Commerce Jamming

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; and said unto them that sold doves, "Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise."

- the gospel according to John

Ever since Jesus tangled with the moneychangers in the temple there's been a sense that the marketplace is a legitimate target for abuse, ridicule and subversion.

One-upping Jesus was the hack of a more recent Jewish troublemaker, Abbie Hoffman, who used the greed of Wall Street against itself - showering dollar bills onto the trading-room floor and watching the brokers claw through each other to get at the cash. Only one picture of that event has survived, and it's the one that's going to be in your mind when you hear the phrase "guerrilla theater."

Advertisements lie and they don't even try to be coy about it. The rules have been written about what lies you can tell without being hauled into court for fraud, and the rules are generous to the liars (well, when you see who wrote the rules, it's no big surprise).

You ever get one of those letters in the mail that looks like a check but turns out to be just an advertisement? A fellow named Patrick Combs took one down to the bank and deposited it - it resembled a check so much (and may have met the legal requirements for a binding contract of legitimate debt) that the bank accepted it. $95,000 later, someone figured out that something was fishy, but by that time, Combs had gotten a cashier's check written out and placed in a safe deposit box! Go to his web page to get the details of his adventures.

If you want to interrupt pathological, media-simulated social interaction such as is often found in advertising, you ought to follow that there link and find out how it's done.

For those of you in the parody market, there are a few web sites that display satirical commercials and cereal boxes and such. Also, Adbusters takes regular aim at the advertising world and the consumer ethic.

Kudos to The Barbie Liberation Organization - they switched the voice chips in Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, and returned them to toy stores in altered form to strike a blow against stereotyped gender roles.

The friendly folks at Happyclown Inc. have taken on the task of helping McDonald's advertise their new Bilder Burger.

Cacophonists have infiltrated and mocked some of the most beloved idols of the consumer culture, for instance Chuck-E-Cheese.

In one such prank, the Los Angeles Cacophony Society snuck into a Toys'R'Us and put a selection of labeled, bar-coded, cement-filled teddy bears on the shelves, then stuck around to witness the resulting mayhem.

When a telemarketer calls, it's only humane to try to transmogrify the encounter into something just a little more fun. And, speaking of rude panhandling, no billboard should escape being forced to uncover its ugliness or ours. However, some billboards seem to need no help...

Things that aren't actually for sale, but have been promoted by pranksters nonetheless include Microsoft's Windows for Macintosh, a 1-900 number for evesdropping on 911 emergency calls, such plants as Common Dickweed and Heinous Welsh Squash, complementary, advertising-laden motor vehicles, cyber dildos, and pure, uncut cocaine.

Creative use of email chain-letters is showing a great deal of promise - one promised that for each pair of used tennis shoes that you send in to Nike, they'll send you back a brand new pair. Last I heard, Nike had 300 boxes of old shoes that they didn't particularly want.

A particularly wicked hack was Luther Blissett's parody of the archetype of poisonous product tampering - instead of putting rat poison in children's candy, he bought packages of rat poison, replaced the poison with candy, sealed up the packages and put them back on the shelf.

The workplace, degrading and soul-suffocating as it so often is, has become a favorite place for sabotage. Entertaining tales are common of employees who get even with worthless supervisors, or who play pranks just to disrupt the tedium.

If you're thinking of getting involved in commerce jamming, you should check out the folks at ®TMark. They are sponsoring a number of interesting commerce jamming projects, and even claim to provide funding for creative hacks and creative career counselling for employees whose pranks have gotten them fired.

Patrick Combs and his check
Patrick Combs

Killer Green Bud
Odd plants

The BLO at work
The BLO at work

See also:

  • Scams & Frauds
  • Counterfeiting
  • Guerrilla Hacks
  • Pages referenced here:

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