I was recently held up in absolute dead stop traffic. We were sitting on the tarmac with no movement for well over an hour, in the 80 degree sun, before I felt obliged to leave my car and go see if it was because of roadwork or an accident or what.
I joined a small crowd of onlookers after reaching the head, spectating a row of sit-in protesters. One driver had tried to get around but a few protesters moved tactically so that he couldn’t go any further without injuring somebody.
I didn’t wait around, although there were people phoning the police and some tempers beginning to flare. So I head back to my car. The dairy groceries that I picked up on the way back from work had begun to spoil.
I was late home by nearly three hours, so no time to unwind. Just enough to pack away some old leftovers before heading off to sleep and restart cycle all over, -1 hour or so of sleep.
Previously, I had no opinion whatsoever on whether cars=good or cars=bad. But after being held up in traffic, wasting money, wasting gas, losing sleep and perhaps a bit of my sanity I am now totally on board with the Fuck Cars movement. I couldn’t imagine a more convincing strategy to bring people over to your perspective. Excellent thinking. Good job.
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Your sorry attempt at a sarcastic post actually proves cars are inferior.
A train would had simply torn those protesters to pieces and got you home on time 🙂
are you sure that they were protesting “because cars exist” ? I’m sure they had another motive and you’re trying hard to ignore their reasons just to rant about cars
Yeah, I’m real motivated now to hear out their reasoning.
Maybe if they physically assaulted me and then asked “Hey, do you care to know the reasons behind why we just assaulted you?”. Same logic.
After a certain point, you begin to realize that some people just can’t be helped. It comes from a place of fatigue.
3 hours ago you wrote this comment 👆
you were right.
I mean you’ve spent a fuck of a lot of energy complaining about it. And you clearly have some strong preconceptions what you are angry about. But it turns out, you don’t even know what the fuck you’re angry about. Go take a bath, dude. Get your head on right, because you’re making a fool of yourself.
This is a thinly veiled attempt at sarcasm I assume.
Lots of logical fallacies though.
Fuckcars is a movement about providing equal infrastructure prioritisation to public transit and soft transit (walking, biking) instead of near-solely focusing on cars.
We don’t know what that protest is and acting as if we as a community must be in support of said protest for the sole reason it blocks cars is nonsensical.
I really don’t think your post is in good faith, I can only assume this protest really bothered you and you’ve come here to blow off some steam? Anyways, this isn’t a very polite way to act, please keep this kind of attitude of lemmy.
Many of us also advocate to get rid of congestion and traffic jams by providing alternatives and making car infrastructure less congested and let it flow better. We advocate for better roads that actually move cars to streets instead of stroads that fail at being both a destination and a throughfare.
Although when we have focused so much on automotive transit, it does make it as a weakness to protestors and saboteurs.
Right now that conversation (whatever the the issue motivating the issue) are still trying peaceful protest.
Imagine what happens if, instead of blocking the highway with their bodies, they just blow up the tarmac?
Then all those people in traffic are just fucked. That segment of highway is useless until days of emergency repair.
A more versitile transit system would be more resistant to such attacks, but that would mean supporting transit for people who are not rich. People who presently are second class citizens, who might be tired of not having the same representation in society. And who might want to disrupt traffic of the wealthy to let them k ow things suck for those without.
No war but class war.
Sorry about your bad day. Hope you have good sleep and feel refreshed in the morning 🖖
The idea that protest is about convincing people of something is such a daft idea, I don’t understand where this comes from. Everyone seems to think it but I can’t remember any protest, and especially any direct action protest where this has ever been the goal or the effect.
But imagine for a moment a world in which a flash dance mob can erupt in the middle of an Ohio mega-mall to confetti, jazz-hands, and live music specifically to convince you, the one standing in the center of a See’s Candies, that clean water is good actually and the city could do a bit better maybe about keeping it that way.
Yeah, that would be the ideal protest. Chocolate and a show. Some good wine, also, they should do that too.
I’d like a massage, is that on offer?
I find massages very convincing
Do you know for sure they were protesting cars, not emissions, not raising awareness for any other cause? It doesn’t matter, I’m just curious.
Your complaints about public transportation make no sense. “Public transportation is bad so don’t spend money on it.” Obviously, if we spent money on it, it would be a viable alternative. I spent some time in Austria this year, a country with excellent public transportation. I could step onto a bus (there was one at nearly every stop about every 10 minutes), be at my destination with no delay, hop off, all without ever needing to show my ticket or talk to anyone. Cars would have been vastly more inconvenient to get around the cities, finding parking takes time, and you almost never have the right of way over other vehicles/pedestrians (as you shouldn’t, you’re in the safe metal box and they’re vulnerable). With effective public transportation, I was able to get out into the Alps, go hiking, and come back into the city without needing to worry about any of the complexities of a car. I could hop on the tram, grab dinner downtown, and be back, without ever getting stuck in traffic. It was so much easier and more convenient than anything I’ve ever seen living in the US, and I fully don’t understand the argument against it. No one is stopping you from owning a car! I own a car, and I won’t stop. There are some things I need one for. This movement is about effective public transportation, and there is no reason to be against it except insecurity, and apparently a fragile ego. What’s next, antifascism protestors block your way to work and you start wearing a swastika? Being reactionary accomplishes nothing good for yourself. If you’re that easily manipulated, every false flag will work on you with no questions asked.
The dairy groceries that I picked up on the way back from work had begun to spoil.
+1, everyone goes “I could never go vegan, I’d miss cheese too much”, but you know what I don’t miss at all? The way spoiled milk smells.
Wipe a few drops off the counter? You have to put that rag in the laundry now because tomorrow it is going to REEK.
you should give a trigger warning when you link gore
There is ample warning in the video itself. Clicking on the link does not expose anyone to gore before they are able to decide if they want to see it. I presume you are the one who had the link removed.
NSFW
I can’t have comments removed since I’m not a mod
The worst traffic I ever hit on my bike is when I have to go where cars are. I wonder what the common thread is…
Clearly bikes suck, you should have taken the plane!
This feels like an attempt at satire, but they failed to mention what was actually being protested. It probably is because it’s very self-centered (“oh no my milk is spoiled! Who cares that 100 ppl are killed everyday day because of cars, I want my milk!!”)
If it’s not sarcasm, then you’re right! A train would have gotten you home on time 👍
I shit you not, on occasions that I have taken a train, I have had the pleasure to experience the train inexplicably rolling to a stop while we all sit waiting, only for the intercom to cackle out a barely intelligible “explanation” and that we will soon be on our way again.
Why did it stop? Still don’t know. How long were we stopped for? About as long as I was stuck in traffic earlier.
A train would have gotten you home on time
In short, no. And on that day, I found myself wishing I had just driven instead. The parking meter fee I was avoiding would have been much preferable, in retrospect.
People will reflexively reject new and different possibilities when advocates are too radical or aggressive in their approach. That’s why it’s important that we try to win people over using reason and logic, rather than protests. The fact is, cars are an expensive and inefficient means of transporting people and things. That doesn’t mean cars don’t have their use cases. They certainly do, and that’s why I don’t think cars and small trucks will or should go away completely, but in an ideal (ie maximally cost effective and efficient) scenario, cars would represent a relatively small percentage of total conveyance methods.
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So some jerks made a traffic jam and your takeaway is to blame cars?
You know they’d be doing the same to busses/light rail if it gave them the same 15 minutes of fame.
Lame take. Not smart. My uncle got held up by the local gay pride parade and he blamed gay people as a community.
Funny thing is, you can get off of a bus or train and walk past protesting people pretty easily. You wouldn’t be held hostage by the $30,000 toilet that is preventing you from abandoning it and the situation.
Edit: Ehhhh the whole thing is sarcasm and you changed your post’s meaning. I ain’t spending energy to hit a moving target like this. Sheesh.
I think you’re missing both the point of what I said and protest. Pride started out as a riot. No protest, no parade. Maybe you can protest protesters, and one day, there will be a chud pride parade. Dream big.
There are inherently more solutions in place to situations like that with public transit. They’re already in place, too. You just get off the train and hop on a bus. That’s not exactly a novel concept.
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The sarcasm isn’t conveyed well, but it is an attempt to highlight to *checks notes anti-car protesters just how poor their strategy is. For example, I’m probably not the only person to have been moved from a neutral position to a strongly opposing position by their antics.
But maybe their goal was never to sway people to their side, like you say? Maybe it is literally being done exclusively for the thrill of the spotlight. Or they’re actually pro-car activists, who are subtly portraying their opposition deliberately poorly in order to sabotage anti-car sentiment?
Yeah. See, the real 1984 is when a guy in a tweed coat beats you up while saying things like “2 plus 2 is 4” and “5 times 9 is 45” because then you learn to hate correct answers.
