• 0 Posts
  • 39 Comments
Joined 1 month ago
cake
Cake day: May 5th, 2025

help-circle



  • There is simply no way to hide your attendance at a protest. Yes, of course don’t trust airplane mode. But if you upload video of any kind you will be connected to the event. Facial recognition will recognize you.

    Even if you hide your face you will still need to travel to the event somehow. Your vehicle will be recorded by traffic cams. If you don’t think the government will go full black mirror here and put everyone associated on a list you’re lying to yourself.

    The algorithm already knows your viewing habits. There is a statistical model of your behaviors and motivations extant on a server somewhere. The NSA absolutely has access to this data and more.

    The only way to be unconnected to a protest is to actually not engage in content and actually not care. By the time an algorithm is feeding you anti establishment imagery you’re already part of a group that is statistically likely to be supportive of anti government ideologies. In for a penny in for a pound.

    So whether you bring your phone or not is academic. You CAN be identified one way or another.

















  • I really think it’s a cultural thing. It would be like me(an American) saying “how can I be more Japanese?”

    To put a finer point on it, Americans have grown up in a culture where self expression and social interaction is encouraged. So we are less afraid of approaching a stranger for casual conversation. Add to that the fact that we, culturally, have very low self awareness. All we know is what offends other Americans. We rarely have the social intelligence to modify our behavior to match our surroundings.

    So while, yes, Germans may be more reserved by nature; don’t think that is a value judgement. If you want to be more outgoing do it in a German way. Americans are the way we are because we are Americans.

    That said, if I could offer a suggestion to mitigate your social anxiety; I would suggest that other people don’t think about you and your behavior anywhere near as much as you think they do. Most people don’t give a shit. If you can’t think of anything to say but you want to start a conversation a compliment is always a winning strategy. But nothing is a substitute for genuine curiosity.