Shit was wild how it was all George Bu$h and McDonald's in Iraq with Ronald McDonald shitting on a kid and everyone was like yeah "ugh" or "I mean yeah, but cringe"

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      8 months ago

      I miss adbusters. As someone who really, really, really hates marketing i've always had sympathy of them

      • ReadFanon [any, any]
        ·
        8 months ago

        At the risk of stirring up sectarianism, adbusters (which itself as a movement is a direct descendant of situationism) illustrated the limits of that sorta New Left retreat from conflict in the political and economic spheres into the cultural sphere. This also applies to adjacent movements like the Billboard Liberation Front etc.

        That's not to say that there is no value in taking the fight to the cultural sphere but ultimately if your entire program is just the expansion of countersignalling against the behemoth that is the PR industry then you're not going to achieve much because under capitalism, the house always wins (so long as you don't flip the table.) Unfortunately they are all dead-end movements as far as I see it.

        • Tofu_Lewis [he/him]
          ·
          8 months ago

          I lost all faith when they did a "takedown" of Baudrillard which was such a blatant misreading it was gross

          • ReadFanon [any, any]
            ·
            8 months ago

            Oh that's interesting. I never came across that.

            Tbh there's a degree of culpability that philosophers like Baudrillard need to take in this situation because of what Foucault called their "terroristic obscurantism" (to which Foucault himself is certainly not free from guilt of committing); I think that Baudrillard is borderline a philosophical cypher that people can project meaning onto, especially if they aren't doing a close reading and if they aren't steeped in the tradition and the conversation that Baudrillard is a part of.

            I might have to read what they had to say just out of idle curiosity.

    • bestesttrash [she/her]
      ·
      8 months ago

      omg!!! I totally forgot about the blackspot, what a trip ty! if anyone wants more info https://subscribe.adbusters.org/products/blackspot