Those are interesting points. I think I’m unaware of how many places there are without a proper data connection. I guess The Netherlands being this small has its benefits! Granted I haven’t traveled everywhere in the Netherlands but whenever I travel somewhere I have a proper connection.

While you are right that sms is the simplest form of messaging a phone can provide, I think nowadays everybody, their parents, and their grandparents know how to WhatsApp, but that might be limited to the Netherlands?

I can’t speak for the rest of Europe but we used to have all kinds of deals to make sms cheap, you could send 1000 messages for 10 bucks. Slowly but surely the internet connectivity as we know it today came around, and while there were still limits on the amount of SMS you could send in the early days, I’m pretty sure we haven’t had those for a while! Maybe we’re just too used to WhatsApp now.

The moment when I hear someone talking about SMS it is almost always an American. Can’t recall the last time I sent a text message to someone like that, wouldn’t surprise me if it was 10 years ago (for context: am Dutch)

I indeed did not think that that is alienating. It might be because English is not my native tongue but thought the word silly didn’t have any negative connotations. If that is the case then my apologies for that. Do you have any suggestions which word I should’ve used? I could’ve gone for ‘strange’ or ‘weird’, but those are negative to me in this context.

I do wonder why you’re coming up against me with such a negative attitude. The way you’re writing your comments are full of blame already, even though you don’t know my stance. Just because I think the way protests like these go about it isn’t the best doesn’t mean I am the devil and I support oil companies and whatnot, that’s such a leap to make.

Especially your comment “Oil companies love that you think any noticeable protest is crazy.” is funny to me, because from my perspective YOUR comments are what oil companies love, you make me not want to associate with this subject at all.

That’s a fair point yeah, I guess the publicity does help

Stop alienating people. You’re most definitely not helping the cause either.

I also never said I think it is crazy. I find the way they’re going about it strange, sure, but if I have to choose between nothing happening or this then I’ll choose for this.

100%. The moment you point out that this isn’t the way to go you’re instantly seen as the bad one, that you don’t want to be inconvenienced. It’s so dumb.

Yes that is exactly what I’m saying. Not.

I want it to be brought to people’s attention, I want countries to take action. All I hear around me is that people who do this are seen as loonies, as idiots who don’t have anything better to do, which paints a bad picture for the cause they’re trying to bring attention to.

I find this so silly. I feel that all this does is make people mad instead of getting them aware and informed on what they’re protesting about.