Why does it feel like protesting isn't as "extreme" as it used to be?

They were successfully beaten down. More specifically, the ORGANIZATIONS were beaten down. The most successful protest movements weren’t people spontaneously showing up in the streets. They were the culmination of the efforts of community organizing. There was planning and they had people they could rely on and who relied on them. But things like unions and the Black Panthers were violently destroyed.

Now protesting is atomized like everything else. A protest that forms by posting to show up somewhere at some time on social media with signs is a collection of individuals rather than a group. If you’re just surrounded by strangers you don’t know, are you going to be able to take more radical actions?

That’s not to say none of the more serious/organized protests are happening though. There were those water protectors who tried to stop that pipeline. There were the rail worker and dockworker strikes. I don’t know how organized it was, but it was heartening to see the LA protests start out by actively protecting people being targeted by ICE. And perhaps there are more that just didn’t get any media attention. But in any case, you see how hard they try to crack down on those. But sometimes they can succeed.

Too many people's idea of activism now is to rant on social media and downvote all the bad thoughts. "I'm raising awareness!"

The police have gotten very effective at quashing effective movements, and we've had decades of concerted effort to make it more difficult to organize and to get people to actually oppose the concept of effective resistance in their own favor.
People with power don't want people threatening to destabilize that power. People who set media narratives need access to people with power, and so they don't want to convey those destabilizing factors positively.
This makes people view them negatively, if they even see them at all.

America has never had a culling of the rich and powerful. The closest we got was when we decided to exchange a rich and powerful person far away for a few closer to home.
As such, there's no weight given to the morale of anyone who isn't rich and powerful.
Reporters, politicians and businesses people have never had to put their heads in the scale when making choices.

Those US nation wide protests that happened a few weeks ago did nothing. People already forgot about them. You'd neeto do that all day every day until trump is gone, hut that ain't going to happen.

Because the political and economical situation is extreme.

Successful protests have clear policy objectives; also work from home and the lack of large factories that can be shut down by walk outs means that the collective bargaining is slightly weaker in places like USA.

Someone just set off a bomb in front of a politicians office in my province. Not confirmed but fairly certain that was a protest.

Pride turned more into a celebration rather than a protest in recent years with the capitalization of it, but due to recent regression I can imagine it going back to more intense protests in some towns at least now.

Depends where you live but most of the time the government does try to keep even controversial protests pretty light with the excuse of keeping people safe, but there's always more extreme action that people take, it maybe just doesn't get shown as a "protest" per se.

Because everything that's happening is obviously bad to the majority.

They stormed capital hill lmao

The things people are protesting against now are pathetically trivial compared to the things those people protested, that’s why.

They’re more just a bunch of people don’t like something, or are against something that they think is happening when it actually isn’t (or is at least a 50/50 issue).

There’s also the fact that most of the protesters these days are just virtue signallers, or are rent-a-protest paid protesters who couldn’t care less.

People are organizing in their communities to patrol for ICE and respond to ICE raids, which is quite a bit like the Black Panthers "cop watch" and community patrols.

I know it's not like when protesters burned down a police station in 2020, but things are happening.

It’s probably at least partially something adjacent to survivorship bias. The most remarkable actions of the past that “survive” to the present to be retold are the ones that were most impactful.

But all of the current protests you feel are not as impactful help build a foundation for the more impactful ones.

The big, well reported protests were the result of decades, nay centuries, of protests.

Sit-in protests were common.

Rosa Parks was, by far, not the first Black person to be arrested for keeping her seat.

Hundreds of thousands of workers died or were hurt in preventable dangerous workplaces and labor protests.

It is hard and costly to go against the government.

"The revolution will not be televised"

It's a phrase I hear a lot in leftist spaces. Effectively, you have to be aware that publicizing these things is a great way to get them shut down.

The work is being done locally, and quietly. Advertising these events in public spaces like this one will very likely lead to them not getting off the ground due to infiltration or oppression

The black panthers were constantly organizing within their communities, and bringing actual weapons and shows of force against the state. The state imprisoned many of their leaders, and killed Fred Hampton in his sleep. That’s why they were actually having an impact. Because they were willing to risk their LIVES over it, and they didn’t ever stop. I don’t really see that happening anywhere now.

Shame.

Those now in power, and Trump especially, have none. They don't even understand the concept. And it's been embraced by his hyenas.

Used to be, when the general population became aware of atrocities, and that they were committed against innocent people, they refused to continue to support those who had done wrong. Now Trump waves it in their face like a banner and they follow him

Used to be,

The powers that be have no fear of ignoring protestors any more. Or education presents civil rights protests as peaceful and effective, that all we need to do is raise awareness and show solidarity and oppressors will relent. Education speaks of the black panthers, but doesn’t go into depth on how they were the armed wing of the movement.

So now today we’re protesting because we don’t like what’s happening, but what is the consequence to the power hungry? If the protests get anything approaching non peaceful, or even if they just want to, those in charge can escalate to military actions.

We also don’t have a clearly defined win condition. What is going to make things better? When do we stop? Is the goal just to raise awareness to get people to vote for a change in 1-4 years? Or are we looking for something more immediate?

Finally how far are we willing to go? If I’m not willing to die for it, or to risk my current comfortable life style, can I ever really push hard enough against current conditions? They’re willing to kill to keep their power, am I willing to kill to pry it from them?

They don’t fear us because they know we have so much more to lose than they do. We are not yet playing a game with equal stakes.

I don’t have a solution to this, so I’ll at least keep doing the peaceful thing, because it’s better than doing nothing.

If we haven't hit the breaking point yet, then we never will. These protests CAN'T be civil. We need widespread civil disobedience all across the country, and especially in D.C.

I think that part of it is that the authorities are confident that we can’t do much. In the 60’s, wide scale protest that was not a preamble to a riot was rare. In recent times, everyone expects things to go off peacefully and just come to an end at some point. This plays directly into their hands, and they are confident that we are toothless.

Desensitation, perhaps. Informations flows more freely now, you hear protests/riots/rebellions everywhere, it just feels "standard" nowadays.

I've seen so much conflict on the news from all around the world. BLM in the USA, Hong Kong anti-extradition, France retirement age increase related protests, Serbia peaceful protesters getting blasted with an energy weapon (yes the governement used an actual energy weapon, its not a conspiracy theory), "Freedom" Convoy in Canada, UK Xenobophic Race Riots, Syrian Civil War, Invasion of Ukraine, Israel-Palestine conflict and war crimes, etc...

Conflict just became "normal".

A few things come to my mind on why.

1. We aren’t fresh off of WW2 when a large portion of the planet was personally affected, extremely sensitive and aware of the impact government overreach can cause.
2. We aren’t bored, we have all these highly refined dopamine injecting options, maybe not nefarious in nature but keeps many of us docile and complacent.
3. Extremely effective propaganda to muddy the waters on what’s actually going on and what a united peoples opinion even is.
4. Globalization of the money, I believe on the grand scheme, the money players are softly united behind the scenes and not backing one side or the other but playing the middle ground class war. So no big money to support a cause.

But should it be extreme? I reckon it should be effective instead. Whether effective means awareness, resignations or something else is a conversation that varies a lot from context to context.

Decades of state propaganda. It's a lot easier for a modern Westerner to feel like the system works and just needs a nudge than it is for a worker in the interwar period or a black person in the 60s.

Americans are brainwashed to believe that there's only one particular and specific way to protest, and beyond that all you can do is kill people.

They haven't yet realized that there is a huge swathe of options in between, and it requires no organization or depending on others, and no violence against anyone. You can just quietly do stuff. Probably less risky than doing anything publicly in a country with ubiquitous surveillance and the law no longer matters. Protests are great for showing the level of public support for a movement, but if the government doesn't represent the people their effect will be minimal for producing real change.

There currently is no cost for ventures into fascism. Make it so expensive they'll think twice next time (if there is a next time.)

Your first 3 all seem to be on target to me.