>and has people talking about climate change

Not in this thread so far.

Neither in this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33309661

There's a few comments in this one discussing the climate, but mostly they are puzzled by the activists' method: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268174

Hacker news is not target audience of that action.

Seems a bold claim to make. Who is, and why?

People who don't know or don't care about global warming. I still think that such action is stupid.

I would suggest that Hacker News is considerably more likely to turn the debate to solving climate change than how weird those people are, how much they hate vandalism or what the punishment should be than the average group of people...

Why would you suggest that?

This is a site of primarily rich tech guys who aren’t really affected by climate change and who get off on feeling superior to people who aren’t rich tech guys.

This is a very misguided take. From my interactions here over the years most HNers exhibit more than average levels of empathy and engage in high quality discourse.

Sounds a lot like the protestors, but with more interest in talking about science!

> with more interest in talking about science!

Read any HN discussion about fitness, nutrition, health, etc. It’s always the same nonsense.

It is a form of hacking.

It is some sort of social engineering.

The target is the media cycle and the hack is bring your name out there.

Did it work? I know they are orange and have a name ala « just say no to oil » or something.

And I really don’t care. So it worked on me.

The same results with classic ad campaign might have touched a fraction of the people hearing about that now.

For a different cost. ( in money as opposed to legal consequence and being in the awkward ass position )

I retain judgement until it became more clear is it’s a endgame, or a first step needed for something else.

I think you really need to explain who the target audience is, if not a site that routinely discusses climate change and climate targeting technologies/solutions.

Target is people who don't know already or are not interested. We on hacker news are interested, I am working on solving climate change problem, this is almost daily topic. Such actions only work to raise awareness. Are such actions successfull or have proper good impact? I think not, but that's different topic than "who is target audience".

> has people talking about climate change, like in this comment thread

Who in this thread is talking about climate change? Everyone is focused on the crazy behavior of the vandals.

They are playing the attention game now and are beholden to the rules of the game and the organisations that control the playing field.

In terms of climate change the media organisations support these activists. However where the media do not support the cause the attention game is the wrong thing to play.

It's all spectacle now. No actual change of a person's heart just ideology mediated through images. It does indeed get people thinking about it but only until the next news item is shown.

OK, what are the alternatives?

- Bribing the politicians to do something (with what money)?

- Having someone run on the political platform of building a greener future, while competing with turbocharged, lobby-backed candidates that want the exact opposite?

- Having those companies clean up their conduct (with what effective regulators)?

- Having better coverage in the media of matters related to climate change, to raise awareness and convince people that this is an emergency (with what media that's not owned by old pro-fossil billionaires)?

Raising awareness in this way may be stupid, but it's an avenue to at least get people talking for a few seconds.

An alternative is for people to blame themselves, the consumer. Oil companies won't produce oil if no one is using it. Everyone is blaming and pointing fingers at other people to do something.

Try buying food and having a social life without acquiring plastic or burning coal or gas, directly or indirectly.

They can control the supply side, and have. Putting the blame on the consumer is what happened in the 90s. The consumer can do nothing but hoard soda bottles to keep them from landfills at this point.

Or we can drink a lot less soda and other bottle drinks. Tap water is better for your body, bank account, and world.

Agreed — my example was intended to be mildly hyperbolic.

Tap water is not safe to drink everywhere, but even if I don’t drink bottled water - that’s still a drop in the bucket next to huge corporations that churn out plastic products by the ton.

Protesting in a way that governments can't ignore? Like imagine if instead of doing this to a random painting or sitting in a road, they blocked the door into congress, the white house, the house of commons, etc? That would get far more attention and press than vandalising a statue or painting or sitting in a road.

You cannot “block the door” into congress or the white house. You cannot get close enough to do it. Even if you did, you would not accomplish anything as the buildings are resilient to spofs at this point.

They have done these things and it hasn't gotten more attention, hence why you've not heard of it. And hence art galleries :

https://news.sky.com/story/extinction-rebellion-protesters-s...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11306813/Now-Just-S...

Have you heard the joke about the drunk man looking for his keys under the streetlight? A cop comes along and starts helping him, but they don't find the keys. The cop asks "Are you sure you lost them here?" The drunk says, "no I lost them over there, but the light's better here."

Murdering executives? If you're going to be an eco terrorist be an eco terrorist. This is just useless.

Or if you don't want to go that far, maybe a protest that actually brings information to people who need it?

I think it’s reasonable to decline murdering people as a protest practice.

Who fits your second group? Who is it that needs the information that doesn’t have it already?

> I think it’s reasonable to decline murdering people as a protest practice.

If you say so.

> Who fits your second group? Who is it that needs the information that doesn’t have it already?

Climate change deniers, of course. Go engage with them. It can't be any more pointless than fucking up some painting.

Getting their opposition to engage with the brainwashed denier masses is exactly what the money wants. They can leverage money and scale to convert and you can’t.

Hitting them in the art is a bit of class-oriented warning, and if you don’t see the subtlety of what’s happening I’d argue that’s on you.

> Hitting them in the art is a bit of class-oriented warning, and if you don’t see the subtlety of what’s happening I’d argue that’s on you.

Sorry but this is just so naive. First of all this is not a "rich vs poor" issue. Lots of people who I suspect you'd consider to be "rich" are very much on the side of climate change action. Second, the very select few rich people who are making these decisions aren't taking this as a warning. Third, you are making the seemingly common mistake of thinking that art is for the rich - it is not. Art in your personal home may be for the rich, but this is in a museum that is publicly accessible.

> if you don’t see the subtlety of what’s happening I’d argue that’s on you.

I mean, it's kind of on them... It's on them to get their message across.

> Getting their opposition to engage with the brainwashed denier masses is exactly what the money wants. They can leverage money and scale to convert and you can’t.

OK so you're saying that we can't engage with the opposition and instead we should use subtle "class oriented" scare tactics?

None of this makes sense.

You don’t understand my position but you claim it is naive and no one else’s position makes sense. I am not against wealthy people but you make a strawman to simplify your attack.

You have not responded to any of the points that refuted your points. I don’t know if you’re trolling, combative, or what.

You are proposing a simplistic first-order response “engage with the opposition” that has been going on since before internet forums were a thing, while calling me naive. I’ve explained why your proposal doesn’t work but you haven’t engaged with it.

Good luck with your solution.

In for a robbery, in for a murder? Some people won’t want to cross that boundary. And that’s even before we lose support for the cause from people who oppose violence.

I'm just saying they have better options. The nice thing about murder is that "support" isn't important. Everyone can say "wow how dare you" but at the end of the day a piece is off the board.

How about taking a page from the political playbook of the U.S.'s NRA (National Rifle Association, an extremely pro-gun group in recent decades) - keep detailed records of how every politician votes (on climate laws, vs. the NRA's focus on gun laws), then zealously turn out to vote in every election? That gave the NRA political influence far beyond what their membership numbers would suggest, decades before America's current culture wars had really heated up.

Of course, that would also require some real work, and a grown-up attention span. Vs. "I scream for full gratification NOW" performative activism, which has seemed the default for kids since at least the 1960's.

Noone saw this and said, "you know what I'm going to focus on the climate now".

Everyone just sees a person wasting glue, vandalizing art, and acting like a child.

It's a selfish act to make them feel better and boast amongst their peers.

If anything it hurts the movement they claim to support.

I guess picking up trash doesn't give them a good enough high...

But does it get attention to what they want to get attention for? At the moment, most responses have been "God these guys are idiots" and "what's the point of this?", not "damn, climate change is a problem we really need to do more about now"

I've never once seen people talking about climate change directly as a response to this sort of protest. Like, it gets brought up in terms of how I just brought it up, I said the words "climate change", but we're not having a discussion.

Because of course we're not. Climate change doesn't need more attention, everyone knows about it, whether they believe it's a problem or not. This isn't bringing awareness to anyone and it isn't changing anyone's mind.

I feel like they should be gluing a poster about climate change to the glass protecting the painting instead of their hand.

> has people talking about climate change

Incorrect. None of this has spawned a single conversation about climate change.

The only thing it has spawned is debate about how much moral justification one can receive from the existence of climate change.