culture jamming.

"culture jamming" is kind of silly. and i kind of hate adbusters. the two are closely associated in my mind. i can't really explain why, i just have this aversion to its pretentious, all-commodities-are-evil, hipster-socialist attitude. and the fact that it's a ridiculously expensive, glossy, prettied-up magazine that thinks it's so much better than all the other magazines just because it doesn't have any ads.

sorry, adbusters, but harper's is a hell of a lot better publication in terms of content, and they've got ads, and they're about the same price. lewis lapham totally outdoes naomi klein in almost every way. and vice is cooler, funnier, and free, albeit with some rather more superficial content. but the whole idea of rejection of ads in and of themselves is just knee-jerk and silly. it's like the hippie kid who refuses blindly to wear anything branded or listen to anything popular - it's just a subculture of blind obedience like any other one. even as adbusters decries the sheeplike consumerism of the masses, it pretends that there's something significantly different about sheeplike anticonsumerism. action without critical thought is ridiculous, no matter what side of the political spectrum it falls on.

that's why i thought it was kind of funny in class today hearing a quote from naomi klein about how it undermines the ability of culture jammers to 'jam culture' when the corporate media co-opt their media. sure, it's annoying when GM pays graff artists to do a giant tag of a Hummer on a wall... but it's equally annoying when pretentious left-wing types try to label, quantify, and exploit the influence of underground or alternative media for their own political goals.

the most annoying thing, i think, about adbusters and naomi klein, is that they're so very similar to corporate 'cool hunters.' graffiti, tattooing, and any alternative, radical, underground modes of communication are 'cool' when they're products of individual inspiration and ingenuity, and expressions of individual thoughts, ideologies, and beliefs. when these modes of communication are hijacked for institutional goals, whether it's a corporation or an 'anti-corporation' like adbusters, they immediately take on an aura of implausibility. my generation is the most media-literate generation ever. and while many of us are pretty ignorant of how our consent is manufactured on a daily basis, the vast majority of us can immediately tell the difference between inspiration and exploitation. so, i've got no problem with 'culture jamming' when it takes the form of an individual's political statements and artistic ingenuity (like banksy ... oh i love banksy!). but when it's an institutionalized campaign, homogenized, committee-ized, and mass-produced... it just rings hollow for me.

maybe things have to be mass-produced for a mass audience to take notice. it's hard to make an impact in a media-saturated society. but if it means that underground media have to be xeroxed and bureaucratized to infinity... i'd rather have something interesting that i can enjoy, than something bland that the whole world can notice and throw away fifteen minutes later.

holy crap!

so it's october 30th, and my progress on my alternative media project has been... halting, at best. this is going to be my attempt to turn this journal into a daily exercise in meta, pomo, self-critical, ethnographic examination of my live in an alternatively-mediated world.

i've intended to do this in a fairly straightforward way thus far, by submitting a volunteer application to globalaware with the intention, rather obviously, of volunteering with them. i had the idea of perhaps translating their (incidentally government-funded) canadians at the front exhibit into French for the benefit of those who speak our government's other official language. but i've yet to receive a response back from them. i'll fire them off another email soon... but as i was lying awake last night wondering what the hell i'd do for this project, i realized that i don't need to wait for anything.

while volunteering for an alternative media organization is obviously worthwhile, it's got some drawbacks - which i intend to explore through this blog. namely, you've got to pester people about getting involved. you'd think that organizations would love to have more volunteers, and i'm sure they would, but bureaucracy is always in the way of easy participation. globalaware hasn't emailed me back, the wonderful mit zine thinks itself above my humble layout skills in illustrator, and cool media organizations/publications have their cool friends that they give their cool jobs to. i'd love to write some articles for vice, say... but i'm no jim goad, and i'm not much of a hipster, either.

so i shall continue my endeavouring to get more involved in such an organization, but the internet and my day-to-day life give me everything i need to work on this project already. let me count the ways.

1. blogger. oh, blogger, you make it so easy to be an alternative media outlet. now i know that there are indeed positive and negative aspects to this fact, and i shall certainly comment on those. probably it's a good thing that having talent and something worth saying are quite legitimate prerequisites, barriers to entry into the realm of (quasi-)mass communication. but regardless, blogger lets me push a button and transmute my thoughts into bits of data for all to see. so, while mine and my roommate's blog allows us to comment on our life experiences and suchall to our small circle of readers, this blog, as the title suggests, will partially allow me to comment on the blogging experience; both as a contributor to and participant within the 'blogosphere.' (i've mentioned how much i hate that word before.) the blog will also be open for comment and perusal by anyone who cares to read. thus, this is simultaneously a journal of my participation in alternative media, and an aspect of that participation. plus, it'll let me hyperlink to blogs and other objects of interest on the web.

2. magazines. i've already mentioned vice and the mit'zine. i love both, and i write contributions to one of them. maybe i'll try vice too - i can write about my experiences doing that on here. both magazines are 'alternative'; particularly the zine, maybe less so vice. i'll return to that later. sometime. i also like journals like mcsweeneys' and harper's. maybe they're not alternative, maybe they are. i'll talk about that on here.

3. the internet. beyond just blogger, the internet provides a huge spectrum of 'alternative' media. flash cartoons, tabloid hack journalism, open-source encyclopedias, free public-domain literature, music, software, and basically everything. not to mention seamier things like marijuana growing assistance, amateur pornography, (2,990,000 sites' worth, apparently) and, of course, pirated non-public domain everything. i joke that the internet is an extension of my brain sometimes. does that make me an alternative medium?

4. life. maybe it's just me, but as far as i can see, we live in a world of alternative media. corporate media networks, as much as we like to knock them in MIT, are just players in a vast web of media outlets. the poster on the street, the graffiti on the wall, the religious tract on the bus, we live in an alternatively-mediated world. the mainstream media aren't called that for a reason - they're certainly the most prominent and pervasive media of our time. but whether we pay attention to it or not, we are surrounded by alternative media everywhere we go. armed with my new digicam, i'm going to try and find as many instances of it as i can while i go about my daily business, and post and comment.

and of course, i'll try my best to get involved in something organized. but hey, maybe organization is a step towards mainstream status. i'll talk about my experiences in more organized forms of media, and compare and contrast with those less organized. discuss the impact of each, etcetera, etcetera. i'll probably get all pseudo-intellectual and pomo too, and i'll warn you, oh hypothetical audience, that i have a tendency to the florid and qualitative. but so does the world. we shall see how this goes.