SydLexia.com - The Forums :: View topic - Culture Jamming: Your own personal Revolution

Posted: May 22 2009 12:50 pm

(from wikihow)
Culture jamming is the art of hijacking the mainstream media, corporate advertisers, and the public domain to get across a message against one-way communication. Basically, culture jamming is sabotage of corporate or public property for political purposes. If you want to know the ropes on becoming the best jammer yet, follow these steps.

Steps if one would like to pursue

1. Become educated. Learn about some of the destructive methods of large-scale consumerism and about the unethical dealings of multinational companies like Wal-Mart and Nike. Read subversive literature, like "Steal This Book" or "No Logo."

2.Gather your friends together who share the same views as you and form a plan. Maybe your group should join a local jammer network. Pick out a target and get some ideas formulating. If you can't think of any ideas, do some research on jamming and learn from the actions of fellow jammers and activists.

3.Gather your supplies. The jammer must be creative and flexible. You have a wide range of tools at your disposal: Markers, spray paint, fliers, wheat paste, stickers, paint, etc.

4.Hit up the scene with your group of friends! Make it something that would catch your eye, and watch out for employees, officers, and live security-cams. Hint, don't forget that the infamous dark dome cameras on supermarket ceilings do not have 360 degree vision, and are in blurry black and white.

5.Rinse and repeat, and develop better strategies after the jams. Hit different communities, to shock people who never saw your eye-catching work.

Tips:
Do most of your work at night for decreased visibility.

Jam at the busiest spots in town, because this will get the word out quicker and to a larger group of people.

Study some of the work of past jammers to get some ideas.

Be as funny, creative, and innovative as possible

If you spray paint, make use of the stencil, a tool for very quick and easy replicas of art.

sites to hit up:http://www.indymedia.org
http://www.indymedia.org
www.bomit.com/

You'd better take caution:

The public and the law do not look kindly upon many forms of jamming. Be aware that you are taking risks here whenever you go out to jam. You could face prosecution if you are not cautious.

Things you'll need

Sharpie Markers
Spray Paint
Stencils
Stickers
Fliers
Wheat Paste
Creativity

.....................

I've just recently got into culture jamming a couple months ago, what my group is about is how we disagree/Hate how mass Surveillance is popping up everywhere in this country, we are also looking to launch a campaign against a certain "News" station sometime this summer.

Stay Free, Live life to the fullest, I'll be in Michigan for the next three days.

Posted: May 22 2009 01:35 pm

Good luck!

For your own protection and in the interest of site, please do not post any specific plans here.

Posted: May 22 2009 01:44 pm

^ Dammit. I thought at the very least that our resident drug lord would protect us if we used the site as a planning space. Sad

Posted: May 22 2009 03:06 pm

'nuff said

Posted: May 22 2009 03:57 pm

SpraCoalee wrote:

1. Obtain flagrant propaganda and treat it as gospel

2. Cut all ties with your current friends and only associate with those with the same propaganda fueled beliefs, ala Scientology.

3. Purchase supplies, preferably from the same giant corporation you intend to be railing against. It's more ironic that way.

4. Break the law at the expense of low level employees who will have to clean up your mess and store owners/managers, many of whom are just trying to make an honest living by investing money to turn their property into a franchise.

5. Get away with it? Keep trying until you go to jail!

Fixed.

This sounds like it's basically encouraging people to do a bunch of shit like in those Truth commercials. Know what? Those commercials are fucking annoying, and have probably made more people want to smoke out of spite instead of getting them to quit. There's a difference between civil disobedience and being a pain in the fucking ass.

UsaSatsui's Youtube Channel · Posted: May 22 2009 04:14 pm

I think Jeebus has it right on. Vandalism is vandalism. This screams of trying to justify it.

I'm fine with civil disobedience, I can even justify specific actions of sabotage for a political cause (not condone it, just justify it). But spraying "political messages" all over the place?

If you want to get a message out, get permission from property owners, or do it on your own property. Or better yet, don't be a punk and sneak around and do it. Have the balls to put your face to the message and actually risk something.

Posted: May 22 2009 04:18 pm

3. Purchase supplies, preferably from the same giant corporation you intend to be railing against. It's more ironic that way.

Reminds me of the Family Guy Episode, Hell Comes To Quahog. Peter wants to protest the Superstore USA and is like "We'll need poster board, markers, Superstore USA has all of that."

Posted: May 22 2009 04:26 pm

Dr. Jeebus wrote:

SpraCoalee wrote:

1. Obtain flagrant propaganda and treat it as gospel

2. Cut all ties with your current friends and only associate with those with the same propaganda fueled beliefs, ala Scientology.

3. Purchase supplies, preferably from the same giant corporation you intend to be railing against. It's more ironic that way.

4. Break the law at the expense of low level employees who will have to clean up your mess and store owners/managers, many of whom are just trying to make an honest living by investing money to turn their property into a franchise.

5. Get away with it? Keep trying until you go to jail!

Fixed.

This sounds like it's basically encouraging people to do a bunch of shit like in those Truth commercials. Know what? Those commercials are fucking annoying, and have probably made more people want to smoke out of spite instead of getting them to quit. There's a difference between civil disobedience and being a pain in the fucking ass.

QFT. That entire post is just perfect.

Posted: May 22 2009 04:30 pm

This also sounds like the Project Mayhem stuff in Fight Club. Where they erase the tapes at a Blockbuster, or change the flight safety fliers, and so on.

Posted: May 22 2009 05:02 pm

IceWarm wrote:

This also sounds like the Project Mayhem stuff in Fight Club. Where they erase the tapes at a Blockbuster, or change the flight safety fliers, and so on.

Goddmmit IceWarm, I was just about to post that. But year, fuck the "revolution", sounds just like a bunch of rabble-rousing if you ask me. Why not channel that energy into something productive, like schoolwork?

Posted: May 22 2009 05:23 pm

So I went to the page that this was taken from. Here are some things that you did NOT post when you coppied the page:

http://www.wikihow.com/Culture-Jam wrote:

* Wear your ideas on your clothes and possessions! You can customize them with paint, bumper stickers, and advertisements to leftist organizations and campaigns.
* Do guerrilla advertising for leftist organizations, too. You can accidentally "drop" some printed posters or business cards, or put new printed brochures in empty brochure stands.

Warnings

* Remember that rather than "activism", the activities described above fall more under the category of petty trouble-making. They will not have any significant effect on anything at all.

So not only is this admittedly intended to be liberal propaganda, but it also admittedly will have NO effect on the world other than pissing people off.

If you're going to quote a source to promote your own means, it's not normally nice to give the whole story and not just the parts that you like.

Posted: May 22 2009 06:40 pm

Terrible, terrible idea. Sorry to say.
I don't get the point on doing this, as people already stated it absolutely won't change the world.
People try this and think they're the next Che Guevara here in South America, but they're still the same pseudo-revolutionaire douchebags that STILL depend on the fucking system (and their parents) to live.
People like this make me want to laugh at the misery of humankind, sometimes.

Posted: May 22 2009 08:05 pm

UsaSatsui wrote:

I think Jeebus has it right on. Vandalism is vandalism. This screams of trying to justify it.

I'm fine with civil disobedience, I can even justify specific actions of sabotage for a political cause (not condone it, just justify it). But spraying "political messages" all over the place?

If you want to get a message out, get permission from property owners, or do it on your own property. Or better yet, don't be a punk and sneak around and do it. Have the balls to put your face to the message and actually risk something.

So anyone feels it's best to work at night, not being harrased by "police" is being a punk?

interesting.

Posted: May 22 2009 08:12 pm

Yes, doing this "Culture Jamming" shit makes you a punk.

Posted: May 22 2009 08:31 pm

IceWarm wrote:

Yes, doing this "Culture Jamming" shit makes you a punk.

http://www.answers.com/topic/punk

Quote:

"punk"
n. 1. Slang.
1. A young person, especially a member of a rebellious counterculture group.
2. An inexperienced young man.

Yeah, pretty much.

Posted: May 22 2009 08:35 pm

enshinkarateman wrote:

IceWarm wrote:

Yes, doing this "Culture Jamming" shit makes you a punk.

http://www.answers.com/topic/punk

Quote:

"punk"
n. 1. Slang.
1. A young person, especially a member of a rebellious counterculture group.
2. An inexperienced young man.

Yeah, pretty much.

well I guess I've been "Burned" huh?

Fine by me.

Posted: May 22 2009 08:48 pm

Shit guys, I think you're a little hard on Spra here. In the same vein, promoting illegal activities isn't so preferable either...

Posted: May 22 2009 08:54 pm

I'm really just saying there are better ways of getting a message across than vandalism. In my opinion "culture jamming" causes more harm than good. These are people's livelihoods being messed with. Not everybody that works at a Wal-Mart is a greedy asshole. Most people just need the work and messing with them is just wrong in my opinion.

Imagine you having a job at Wal-Mart and somebody "culture jams" something. Guess who is going to have to clean it up/fix it? Just an honest man/woman trying to make a living. Messing with the lower level employees is not right, they are not the ones who run the company.

Posted: May 22 2009 08:57 pm

Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!

What? The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy!

I'm all for counterculture and dissadence, questioning the authority and all that good stuff. Hell, America was founded on this kind of stuff. This thing just reeks of angsty jr. High rebelliousness though.

Posted: May 22 2009 09:10 pm

Yeah, I'm sorry. Sharpie graffiti is not the way to express your political dissent. Rolling Eyes

Posted: May 22 2009 09:18 pm

This sort of reminds me of The Monkey Wrench Gang. I know a site with stencils if anybody wants to know.

UsaSatsui's Youtube Channel · Posted: May 22 2009 10:49 pm

SpraCoalee wrote:

So anyone feels it's best to work at night, not being harrased by "police" is being a punk?

In short, yes.

In long:

I have nothing but respect for people who feel like they need to make a statement, even if I don't agree with their statement or their means (so long as people don't get hurt). However, stand by your statement. Have the courage to have your statement means something, and the courage to accept the consequences of said actions. Unfortunately, civil disobedience involves getting busted sometimes (and it's a great attention getter)

We'll take your cause of over-surveillance as an example. Someone who, in broad daylight, goes out with some leaflets, an attention-getting t-shirt, a ladder, and some black spray-paint to paint over cameras is making a political statement with their vandalism. Someone who goes out under cover of night and makes anti-camera graffiti is being a punk.

Please don't feel we're picking on you or anything, by the way. You made the thread, you stated your opinion, we're stating ours. It's not personal (I don't think you think it is, but Ross mentioned it, I just want to make it clear.)

Posted: May 23 2009 12:35 pm

SpraCoalee wrote:

UsaSatsui wrote:

I think Jeebus has it right on. Vandalism is vandalism. This screams of trying to justify it.

I'm fine with civil disobedience, I can even justify specific actions of sabotage for a political cause (not condone it, just justify it). But spraying "political messages" all over the place?

If you want to get a message out, get permission from property owners, or do it on your own property. Or better yet, don't be a punk and sneak around and do it. Have the balls to put your face to the message and actually risk something.

So anyone feels it's best to work at night, not being harrased by "police" is being a punk?

interesting.

Your use of the word work here is misleading. There's nothing wrong with working at night, like at a job or around the house. But yes, if you're aim is to run around at night breaking the law like a fucktard and causing damage to people's personal property, then yes, you're a punk. And why is "police" in quotation marks?

Joined: Apr 14 2006 Location: Lake Michigan Posts: 3332

There's plenty of avenues in the system to pursue to promote reform. Civil disobedience is usually only needed in extreme situations.

Posted: May 23 2009 01:06 pm