of a people, you don’t get to say “Well, I just liked their graphic design.”
If someone is flying the flag of a country that literally murders LGBTQ+ people and hangs journalists from cranes, you don’t get to shrug and say, “But I thought we were just here to decry violence.”
Because guess what? You weren’t just there to decry violence. You were there to lend legitimacy, intentionally or not, to a movement that had become so compromised, so morally rotten, so strategically reckless, that any good intentions were drowned out by the sheer volume of bile spewing from its fringes and increasingly, its center.
And if you're still tempted to defend it, if you're still clinging to the narrative that “it was mostly peaceful,” then please let me remind you: so is a wildfire, for the first fifteen minutes.
And please DO NOT take my word for it. Go ask the Jewish students on those campuses.
Arrest Is Not a Hypothetical. It’s a Likely Outcome.
Or: “Congratulations on Your New Misdemeanor, Hope It Matches Your Jacket.”
I need to say this for the folks at the back yes, the ones in the vintage protest T-shirts they bought ironically but now wear sincerely, sipping iced oat milk lattes while double-checking if next weekend’s rally will wrap up in time for their 3 PM pilates class.
Look alive, kids: if you are at a protest, you can be arrested. Full stop. No asterisk. No “but I was just vibing.” No “my sign was ironic.”
You. Can. Be. Arrested.
Even if you don’t do anything. Especially if someone near you does.
Here’s the quiet part nobody says out loud because it sounds too bureaucratically stupid to be true: the laws around protests are written vaguely on purpose. Things like “unlawful assembly,” “failure to disperse,” and that all-time favorite, “disorderly conduct,” are not exact science. They are elastic. They are jellyfish in legal form vague, squishy, and capable of stinging you in places you didn’t even know were vulnerable.
You don’t even need to throw a rock. You just need to be standing within ten feet of someone who does. Or looks like they might. Or makes eye contact with an officer in a tone they don’t like.
And no, they don’t have to arrest you there. That would be convenient. Instead, they’ll wait. They’ll let you go home. Maybe even post your carousel of black-and-white protest photos with captions like “We showed up.”
And then days or even weeks later they’ll show up at your door. Not with a memo or a warning. Not even with enough time for you to change into pants that don’t have holes in them. You will not receive a scented parchment envelope addressed, “Dearest Activist, We Regret to Inform You...”
You will get a knock. You will get handcuffs. You will get that sudden, sour realization that maybe the state isn’t your quirky antagonist in a feel-good coming-of-age arc. Maybe you’re just one line in a report.
And here’s where I stop being hypothetical and start being personal.
I was there once. I documented the beginning of what was meant to be a peaceful protest. The kind with singing, signs, chants the usual. The police had asked the group’s organizer not to take the crowd onto the highway. Reasonable. Highways are, you know, full of fast-moving vehicles and unaware drivers and bad outcomes. The kind of place where even good intentions get people killed.
And what did this young woman let’s call her what she was, a self-appointed leader do?
She led the group straight onto the highway. After being explicitly told not to. Not quietly. Not by mistake. With a flagpole in hand and the energy of someone who thinks “civil disobedience” means knocking off Grand Theft Auto side missions in real life, she marched forward. When the police finally intervened, she resisted. Someone in her group hit an officer in the... let’s call it the unpoetic region.
And instead of taking the moment to reflect perhaps consider the very simple request made for everyone's safety—this person became a hero to the movement. Held up as a martyr.
Applauded. Shared. Celebrated.
Which I found to be… In a word… Bullshit.
Funny story: she later turned out to be a virulent antisemite and someone with all the intellectual flexibility of wet drywall. The kind of person who hears “you might be wrong” as a personal hate crime.
The lesson here?
It didn’t matter that half the people at that protest had shown up for peace, for unity, for justice. Because the crowd didn’t vote. The loudest voice the worst actor hijacked the narrative. And when things went sideways, everyone nearby got dragged with it.
You think you're showing up to make a difference. The State is showing up with a spreadsheet, ready to assign numbers to faces. Your moral clarity doesn’t change your proximity. It doesn’t protect you from someone else’s recklessness. It doesn’t immunize you from the consequences of standing beside a human lit match.
So yes, you can be arrested. You can be made into an example. And you don’t get to pick which part of the protest you’re associated with. That choice gets made by whoever’s got the camera or the badge.
And if you’re still not convinced? If you're still thinking, But I didn’t throw anything. I didn’t chant anything aggressive. I was just standing there, I want you to ask yourself this:
Do you really know who you're standing next to?
And more importantly do you know what they’re about to do?
Because when the sirens start and the crowd lurches like a stampede in slow motion, it’s not about your intent. It’s about your location. Your company. Your silhouette in someone else's frame.
You Can’t Just Say “That’s Not Me” Anymore
We live in the age of guilt by association, and while that may be deeply problematic in many contexts, it is absolutely applicable when you are choosing (choosing, mind you) to stand beside other people in a public, political display.
This is not brunch. This is not a dinner party where you can politely ignore your racist uncle and later say, “I was just there for the cheesecake.” This is a protest. It is, by definition, a collective. You are part of that collective. If someone in that collective is screaming genocidal slogans, you are complicit unless you call it out.
Or better yet: leave.
I’m tired of people pretending they don’t know who they’re marching with. It’s not a surprise party. You’re not blindfolded.
You’re not being tricked into holding hands with lunatics. If you’re standing next to someone holding a sign that could comfortably double as a hate crime, a call for violence, and you stay silent, then congratulations you’re not neutral. You’re decorative.
And don’t give me the, “But I didn’t see that sign!” line. There are photos. There are videos. There are drones. You are being recorded by a dozen state agencies, six teenagers with livestreams, and at least one guy named Brad who has monetized your outrage into a YouTube channel called “Woke Fail Compilation #297.”
FUCKING, BRAD!
Performative Activism: Or, How I Learned to Love the Megaphone
At some point, we must face the uncomfortable truth that much of modern protest isn’t really about creating change at all. It’s about constructing an identity. It’s less about reforming the system and more about making a public declaration: “I am on the right side of this. Look at me! I am visible, I am here, I am morally correct.”
And I suppose there’s a certain appeal to that who doesn’t want to feel like they’re part of the virtuous crowd, standing tall with their face in the social-media spotlight, their message perfectly framed for maximum exposure?
But here's the thing: the right side of history is not a runway, it's not a trendy social event with hashtags and filters. There’s no red carpet where you get a point for just showing up. No, the points are awarded for the slow, grueling, and often thankless work that most people prefer to avoid.
That’s the true work of change slow, painful, tedious, occasionally maddening, and, let’s face it, entirely unsexy. The kind of work that never gets captured on Instagram because it’s happening behind closed doors.
Behind those doors, you’re not finding people lighting candles and waving banners you’re finding them hunched over data sheets, consulting books and papers, maybe scribbling on a notepad, with a coffee cup growing colder by the minute.
Change, real change, is almost never photogenic. You won’t see it on the front page of the news or trending on Twitter. It’s quietly done in dimly lit rooms, away from the camera lenses, in the quiet hum of bureaucracy and the occasional sigh of frustration. You won’t see it during the marches or in the passionate speeches; you’ll see it in the long hours spent deliberating over facts, weighing arguments, sifting through the endless maze of statistics and regulations that form the foundation of meaningful reform. It’s the work that doesn’t garner likes, but it makes the difference between having a movement and achieving lasting change.
So yes, while the spectacle of protest is loud, visible, and often quite stylish, we’d be wise to remember that the real, sustained work of change is neither glamorous nor dramatic. It doesn’t fit neatly into soundbites or hashtags. In fact, it’s more likely to be happening in a forgotten corner, far from the flashing cameras, and much nearer to that pen-and-paper grind where progress is painstakingly often invisibly made.
Which brings me to my final, deeply unpopular point:
Real Change Is Boring, and NOT BULLSHIT
You want to change the world? It’s going to look like a bake sale. Or a zoning meeting. Or a grant application. Or a conversation with someone whose political views make your skin crawl. You want to make a difference? File a lawsuit. Raise funds. Run for office. Call your school board. Knock on doors.
Or, have coffee with your ideological nemesis. That’s the revolution. Not the hashtag. Not the poster. Not the 4K ultra-wide Instagram story. And that is NOT BULLSHIT.
And no, you don’t get to claim that “every little bit helps” if your little bit includes standing next to someone calling for the eradication of an entire ethnic group. There are limits. There are lines. And if we don’t draw them, someone else will usually with a badge.
So yes. Protest. Shout. March. Be heard.
But look around. Know the news and information you have about who is coming to this event is spotty, and unreliable, take stock and decide if this event represents you.
Because history won’t remember your nuance. It will remember your neighbors, and your bullshit.
Song of the Day:
On the heels (pun intended) of last weeks post about Paul Heyman, and his incredible heel turn, that it would be appropriate to pull on of the best hardcore bands ever out of the ol box.
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