ihatecispeople:

securipun:

ihatecispeople:

securipun:

kropotkindersurprise:

March 22 2019 - Man installs adblocker on Melbourne Central Station. [video]

Protest all you want, and for whatever cause you want, but as soon as you start affecting public transport because of it I lose all interest in anything you have to do or say.

protests must be disruptive to a certain level to be effective. you can’t protest increasing video advertisement on a vital part of people’s everyday life without destroying some screens with paint. how would he have protested the advertisements without affecting public transport? he’s not physically stopping trains, he’s not violent. 

Increasing video advertising means absolutely jack shit to somebody living paycheck to paycheck.

Missing out on three to four hours work because somebody wants to protest against increasing video advertising by delaying trains because of the sudden need of a cleaning crew ABSOLUTELY means something to people living paycheck to paycheck.

Affecting public transport for the sake of your personal views is selfish, and trying to attain the general public’s support by inconveniencing the general public is the most arse-backwards way of protesting on the planet.

the incident didn’t cause any delays, which is to be expected. do they close down the subway stations every time they find graffiti on the walls? no, they wait until maintenance time, which is regularly scheduled during nighttime–either every night, or a couple of times a week.

to force the low and working class to be exposed to far more advertisement than the upper class (in all senses: they afford premium tv channels without ads, they don’t take the subway, etc etc) is something that we in the low and working class should stand against. it hurts us, it pressures us to spend money we already don’t have, and ads are used as a tool to sell a false idea of what our lives should or could look like if we just worked under capitalism just a little bit harder. ads are not the friend of those who rely on public transport.

inconvenience is an age old tactics in protesting. that’s why strikes use picket lines (and that’s also why you shouldn’t cross them!): they inconvenience the company or organisation that the workers are protesting against. that’s why we hold marches, to inconvenience the public to force them to listen to our demonstrations. that’s how protesting operates and works. 

i want to make it clear that i’m not in any way trying to say that you are authoritarian (or belong to the right), but non-disruptive protests and demonstrations are heavily favoured by the conservative far right and those of authoritative power (companies, universities, and so on). they favour it specifically because they know non-disruptive demonstrations are ineffective. if your ideal protest is non-disruptive, your ideal protest is also ineffective.