23 April

When you're in the middle of a wave of outrage and euphoria, like we've had for women (metoo), Tesla, and here for climate change, it feels like you're changing the world. You're not. Sometimes protest movements cash in on an already broken situation, and then act as a catalyst for a change. But without that pre-existing catastrophic disruption, protest politics is impotent. Performative feels. It's popular, because people love being in a crowd. Also why gigs remain so popular. Gigs also don't change the world. Gig culture is crowd culture. 1960s counterculture often claims to have led to major social progress. But again it relied entirely upon the catastrophic disruption to the status quo from WW1, WW2, the Spanish Flu and the Great Depression.