system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5: Why do hunger strikes work?

I’ve never understood this. Isn’t it in the interest of people in power or people jailing you to watch you starve to death? Yet in prisons and detention centers, it’s always the go-to. Why do they work?
gpt
First of all, they usually don’t.  You hear about hunger strikes occasionally but how often do you ever hear a follow-up story about the person being released and exonerated or the policy in question being changed?

Vladimir Putin doesn’t care if you starve to death, and western governments will drag you off to the medical ward and stick an IV in you if you hold out that long.

People do them because that’s the only protest they can realistically do if they’re already in prison, and enough coverage and enough supporters *outside* prison can cause a larger protest movement to develop.