Not a Mass Uprising It’s a Spectacle, Shut Off the Live-stream « The Activists | #wallstreet
7000 Watching and 200 Participating is Not a Mass Uprising It’s a Spectacle, Shut Off the Live-stream
In Active Nihilism, Activism, Mass Media, The Revolution on September 25, 2011 at 1:10 pm
There has been many problems with the recent Wall Street protests and many successes, but the worst hindrance is the live-stream.
The television is an inherently counter-revolutionary medium, it inspires people to sit down and watch, to feel as if they are participating by merely viewing. Thus, the organizers of the Wall Street protest risk turning it into yet another spectacle.
This is what they can do to bring more people to the protests
1)Shut off the live stream, my contacts tell me, that whenever they get the impulse to go there, they just go to the stream and feel as if they’re participating already.
2)Shut off the virtual donation system, people should not be allowed to feel as if they are participating in an immediate action by paying, they must show up. Tell people if they want to donate, they should physically bring things.
3)The 30 second clips of police brutality, are okay, focus on broadcasting those, but really nothing longer than a minute or so.
4) It is difficult to create a mystique around an event if it’s easy to tune in, force people to join the protests in order to see what is going on.
5) We Americans have been trained to obediently watch the mass spectacle, Super Bowl, American idol, etc. We must get out of this formulation, in order to inspire mass action.
6) Essentially, you must tell people, that if you want to see these protests, you must join.
7)Written information about the protests are much more powerful, because you can inject it with doctrine, where us the constantly streaming image, becomes yet another window into nothing.
Long live the cause!
And good luck brothers and sisters.
Mark S.
Darin Sullivan 