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Arrests after Charles Darwin grave spray-painted
(www.bbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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I'm beginning to think that Just Stop Oil is paid by oil companies to do dumb shit to make it look like oil guys are the good guys.
They do dumb shit to make the news.
What exactly about this is dumb?
It seems like a harmless way to get the message out. Charles Darwin likely would be spinning in his grave, along with Newton, Einstein, and many others.
Pretend the public has no idea who they are or what their message is. The public sees this and, without the context of their published statements, assumes they vandalized Darwin's grave because they must have something against Darwin or what he represents. Even then, before I read further, my initial reaction was much the same.
The statement of a protest should ideally be self-evident. Sit-ins, occupying corrupt institutions, publicly breaking unethical laws, defacing monuments of reprehensible people, assassinating a CEO, those are all much better approaches to get a message across. Protests that draw attention to issues are effective, protests that draw attention to the protestors less so.
By "the public," do you mean people who are seeing this in person, or people who are seeing it in news articles on the Internet?
Most of the public would be in the latter category, where the context is in clear display.
Assuming people bother to read more than the headlines, or trust news to not put their own spin on things. The title of this post, and the BBC article it links to, are just "Arrests after Charles Darwin grave spray-painted". It doesn't even mention who or why until you get into the body of the article, which tragically few people will bother to do these days.
It's definitely not the media that is paid to throw dirt on them whenever they do something, that's for sure.
I'm beginning to think that climate change is paid by the public to do dumb shit to make it look like comets are the good guys.
What?
I think this is a great way to draw the public eye when they would otherwise be ignored. These stunts have granted them so much power and reach. They may even be doing everything right. Why not deface shit and inconvenience people if it gets people talking about it? I'd choose to be hated if it made a change. There are so many protests today that don't even make the back page of the news. You know what has a chance of making the front page? Violence and things that piss everyone off. Gets people talking. Asking why. They walk a very fine line. You can't go too hard on hitting oil execs directly or you will be stopped and you can't do quiet protests or you will not be heard. This could be the conclusion of the most harmless way to achieve their ends even if it doesn't pan out the way they want.
Provocation gets eyes.
But are people actually talking about climate change or are they talking about whether or not the protestors were idiots?
I have to agree. Every time this group makes the news, the conversation isn't about climate change. It's about how these people are defacing beloved historical works of art. They don't discuss the climate at all; they just discuss what these people are targeting. And there is no link between the message and the target.