R.I.P.: Adbusters

Chuck0 chuck at tao.ca
Tue Oct 31 21:07:35 PST 2000


kelley wrote:


> well, you can't--they boot you out and they generally have some mall rules
> posted by the freight elevator or something and most people don't go there
> unless they are hoping to join the "mall high club" heh.

Yes, you CAN. You can do whatever you want until THEY notice. Mall security is not some kind of omniscent panopticon that watches your every move.

I'm talking of spray-painting IN THE MALL, not back by the elevators.


> ever notice that there are few exits and difficult to get to? that's so
> you can't shoplift as easily. i think it would be really hard to do any of
> that and get away with it, particularly if you managed to make it the DDoS
> that i envision and that would be very difficult. you'd have to
> strategically target certain malls and get people from all over to participate

People don't actually have to shoplift for the "Steal Something Day" to be successful. Just the simple audacity of promoting such a holiday will raise flags in the minds of money. It could be promoted as a way for workers to steal back what was stolen from them by their bosses during the preceding year.


> this would be something that should *really* sneak up on them. you could
> easily fill the lot, renting vans, every ten drivers or so are instructed
> to park like an idiot. you could also just get as many vehicles as
> possible to fill up the lot, as early as possible.

Again, social hacking. Transgress until you get caught. The worse charge they can charge you with, if you hand out flyers in the mall or do street theater, is a trespassing charge.


> handing out flyers isn't a bad thing to do, but it'd just be perceived as
> another group of freaks and i personally find that flyers is about as
> useful as singing union songs or somesuch.

You could tape up the flyers, or you could sneak in subvertisements which alter the billboards that they are putting up in malls.


> to make it look good you'd have to have some folks buy things errrrr i mean
> get in line and then jam the line by asking questions, complaining, taking
> forever to find your credit card and then giving them, one after the other,
> a bad credit card. particularly wonderful if they have a do it yourself
> swiper and they can't see that you're swiping a library card.
>
> "oh damn, that one isn't working? here, let me try another."
>
> and so on.
>
> what i'm playing on here is the fact that they have created a space for
> people to lounge around and don't typically object to "mall walkers" and
> other sorts of upstanding citizens milling around not necessarily
> shopping. they flip if you try to use the public space for any sort of
> leaf letting or political protest or whathaveyou. you can do that on a
> main street in Podunk USA more often than not. not in a mall because it's
> all privately owned and they've aggressively enforced the deterioration of
> the public sphere--what little we had of it.
>
> this wouldn't be political until after you're all done or a few hours into
> it when they started to wonder what they hell is going on.

I think you've organized this too much. ;-)

There are some cases of activists organizing like this. In actions I know about, they enter a hotel en masse and take food from a catered party and then take it outside to the homeless. This was done several times in montreal. The law comes down hard on this action though.

<< Chuck0 >>

This was the year *everything* changed.

-- Commander Ivanova, 2261

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