When seatbelts were introduced to cars, there was a big movement against them. Some by car manufacturers to keep costs down, but a lot of backlash was from good ol' natural born idiots so contrarian and averse to change they'd let themselves die just to give a smug look about not doing what someone asked of them. The sort of dumbass who during the height of pre-vaccine Covid would drown in the fluid buildup in their lungs and refuse treatment because doing so would be an admission of fault.

These past 9 years have made me DEEPLY cynical about my fellow man. There is no bottom. No level of malicious stupidity is low enough. It's not even disappointment anymore, I'm resigned to it. Some people are so beyond hope, so beyond redemption, it's like trying to get a fucking deer to recognize itself in a mirror. Just ZERO awareness, no theory of mind, object permanence is a fucking coin flip. If it weren't for my principles, my absolute refusal to engage in dehumanization, I'd be tempted to write them off as another species just to cope with the dissonance that comes from seeing people acting that self destructive. Like it doesn't make sense. You'd expect at some point some form of pattern recognition and harm avoidance to develop. "Hey, putting my hand on the stove hurt. It hurt every time I did it. It hurt everyone I saw someone else do it too. I'm gonna put my hand on the stove and it won't hurt this time.".

I don't like to talk about politics. I also don't like working, cooking, taking the trash out, cleaning, etc. etc. I DO it, because it HAS to be done. There is no systemic good which comes that does not in some way come from participating in politics.

I don't talk politics with CERTAIN PEOPLE. People who engage in bad faith, whose highest political priority is fucking over someone else, rather than lifting everyone else up, who celebrate ignorance and cruelty. Any political ideology which is built on such foundational principles can be shut out of all political discussion by those with better, smarter, kinder ones.

Me and you might not agree on how to GET us there, but we share the goal of making things better and easier for the greatest number of people. If we don't, there's nothing to discuss, and so I won't talk politics with you.

NON-DISRUPTIVE protests don't change anything. Typically, violent protests are risky and potentially counterproductive. They make it harder to recruit larger numbers and easier to justify a proportionate police/government response, further discouraging recruitment. It's also just bad PR. People are stupid, and gullible. All it takes to turn people against your movement is to convince them you're violent and dangerous, which again, bad for recruitment. One thrown brick, especially early on as a movement gains momentum and tries becoming sustainable long term.

Sometimes the thrown brick kicks off the movement, like Stonewall, but you can't count on moments like that with planning. Those are powder kegs set to go off from a spark with decades, CENTURIES of fuel. And even then, the LGBTQ+ rights movement took decades of work and organizing and planning after the fact.

The most successful movements take a long time to build support and establish organization to commit supporters to disruptive actions. And it gets harder the bigger a country is, harder to organize and coordinate over greater distances and life circumstances.

BUT, once you get to that point, by katamari-ing fellow protesters with marches and days of action, getting larger groups to commit to an action organized within the movement, building social support infrastructure to maintain things, you can go further, organize more specific disruptions. Sit ins, boycotts, strikes, blockades, occupations, slow downs, vandalism, interrupting police/ICE operations, shop ins. There's a lot of powerful methods of non-violent protest you can get up to if you've got the support and are coordinated enough.

The civil rights movement wasn't just standing in crowds with signs asking nicely to have civil rights laws pass, they were breaking the law and interrupting the functioning of society. We look at other effective non-violent protest movements. Hong Kong's coordination and disruption tactics were AWE inspiring, and would be effective here if we can get to the point of large scale coordinated disruption.

Actually, here's the wikipedia page for tactics and methods used in the Hong Kong protests for anyone who wants to read it: https://en.wikipedia.org/...

What sticks with me, as it applies to organizing in the states, and the west in general, is the fundamental organizing principle of "Do Not Split". There's a lot of infighting and division among protest groups (much of which is intentionally manufactured to weaken said groups) on the basis of specific issues. Communist groups fighting Socialist groups over how society as a whole should be organized. Purity testing over individual belief systems rather than uniting over shared goals despite differences in approach. The fascists don't have this problem. They'll step in line with each other over their shared hate even if the details differ, and it's why they're WINNING...I mean, aside from all the inherited/exploitation gained wealth and power.

If you're someone looking to join the 50501 protests, or are wanting to organize your own, maybe you're unhappy with some of the methodology, remember this: DO NOT SPLIT. If you despise someone and they're fighting the same fight as you, THEY ARE STILL YOUR ALLY. There is no greater cause than fighting fascism together.

May Day, May 1st, is the next major protest event. We are in the early days of this movement. Yes, we should've been doing it years ago, but the next best day to plant a tree is today.

His vile cowardice is something I'm seeing people talk about, but the sheer stupidity of it isn't touched on.

CHUCK. HE IS GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU! THE D NEXT TO YOUR NAME MAY AS WELL BE THE STAR OF DAVID ON YOUR CHEST YOU DUMB FUCK! DICTATORS DO NOT LET "OPPOSITION" PARTY MEMBERS LIVE. NO MATTER HOW HELPFUL THEY WERE IN GIVING THEM POWER!

Like are you fucking stupid?

How do you DO that?

I don't need validation from other people to be happy. Hope this helped.

I'm sure when Chancellor Trump orders the purging of opposition leaders, he'll leave you alone for sucking his dick like this. Surely debasing yourself before wild animals will keep you from being ripped to shreds by them.

Dictators kill their enemies. Everyone who isn't, and hasn't always BEEN their fiercely loyal, obedient ally is an enemy. Especially if they're a declining, psychopathic, malignant narcissist.

Got banned over there a month ago, came here hoping to find something of a Sonic community in the same vein as the one over there (very involved in that fanbase, did a lot of my discussion on reddit), has not materialized yet, not enough fans over here, hopefully that changes at some point. I thought at first that it was the open support of Luigi's alleged actions that got me banned, I could be ok with that, I get it, supporting violence and whatnot, I broke the rules, and they were sensible rules more or less, but the longer I look at the current happenings over there, the more suspicious I am that it was because his name came up at ALL, multiple times. That's annoying. That feels less justified.

Also becoming more and more glad it happened when it did. Lot of overt, fascist appeasing censorship going on over there. Like it's not even subtle. There's no ambiguity in it, it's just "this post criticized or disparaged Musk or Trump in some way. (Removed from Reddit)."

Because their tactics are not why they failed, and they were a modern protest movement using sophisticated modern tactics to put up an incredible fight against a much bigger, equally modern enemy they could almost certainly never beat on their own, whose tactics and strategies we can appropriate and use for our own movement.

They were coordinated, smart, disruptive, fighting a panopticon mass surveillance military superpower with resources and political sway other superpowers would also struggle with. We hear about the underdogs winning because it's notable. Underdogs usually lose, no matter how big their fight, and they were the underdogs, by a LOT.

We should absolutely take from the more successful civil rights movement of the 60s, Ghandi's Indian independence movement, the Suffrage movement, but looking at stuff like the Hong Kong protests gives us a look at tactics and a general approach that can be used in the modern day to combat modern day oppression effectively.

You can do everything right and still lose. Hong Kong's protesters did everything they could, went far above and beyond what a weaker movement could have managed. The tools and tactics they used shouldn't be ignored just because they were beaten. They were powerful methods of disruption and resistance, ways to fight and protect the most people in the movement at once as possible.

There's a Sonic fan game I like to play called Sonic Robo Blast 2, built on an extremely heavily modified OG Doom engine with a pretty good modding community, and there's a level pack for it called Sol Sestancia that's just crazy fun to run through with the Neo Sonic character mod. Getting up to top speed to activate boost mode and trying your best not to slow down or stop so you don't lose it. So satisfying.

Could they have made the city dangerous to the CCP without inviting a proportionate (or disproportionate) military response? Protesters get violent and things start looking a lot more like Tienanmen Square. There was not the sort of external support to enable that sort of rebellion on the scale that would be needed to directly combat China. Because someone has to supply weapons, information, medical support, something they'd need help with but China would not.

They would have set themselves up to die for nothing. Not even their own freedom, they didn't have the backing of their own government and the necessary resources that'd have required, and so would have to secure food, water, shelter, medicine, defences, security both physical and informational, on their own, at a bare minimum to even put forth a token guerilla warfare effort like that. Even the US had the support of France during the American revolution. These things don't just happen because there's the will for it. Non-violent resistance is not a compromise on violent resistance, it is a strategic decision.

If there's not a solution to a proportionate military response to violent retaliation from Hong Kong movement, then it doesn't matter if they fight and die for their freedom or not, they won't be keeping it. Making the decision to kill and die for a cause that will collapse under the weight of its opposition is not an effective act of resistance, the force needed to scare off the CCP with violent retaliation did not exist in the Hong Kong protest movement. Like Russia with basically any and all prolonged military problems, China could afford to throw bodies at the problem until it went away, and Hong Kong, as organized and efficient as their movement was, did not have the material support to survive an onslaught like that.

But none of that matters to the bigger point, the tactics used, the anonymity, the discrete messaging apps and security protocols adopted by protesters, the decentralized organizational structure for direct, disruptive protest actions, the countermeasures against police force and tactics like using laser pointers en masse against helicopters and security cameras to make it difficult to fly, aim, or identify protesters, the counter measures against tear gas and protocols for dealing with it quickly, pre-arranged escape routes and ditching any markers identifying you as a protester before merging into crowds , burner phones, all tactics they used that were extremely effective at countering typical police tactics, and were methodologies we should be using when organizing our own direct actions. None of which were tactics that were necessary in periods before mass surveillance states were the norm.

Don't like the implication that they were cowards or failures for choosing to live, when they chose to fight the best way they thought they could under the circumstances they were under. They certainly weren't sitting on the internet asking someone else to do it for them, and they weren't just standing around with signs chanting either (though they were also doing that, building support and solidarity is necessary).

I'm not. Don't put words in my mouth.

Fighting without a plan for success is the same as fighting for nothing. In Hong Kong, there was no plan for success that could involve violence, strategically. It's easy enough to say people somewhere else should kill and die for a cause you believe in, it's another thing entirely to commit millions of people to doing so. They would have been treated as an invading army and far more than the active protesters would have been targeted and killed as "collateral damage".

My actual perspective on it is that if I thought killing and terrorizing the CCP, or any authoritarian government like that would work, I would be here screaming from the rooftops to pile the bodies high. I have no qualms about dragging fascists out of their homes and butchering them like animals in front of their families, because that is the world they want to build for others, but you cannot commit to violence like that without a rock solid plan, a plan that would involve being able to count on non-combatants seeing violent action and sticking around or joining in. And even if that was the right course of action, this is not Ukraine being invaded by Russia, people getting their homes and cities bombed to pieces, you'd have to convince people that level of retaliation was necessary when the danger was in the form of powerful people signing documents making agreements out of sight. You have to CONVINCE people to do it. And then those people have to actually see it through.

And I'm NOT saying they're even the main movement we should be taking lessons from, but to ignore the usefulness of the tactics they used that DID work, and not looking at what SPECIFICALLY DIDN'T work, at what caused them to fail would be FOOLISH. Take from the Civil Rights movement. Take from the Suffragate movement. Take from the Indian independence movement. There's even lessons to take from revolutions that turned violent. The Boston Tea Party was a non-violent act of economic terrorism that cost the British government the equivalent of almost 2 million dollars. That's the sort of thing we can do TODAY. But we are in the early stages of this thing, and the organizational infrastructure IS NOT THERE. That's WHY we do the marches. To build momentum. To make each next step easier and easier to commit to, and to build communities and networks around protesting like this, making it routine and just another part of people's lives so it can be done sustainably. We want them to be fighting us all day every day on every front without rest, and it takes a LOT of time to set something like that up, especially across an entire nation and ESPECIALLY one as big as the US.

I am unwilling to disparage and dismiss the intelligence, effectiveness, and effort of the Hong Kong protesters, or any protest movement that tries but collapses under the weight of their opposition. Unions used to be a stronger force in the US, until they were systematically destroyed by the forces we're currently fighting. Would you say that of them because they failed and didn't then choose to die fighting an enemy they couldn't beat? I wouldn't. I'd say survive until you can create an opportunity to fight again, better next time.

!sonic@pawb.social is the biggest one I've found but it's VERY inactive. You'd be better off going to a Sonic forum like the Sonic Stadium message boards, but those are a little less penetrable than something like reddit because EVERYONE there is a huge, dedicated fan, and it can get really strongly opinionated.

I would be fucking ASTOUNDED if this happened.

Conspiracy theory: They know this, but being able to claim to their followers, with official records to show for it, who know NOTHING about programming, is an easy, effective win for them. They can claim fraud to their gullible audience and now have records they can point to and say "LOOK! THEY'RE GIVING DEAD PEOPLE SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY!"

That's...actually way less than I expected. Not GOOD obviously, but on some level it's nice to see your worst assumptions about the world refuted sometimes.

I see him doing this more as an opportunity to generate conflict between their cults, weakening them, dividing them.

Any "Rah rah Elon! Get him!" from me should be assumed to be egging this on, and not actual support. He gets no credit or absolution for this, it is entirely self serving, and possibly not even fully real (given the narcissism involved, I doubt it, but still worth considering given the lying shitbags we're dealing with).

I want them to eat each other. Figuratively, sure, but also very. VERY. Literally. If at all possible.

It wouldn't be a 50/50 split, I think Trump's cult is a lot more dedicated and numerous than Elon's, but still, better to have them fighting each other than not.