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Re:Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hon... by dsfyu404ed on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @06:54AM (#21190830)
In theory. In practice you can only act like a bully like that when you are already on the side with much more power. Repeatedly swatting (or whatever, doesn't have to be swatting) people richer and more powerful than you will just get them to use their power to make the problem go away (maybe by leaning on politicians to lean on police to not respond so over the top to unsubstantiated calls or to create harsh punishments for the callers).

In a situation like this (i.e. small minority who care vs small group with power who don't) you need to either convince the people with the power (the CEOs and execs you initially referred to) to see your point of view or convince the apathetic masses to take your side. In either case you need to be persuasive or at the very least not acting in a manner that makes you hard to sympathize with (e.g. swatting people).

Now, if you were already in power (say for example, you were the government) then you could act like a bully and kick down people's door, shoot their dogs, etc. But do that will make the targets and people like them resent you and if you do it too much or to too powerful people/groups you will either find yourself voted out or lined up and shot (depending on the power transition mechanism of the government in question).

TL;DR affecting change is much more nuanced and complicated than just being a thorn in the side of the people you don't like.

Re:Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hon... by FDSGSG on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @07:22AM (#21191005)
>In theory. In practice you can only act like a bully like that when you are already on the side with much more power. Repeatedly swatting (or whatever, doesn't have to be swatting) people richer and more powerful than you will just get them to use their power to make the problem go away (maybe by leaning on politicians to lean on police to not respond so over the top to unsubstantiated calls or to create harsh punishments for the callers).

They'll only be able to keep the police from responding at their home and office, anything beyond that will be difficult and require significant constant effort to arrange. And besides, it's not enough to just coordinate this with the local police, you'll also need to talk to various state agencies, sheriffs and so on.

A bomb threat will take down a plane, a single individual targeting you can permanently prevent you from flying commercial. A single individual submitting online visa applications with threats can make any kind of border crossings extraordinarily difficult too.

There's no end to the awful things a person can remotely do to you if they know who you are, being a powerful executive just leaves you much more exposed.

Re:Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hon... by acollins1331 on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @08:19AM (#21191392)
You're missing the bigger picture. You're debating on basically becoming a terrorist. Which in small isolated incidents might be shown to work, but then the institutional response happens. For example, look at the middle East, they can do a few attacks but when it gets too big the UN or US or whatever comes in with huge armies and destroys the country the terrorists were trying to fight for. Not good.

In this case if you try to commit domestic terrorism here, it may initially be successful, but then the institutional powers will respond by passing laws and turning the suspicion on their own citizens making life shittier for everyone here.

So for the love of God, please don't try to seat powerful people (or anyone at all).

Re:Blizzard Suspends Professional Hearthstone Player for Hon... by FDSGSG on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @09:25AM (#21192002)
> You're debating on basically becoming a terrorist

While on some technical level you may be correct, I think it is intellectual dishonesty to compare the targeted activism I'm suggesting to the indiscriminate violent attacks typically associated with terrorism.

I'm certainly not advocating that anyone fly a plane into a building, that doesn't help anyone.