Without showing my hand too much, I did do some actions with Just Stop Oil, so have some insight here.

The whole Getty thing has some basis in reality but has been ran with far too much. JSO received funding from the “Climate Emergency Fund”, who Getty co-founded. That group has donated money to 250 different NVDA groups, according to them. A vast majority of JSO’s funding came from donations from supporters.

While I obviously can’t really speak for anyone but myself, everyone I interacted with, including the founders, seemed 100% genuinely committed to the cause, if a bit misguided at times. You’re right about them trying to cause outrage, the whole idea was to keep the topic in the news, get JSO spokespeople interviewed etc. Everyone was well aware that we’d be treated with contempt but were okay with that, if it shifted the overton window a bit. There is theory behind this: Radical flank effect

Effectively damaging the oil industry is ideal, IMO, but it’s incompatible with being an “accountable” movement (i.e. chooses to get nicked), as you will spend your life in prison.

Lots of people will spend all day arguing about what the right kind of protest is but much fewer people go out and do what they believe should be done

Just Stop Oil’s first protests were directly shutting down oil terminals, then oil companies bought private laws to stop that so they moved on to other, at the time legal, methods such as “slow marching”. These were then also made illegal. Also the sunflowers painting was covered in glass.