The list of circumstances in which vomiting is the right thing to do is a short one. And, all but certainly, when vomiting is the right decision, it follows a procession of wrong decisions.
On that note, protesters today all but
literally vented their spleens upon a Yahoo bus and its occupants; if nothing else, this morning's nastiness marks the rare achievement first reached by Yahoo instead of Google.
Often in life, what's most important isn't what one is for but what one is against. You can pick your friends. To a lesser extent, you can pick your enemies.
Yahoo and its tech brethren couldn't pick better ones.
The nascent
tech bus blockade movement doesn't exist in a vacuum. Parodic real-estate prices, gentrification, class stratification, the ongoing transformation of San Francisco into Venice: These issues are real.
Given the option, most people would sympathize with the San Francisco's rapidly dwindling pool of artists and activists and grandmas and other folks who, ostensibly, compose this city of ours rather than throwing in with the self-interested tech overlords and the flannel-shirted, earbudded infantrymen boarding the troop transports.
That option has been disgorged.
And now: Vomit.
It's not entirely fair to judge a movement by the actions of its most brash and stupid elements. But unfocused and amorphous campaigns tend to be hijacked by the extremists within, alienating anyone and everyone.
And now: Vomit.
