Mediagasm

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Enki just gave me an idea (I hate to fucking admit it, but the truth is the truth).

A project to discredit the media, not because it's biased, but because it's dumb.

Anyone interested?  I think this one could go places.

[Cramulus]

interested.
how would we do that?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

interested.
how would we do that?

Still working on that part, I'm afraid.  I'm open to suggestions.

Maybe something along the lines of adbusters or culture jamming.

[Cramulus]

brainstorm,brainstorm...

attacking the media itself is a tall order


faking a study about media accuracy is kind of cute in that it's self-reflexive. Like a headline that reads "80% OF HEADLINES LIE"

but that's still within the media, you know? It's like running an anti-commerical TV commercial.


I'm not sure whether or not drawing attention to the dumbness of the media will get people to stop consuming it. The Adbusters crew has been trying to "bring the factory of images to a shuddering halt" for years, and all they've succeeded in is creating a weird counterculture brand identity. Essentially another consumer choice like being vegan or "green". The problem is that it's ineffectual to attack the same channel you're using. (example: if you create a really tight anti-twitter meme, and people tweet about it like crazy, you fail)

"GASM" implies something we can all do... so perhaps a project where we write to our local papers / news stations on behalf of some cause. GASM command can provide publicity kits that will make it a simple print-n-mail project.


a good start is to crystalize the idea of the media being dumb. Can we boil that down into a memorable sound bite or image?

because then we can repackage it in numerous forms


food for thought

[Aciddino]

Great idea! i will be brain storming some ideas!   

[Remington]

An idea has struck me!

...ow



Okay, so what if we took down ad posters (you know the type, advertising anything from Sham-Wow to Mormonism), scanned them, and photoshopped them to completely subvert the meaning? For example, take the Shaw-Wow ad and (without changing the layout or overall look) replace the ad-text with how efficient sham-wows are at cleaning up hooker blood (http://www.hollywoodgrind.com/vince-shlomi-arrested-and-mug-shot/)?

Or how about editing those Scientology posters with information about how their leader is a 5 foot 2 inch psychopath who beats up fucking everyone? Needless to say, you would then replace the "subvertisement" back wherever you found it.

What do you guys think?

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

The first thing that came to mind was how Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in the 1990's.

But I don't think that's the idea here is it.

[Captain Utopia]

To me, Enki's images are cute.. but they're not an example of the media being dumb - they're examples of people in the media being dumb or just making mistakes. Whatever.

Some examples of how the media appears dumb to me:

• Falling into feedback loops of insecurity - "everyone else is reporting on this so...."
• Giving false equality even when one side is obviously playing them
• Trying to break a story too quickly and giving either false information or no information at all - filler
• Following predictable patterns that everyone they give a voice to can manipulate
• Is institutionally blind with regards the internet

Each of those areas of dumbness above is also a potential weakness.

What Cram said about adbusters was spot-on I think, there's absolutely no leverage to be had in pointing out stupidity after the fact. Otherwise Jon Stewart would be president by now.

Yet would it be different if we could intentionally mislead them a few times by using easily demonstrable tricks and techniques, document the premeditation, at the same time enabling anybody else to join in? If it would force the media to become less dumb in those ways, would that be worth it?

Getting to the point where they want to give us a voice is a long troll.. I think the third item above would be the easiest to pull off - monitor the AP wire, or as close to, then when a story breaks which has sketchy/speculative details cross-reference a few bogus blogs to each other, make up some stupid but juicy fact for the media to soak up.. backdating if applicable, link wikipedia articles to them as cited sources. Some "breaking news" stories run for an hour or more with scant information - that's more than enough time for even one person to customise some content on the various locations and tweet the link to CNN or whatever.

Making bogus blogs is a bit of groundwork. But we can share the passwords here, and livejournal is a treasure trove of content (e.g. something mundane like gardening), the blogs can be blank (all entries private) until everything is ready to go. I'm guessing I could do one in a few hours with backdated entries, how many would we need for each round? 2-3? I'm guessing they couldn't be used more than once.. cause the media ain't that dumb. Is it?

I would expect this would only work a few times before they became more cautious - doesn't matter as long as we present our "the media is dumb - look - we did XYZ and here's how" first - by inspiring copycats, they would be bound to be more inventive than anything we could come up with.

[Dalek]

I have been a trainee in televisions, radios and newspapers, and I can tell you that those guys fucking want scandals. You can throw them any information without it even being true, and a lot of them will publish it without even checking, especialy if it sounds like a good scandal. You can provide them with some photoshopped images and there is a pretty good chance that they will fall for it.

[Remington]

I have been a trainee in televisions, radios and newspapers, and I can tell you that those guys fucking want scandals. You can throw them any information without it even being true, and a lot of them will publish it without even checking, especialy if it sounds like a good scandal. You can provide them with some photoshopped images and there is a pretty good chance that they will fall for it.

A scandal? What about the rumour that Glenn Beck murdered and raped a young girl in 1990? He hasn't denied it... probably because he can't.

[MMIX]

How do you actually go about subverting a media which is already autosubversive? Leading on Fuck-ups [your own or someone elses] is such a staple of contemporary media output that you either have to go for a seriously conspiratorial approach - and good luck with that - or get lost in the rest of the quick laugh/raised eyebrows dross that constitutes "news" output . . .

here is an exemplar piece of shit thrown by MediaMonkey in the Guardian a couple of days ago http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamonkeyblog/2009/sep/01/express-ant-dec-headline-error



I found the explanation of how it happened to be much more interesting than the headline - but thats just me . .

[Triple Zero]

To me, Enki's images are cute.. but they're not an example of the media being dumb - they're examples of people in the media being dumb or just making mistakes. Whatever.

The first two are, but the last two are definitely just really really dumb headlines.

The first thing that this made me think of however, is that youtube-trolling-paradox. Meaning, (supposedly) it is impossible to make a comment on a (reasonably popular) youtube video that is so dumb that nobody will take it seriously because they see it's just being dumb on purpose. The lesson here being, there's probably always somebody dumber than you can be on purpose (one example that comes to mind is a story I heard about a black guy complaining that the computer industry was being racist and keeping the black population down, because the white man made computers too complicated for black people to understand ...)

Anyway, making extra-super-dumb news articles, well it's gonna be a load of fun, but I'm afraid we're gonna hit that paradox.

[MMIX]

This ^

[Captain Utopia]

The first two are, but the last two are definitely just really really dumb headlines.

Could be to meet the 4am deadline, maybe the reporter felt like fucking up on purpose, maybe it was April 1st, or the Daily Mail. I guess my point is - it's not evidence of systematic stupidity.

Anyway, making extra-super-dumb news articles, well it's gonna be a load of fun, but I'm afraid we're gonna hit that paradox.

I wasn't talking about making dumb articles for the lulz, but rather demonstrating the process by which forms of news media are not just dumb, but predictably and dangerously stupid... and if we inspire copy-cats, that would create the situation where they have to adapt. If that makes them just a little bit less dumb, that's an unusual victory.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Okay, dumb idea.  Thought it was worth floating.