Protest was once a thing that was mostly practiced on a local level, within the family and church, and subject to the constraints of small groups. It is now fully secularized and pushed into the hands of the masses. There is a subculture for everyone.<p>And this works against &quot;strong and silent&quot;. Strong and silent is not particularly noble in practice - it&#x27;s a self-sacrificing game theoretical strategy. To take the upper hand in social situations, you avoid showing vulnerability and instead consistently display strength. For any problem someone cares about, you will show that you don&#x27;t have to care, that you&#x27;ll soak up the consequences rather than try to help. For any threat presented, you shrug it off or escalate until they cave in. Then everyone else has to bend to your wishes if they want your cooperation.<p>The ideal strong and silent person is psychopathic. Most people trying to follow it tear themselves up to do so.<p>The alternative is to allow the small complaint, to whine a little bit about how something wasn&#x27;t right today. Because you have a subculture to validate you, your feelings become &quot;reality&quot; in that you can have an ongoing conversation about it instead of being told to shut up. On balance, a good thing for every underrepresented idea under the sun.<p>What we don&#x27;t know how to deal with yet is when this turns into a social media mob; the new face of the manipulator is someone who points the subculture at a target and says &quot;their fault; go get &#x27;em.&quot; But - my conjecture is that eventually, most people burn out on this kind of radicalization.<p>So then, are we getting better? Will Endless September come to a conclusion? Stay tuned, I guess...