I have a coworker who purposely cuts off, road rages and hostilely engages with Waymos and Cybercabs. He views it as his civic duty against machines taking over, and arrives to work all amped up having messed with a Waymo on his morning commute. He basically is like "the machines deserve it! Put THIS in your ai, mfers" after he cuts them off. Over coffee one time I was telling him maybe it's not that good for his mental health to rage against machines every morning. He responded, "therapy is not enough, I need to fight for humanity."

I wonder if these Philly robot attackers feel similarly.

I'm not condoning vandalism but I can empathize with the feeling that this alien thing is in my personal space, is a motorized vehicle on the sidewalk, is just as likely to cause a fall that no one will be held accountable for, and is taking a job from someone. I can see how that would be rage inducing. Perhaps surrounding it with traffic cones would be a better plan than actually damaging it.

I lived in Philadelphia (center city) and my other reaction based on simply attempting to keep a flowerpot on doorstep is, why have people not just stolen it yet?