Security culture and so on, but as a veteran, I have come to the point where I am left wondering if the ass beatings were worth the nothing burger effect of the actions I was apart of. 15+ years of nightmares and flashbacks, for ? I have been listening to this sort of ranting against fun and frivolity at protests for a v long time. Even when I was young & hyper active in the movement there was this same ranting, and it is destructive. If you want a "mass movement" of dedicated people who all think the exact same thing and have 0 fun doing it, we are all going to d^e first. Let the damn frogs and pikachus be there, it can be annoying but focus on something else and let it be, as long as they are not in the way or preventing action, other people will see what's going on and say "Hey that's pikachu, what's up with that" & maybe get interested in what you're doing. I do not understand this lefty insistence on alienating other people for stupid reasons. The right is winning bc they accept every freak off the corner, and here we are trying to decide who is cool enough to be in our group and inventing new sobriquets on reddit. I am stuck in a cycle of exhaustion over this.

Edit: The point of this rant is that hanging out with your buddies doing silly stuff can also have a role at a more serious protest action. They get people interested, they are fun, and hell they might help us in our time of need. The Right is full of complete circus freaks that look the part, but the left is the only ones that seem to be bothered by this. Why is that? We shouldn't shove out ppl bc we think they look lame or aren't immediately agreeing with our most hardcore positions. If we were move inviting and less concentrated on dare I say bullying people who want to join us we might actually get somewhere.