The Theory of Culture Jamming

There have been more than a few things written about Culture Jamming in its various guises; I'll note a bunch of them here and trust you to search out more based on your own interests.

Nowadays, they're even teaching classes (both the allegedly real and the admittedly fake) about culture jamming, but most of us are self-educated.

William S. Burroughs
The late renegade William S. Burroughs laid out the case for culture jamming in his nonlinear essay The Electronic Revolution.

Hakim Bey is one of the more prolific and talented apologists for Art Sabotage and Poetic Terrorism.

American labor activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn made a fine case for sabotage in the workplace as a tactic for organized or disorganized labor. And other creative activists might get inspiration from The Encyclopedia of Direct Action.

But if what you're doing involves breaking The Law, you might want to read a chapter of wisdom on How to Break the Law and get away with it.

Our government has done its own research into subversion of this kind, and has published its findings in such frightening tomes as Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare and The C.I.A.'s Nicaraguan Sabotage Manual.

Here's a novel idea: Fake Assassinations. "My guess," says the author, "is that nobody can withstand the psychological warfare tactic of repeated, simulated death."

Opportunities for a more-or-less captive audience for soul-satisfying pranksterism happen every time you're called up by some minimum-wage telemarketer who wants to sell you something. Some good ideas for how to best use these opportunities are at sites like this one, this one, this one, and this one.

Mark Dery's essay Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs is a frequently HTMLized inspirational text. And the call for Action, Not Art deserves the reply "action is art!"

I tried handing out copies of The School Stoppers' Textbook to some schoolkids in my town, hoping that the thirty-year-old Yippie production would inspire the prisoners of the public schools to acts of rebellion appropriate to the circumstance. I was met by five people with badges who informed me that the First Amendment did not apply to this particular piece of writing. I was held in prison on $40,000 bail and eventually convicted for (I kid you not) nothing more than handing out leaflets on a public sidewalk. So the people who publish this text on-line at places like here, here, here, here (in German translation), here, here, here, here, here, and here are in danger of prosecution if any California student clicks their way to the page.

Helpful tips on Pranking Talk Radio are available on-line, and those of you Kommunikationsguerillas with some fluency in German will definately want to take a look at the Guerjia Culturale site.

Joey Skaggs
A visit to the Adbusters Culture Jammer's Headquarters will get you their Toolbox of resources for those engaging in such naughty behavior.

Prankster first class Joey Skaggs was kind enough to include a manifesto on his site. Other manifesti, like the Communiques of the Association for Ontological Anarchy and the web sites of The Coalition to Raise Æsthetic Consciousness and Team 7 are also worth a visit. Inspiring perhaps are Bob Black's Theses on Groucho Marxism.

If you're one of those ambitious technological types, you might try out one of the items on the Evil Genius List of Hi-Tech Practical Joke Ideas (my favorite: "Carve computer-generated ripples in the surface of a main highway, and when vehicles pass over the surface, mysterious voices whisper, and distant music plays.")

For information on The Trickster archetype in myth and legend, check out our page on that topic.