[cgio]

There is the Arab Spring which started as demonstrations and ended up as full fledged revolutions which overpowered long standing regimes. Different dynamics, admittedly, but who can claim they can predict the dynamics of a society in turmoil.

The most worrying phenomenon, which I think you allure to, is protests with no clear intended goals which act as a massively confused way to defuse anger. It's like if we need volume for our fundamentally egocentric revolutions and this is why ideology is less of a bonding element in a range of protests lately. Or like crowdsourcing loud proclamations of the least common denominator.