It’s TV Turn-Off Week again. I saw an ad for it on the Adbusters website. The culturejammers are going to go around turning off TVs in public places. Presumably they will do this using the $15 TV-B-Gones™ they bought after seeing TV-B-Gone™ ads on the Adbusters website.
Adbusters is against ads.
The Adbusters website also has ads for other stuff that’s against ads. Books, posters, videos.
And shoes.
That’s because Adbusters is also against Nikeâ„¢. So they invented their own for-profit, anti-Nikeâ„¢ sneaker company, The Blackspot Anticorporation. Blackspot Anticorporation sneakers are vegan, organic, Fluevog-designed, and made in rural Portugal by rosy-cheeked workers who skip contentedly through olive groves on their way to work. The sneakers cost about $60. They have an anti-logo on’em.
An “anti-logo†is a logo used by an anticorporation to brand a product so that the kind of anti-lifestyle it pretends to sell is readily apparent to the anti-consumer. Anti-consumers of Blackspot Anticorporation sneakers want to anti-consume the lifestyle of the renegade iconoclast, as is evidenced by the “hand-drawn†red spot on the toe, which is “for kicking corporate ass,†and by its antimercial.
An "antimercial" is a commercial that says "by buying this product, you are speaking out against commercials."
The antimercial for Blackspot Anticorporation sneakers shows white male youths keepin’ it real by leaping around on dirty snowbanks, wearing the sneakers. The soundtrack is N.E.R.D.’s “Lap Dance,†which goes like this:
“I’m an outlaw
quick on the draw
somethin you never seen before
and I dare the muthafucka to cum in my face.â€
An “anticorporation,†by the way, is a corporation.
I’m just sayin.
I still read “Culture Jam” yearly, and it still lights a fire in my belly and makes me sad at the same time.
I knew you were cool.
I didn’t know you were this cool.
Good job on being cool, there.