About the Encyclopedia |
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The Culture-Jammer's Encyclopedia is a labor of love that was created and is maintained by Dave Gross. It is hosted by the Idiosyntactix Strategic Arts and Sciences Alliance, informed by the Disumbrationist League, and assisted by web surfers and culture jammers like yourself. Nobody is making money from this or advertising their stuff here. I made these pages because I wished I could find pages like this on the Web; now I can, and so can you, and I've earned many a smile. The Encyclopedia was born as a single index page hosted at The Lycæum with the imposing yet informative title of Trolls, Hoaxes, Culture Jamming, Poetic Terrorism, Media Hacks, Frauds, Impostors, Spoofs, Counterfeits, Fakes, Pranks, Scams, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. From there it moved over to Geocities, which quickly became the most annoying host on the Web, at which point the crew at Idiosyntactix graciously offered to provide a new home.
The site covers a lot of strange ground - I think there exists something that connects religion and graffiti, anarchism and cryptozoölogy, art forgery and the Barbie Liberation Organization, P.T. Barnum and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the Pieman and O.J. Simpson, laundry balls and Monica Lewinsky - I don't think there's a name for it yet, but I think whatever it's called merits study. Most of this site highlights deception, but it's not because I have a thing for liars and cheats. I think there's a brand of deception that helps us to expose and correct the lies we tell ourselves and the webs of falsehood that make up our societies. Little silly harmless fibs can remind us that we've dropped our guard and let the awful Big Lies in. Pranks and hoaxes and delusions and frauds remind us that we're easily fooled and that we aren't quite as smart as we sometimes think we are. The trickster, by taking us down a notch, does us (and society at large) a valuable service. It's when we start acting clever, as though our meager knowledge actually adds up to wisdom, that we summon forth the worst of humanity's evils. So I present this site in the hope that it will inspire as much as it informs or entertains. I think people are all too frequently blind to the ways in which our lives are so very messed up by our culture, and the extent to which we each help to maintain this blindness and this absurdity. Culture jamming, whether or not it is performed with any such awareness, helps to poke holes in the veil we spend so much time helping each other to construct. The Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia isn't an encyclopedia of culture jammers, so much as an encyclopedia for culture jammers - exposing the cracks in a culture where a jammer can hide the explosives.
There's a great cosmic battle between organic chaos and mechanical order. On one side: life, libido, novelty; on the other: machinery, standardization, law. Every time you are confronted with choices and, instead of playing one of society's designated rôles, you choose "none of the above" and find yourself alone in a nameless category - you score a point for our team. If you note an insurrectionary undercurrent running through these pages, you're right on target. My feeling is that when the enemy is an army of deadening algorithms, committing buffoonery is tantamount to revolution: "Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Herman Hesse. Hardly anyone understands Albert Einstein. And nobody understands Emperor Norton."... You never know when one of these opportunities is going to present itself, or in what form it will come. It helps to be alert, and to have good examples (for instance, the ones at this site) of the wise and silly people who have broken out before. And silliness is part of the fun - I can rant and rave about the subversive potential of pranks, but sometimes joy and fun are their own reward, and you'll find plenty of this here as well. The artist in you may also find a new set of canvases to play with here.
Thanks for your words of encouragement and for suggesting links. If you want to get ahold of me, please write to me in care of daveg@syntac.net. Do something to disrupt the status quo, then document it (without generating excess evidence), and let me add it to the Encyclopedia. If you run a page of your own, you can help potential cultural terrorists find this resource by linking to the Encyclopedia through one of our banners. Another way you can help is to write one of our Special Reports - know something about the Howard Hughes autobiography or George Psalmanazar? Write up a report and I'll publish it here. Check out our reports on Brian G. Hughes, Captain von Köpenick, Dr. Drown's Homo-Vibra Ray and Brother Jed for inspiration. But the best way you can help is to join up with some like-minded crazies (or go solo if you wish) and start to color outside the lines. |
Feedback & ReviewsI just wanted to say how much I enjoy your web-site. It is so refreshing to see a really cool page that shows just how easy people can be manipulated when the conditions are right. It's awesome to see a web-page that really offers some actual worthwhile and interesting content. Thanks very much! Just wondering though, how did you come upon the idea for this site? What was your inspiration? - DM Awesome page! We're going to be spending a lot of time there these next few days. We've linked it, too. - ®TMark Every few months I'm compelled to write and let you know that the "Trolls, Hoaxes..." page is still my favorite read on the net. It must be a LOT of work keeping this page going, but it is much appreciated. - MB Because the Conspiracy is so vast, omnipresent, and pervasive in our society, it can be difficult for a SubGenius to effectively STRIKE BACK against the non-stop barrage of hypnotic commands emanating from a thousand different sources every day.... This site is a terrific source of information for those who wish to see the archives of the culture jammers... [A]n extensive list of hackers, parodists, Discordians, and media manipulators who pull off incredible stunts every day - AND THEY GET AWAY WITH IT!!! It's an inspiration that will make you want to go out and FIGHT for your right to be SUBVERSIVE! - Modemac For the cyberian who has everything, including an attitude, take two doses of Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia and call us in the morning. You'll find a bevy of sassy skeptics who are ready, willing, and able to deconstruct society's hottest hucksters, hackers, and antiheroes. Got the millenium-bug blues? Luxuriate in a lukewarm bath of literary hoaxes. Stuck in an ill-fitting operating system? Witness the inaugural Bill Gates pie-throwing contest, then slip into something a little more uncomfortable... Your page is a light in the black hole that is the internet. - PNN The late Marshall McLuhan wrote "World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian and military participation." Participants in this war will find the Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia to be a compendium of great information and links... Thank you very much for what is obviously a labor of love. I'm going to savor it and pass it on to friends who will also enjoy it. - RJ Thought your site might be interesting until I got to your page on The Great God Hoax. Found it to be offensive in that you set yourselves up as All Knowing when it comes to people's belief systems. Unless you have been around a lot longer than your prose would indicate, or you are omniscient, you might refrain from portraying your opinions as THE TRUTH. I had thought of Bookmarking the site, but... - GR Una increíble colección de fraudes culturales, en todos los campos del saber humano! Las mejores falsificaciones en la pintura y la literatura! Las más complejas estafas políticas y científicas! El siempre asombroso y muy humano deporte de engañar al prójimo, a veces por dinero y otras sólo por la fama o por el placer de hacerlo, aparece aquí reflejado con informaciones, artículos y excelentes imágenes. Desde el incidente del Golfo de Tonkin hasta los Protocolos de los sabios de Sion, el mundo de la mentira desfila ante nuestra vista. No dejes de visitarla! - iWorld I've waited a long time for a page such as this. Thanks. - CB I was far from imagining such a complete site! As for being French, I thought that America (Canada included) was a place of mad folks. I realized that some Americans are equipped with brains, not just taking care about Clinton's dick and reading Newsweek! You can count on me for showing your site to my friends! Keep on like this guys, your site is one of the best I've ever seen on the net! - FT Your 'Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia' page is excellent!! I've gotten more bookmarks from your site than from the rest of the entire internet combined! Keep up the great work! - MC Greetings; I make a point of writing once a year to say that this is still the best read on the net... It must be a lot of work to keep this site maintained, but it's much appreciated - MB No fooling: This site, jammed with entries about every kind of forgery, hoax, scam, trick, and rip-off, will keep surfers fascinated for hours. ...wryly relates the scoop on the unscrupulous... True crime was never this entertaining. Grade: A - CWC (Entertainment Weekly) Quite possibly the most entertaining site ever. - cookie ...great links on Culture Jamming and the like. I spent about a week just going through a small number of his links and not a minute was wasted. Well, the whole experience was a waste of time, but I was at work so at least I got paid for it. - NM Just wanted to say thanks for everything you're doing. - RM ...a comprehensive collection of links to the weirdest organisations with official sites on the Web. Some of the groups you'll find are deliberate shit-disturbers, while others are as earnest, and as blissfully oblivious their own strangeness, as Ed Wood writing, directing, starring in, and narrating 'Glen or Glenda'. This deserves hours and hours of your precious time. The Culture-Jammer's Encyclopedia is an awe-inspiring compendium of human mischief. - memepool Definitely a site to infect you with Mad Sacred Cow Disease. A great resource for all things anticommercial, including great spoofs and a guide to concocting a good hoax. This site kicks ass. Its always proud to see sites that provide worthful information about some of the great minds and thoughts of the past. Good Job. - YZB Sir, madam, or It, whatever the case may be: I have no idea how I located your website in the first place, but I most certainly am glad I did. What a kick. I hope you continue this work; it makes an otherwise gloomy winter day full of light and warmth. - TKW Let me tell you guys one thing. I'll vote for the best page this Encyclopedia. - PA A virtual reference book of all things subversive, fraudulent, anti-commercial, or just plain fun and devious. Includes tons of cool links. - Yahoo! Cool Links: Surfers' Picks: Nancy Many thanks for putting together such an important site - it needed to be said, all of it. - Dragonfly |
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