[justin66]

> And while I sympathize what many of these causes, the lack of a proper, unified list of demands makes the whole thing completely worthless in the best case, and quite dangerous in the worst.

"Represent us, not yourselves" is the message delivered by these sorts of protests. It's more effective than an itemized list.

> And then my own friends and coworkers who supported the whole thing trying to explain what they thought it was about (each one with a different explanation).

This makes perfect sense amongst people who aren't being represented at all well by their government - the government isn't just doing one thing badly, so of course there isn't agreement over what they're doing wrong. It says something kind of ugly about you that you think it's "funny."