2.28.2007

The Yes Men

I've been of the opinion that while massive marketing campaigns can get an idea about reality into the popular consciousness, by most products very uselessness this idea is short lived. Additionally, popular culture is so easily undermined because its grip on reality is so tenuous. Built on fantasy and illusion of the consumption machine, "mainstream" culture is ripe for pranking and hoaxing. I have a particular penchant for fucking with peoples ideas about "reality" and turning their assumed truths on their head. I actually toyed with bumping over the Psyops while in the service, but it was not to be.
This leads me to the Yes Men. Some folks who have managed to present themselves a corporate types representing companies at some presentation or another, only to take it to absolute extremes to point out the inherent absurdity of the system.
An example:
At the International Payments Conference on April 28, 2005 'Dow representative' Erastus Hamm unveiled Acceptable Risk, the Acceptable Risk Calculator, and the Acceptable Risk mascot — a life-sized golden skeleton named Gilda — to an audience of about 70 banking professionals. (Yes Men at Wikipedia)

There's more videos and fun stuff at their website.

The Yes Men movie (about an hour and a half long).

If you don't have time for that right now, here's a six minute video of "Jude Finisterra of Dow Chemical" on BBC accepting responsibility for the Bhopal disaster.

1 comment:

The Doctor said...

I love these guys, and they're so good at what they do that a friend of mine who's as anti-corporatist, smart, and well-informed as one could reasonably hope for completely believed (for a short time) that the Survival Ball was a real Halliburton product.