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Ask The Yes Men
Agit-prop? Absurdist pranksterism? Unsubtly subversive PowerPoint-based performance art? Yes, Yes, and Yes. Specifically, The Yes Men, whose brand of straight-faced media manipulation has raised eyebrows at staged events and on international news, have agreed to answer questions about their activities. These include social engineering of a certain peculiar variety ("Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them"), and multi-media lampooning of major corporations and political bodies — and, sometimes, committing the results to film. (Their 2010 film The Yes Men Fix the World is CC-licensed; the torrent version includes a bonus short, the making of which is the subject of a lawsuit by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the target of a mock press conference it depicts.) So, please ask your questions of The Yes Men, bearing in mind (especially if you've never read them before) the Slashdot interview guidelines. (Major takeaway: for unrelated questions, please use separate posts.)
What is a business?
I don't know who your targets often are but one of your recent results from the Yes Lab and Black Flood was to fool people into thinking that The Hobbit was being filmed in the Tar Sands in Canada. This apparently raised awareness of the Tar Sands but also there were complaints that you were no longer limited to fooling corporations and that this prank tricked activists as well. So I must ask, is there a line that you won't cross on who you will prank and who you absolutely will not prank? Is anyone a potential target for these shenanigans? Is no one safe? Children? Impoverished people? Cancer patients? Related follow up, have you personally ever felt bad about someone or some group (perhaps an innocent bystander) that fell into being duped by your antics?
My work here is dung.
How did you get into these shenanigans? How did you realise that this was something that you could actually do, and how did you go from there to make it into a reality?
This seems like the most obvious and interesting question to me.
What do you feel has been your most effective prank to date, and why?
When I was a wee lad, the global company down the road had CEOs who were from the Middle Class and their children attended the same public schools I had. Now CEOs and their cabinet appear to be from some space-faring race which silently invaded the world and replaced responsible, forward thinking professionals with babbling cauldrons of buzzwords, who slashed payrolls and feathered their own nests.
Irony isn't dead, it just requires a mind which isn't closed to it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Question 1: Yes
Question 2: Yes
Question 3: Yes ...
Question n: Yes
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Surely you must appreciate the research and hard work that goes into the field of prankology and I was wondering if you could share with us each of your favorite pranks throughout history that are well documented and evidenced. Crop circles? Andy Kaufman? What?
My work here is dung.
Do you actually make a living at what you do? If so, how?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What do you think of the TSA sexually assaulting people?
Just wonderin'
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Are you very comfortable with the means (impersonating people, companies and organisations to tar their image) as something that the public debate really could use more of in general, or do you feel that they are mainly justified by the ends of fighting for good causes?
Has there been any retaliation for your pranks/hijinks?
... that you have made examples of (or their representatives), shown any evidence of sympathy or understanding to your cause?
In your film "The Yes Men Save the World" it would appear that the targets of your pranks were completely offended and dismissive; they were portrayed to respond 100% in line with the wrongoer persona by which the Yes Men has identified them (I'm sure many would agree with your analysis).
If any had shown a form of understanding or compassion for your rhetorical purpose, who, and how?
What was it like getting busted by the Bureaucrash guys in front of the Cato Institute? Do you just hate those guys or is there any sort of camaraderie or at least friendly rivalry among culture jammers, even those with different ideological motivations?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Has there been any retaliation for your pranks/hijinks?
Considering the summary lists a court case from the Chamber of Commerce after The Yes Men held a mock conference where they claimed the Chamber of Commerce was going green, I'd guess that the answer to your question is an undoubted unsurprising "yes."
Furthermore on their site you can find news articles of companies like Peabody Energy suing them to take their company name off their fake sites.
My work here is dung.
You purchased the brilliant satire project "Voteauction.com" in 2000 for 1 euro. Any plans to resurrect large-scale web-based pranks like this? They seem to have more broad penetration than your videos, which go largely unnoticed save for the astute film-goer.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I'm watching your Fix the World movie, and it's hilarious. But, I disagree. You make the point that industry is at fault for the suffering of Bhopal. That's not the whole truth, though. Aren't the people of India responsible for suing Dow in order to get the justice they want? The biggest failure as I see it is from the government of India, and the lack of unrest. Luckily for them, two members of the Free Market saw an opportunity in calling for more damages from Dow.
So, to summarize in a question, who's more responsible for action against injustice, the corporation of stockholders, or the population that's affected?
If you posed as a lobbyist, I suspect some legislator would be willing to accept "persuasion" from you. This might expose the routine bribery accepted by politicians in the name of lobbying.
As the official spokesmen for [insert name of multi billion dollar bailed-out bank here], can you confirm that all executive bonus payments for the next financial year will be returned to the taxpayer as a gesture of gratitude and goodwill?
How have you been successful at thwarting litigation? Are you able to claim fair use / parody rights?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I first became aware of your efforts when the Dow Chemical/Bhopal news stories hit. It struck me as brilliant at the time; but less than seven years later, it's hard for me to find folks who remember that bit of agitprop (indeed, sadly, it's often challenging to find people who remember what happened at Bhopal at all). In general, it's definitely hard to see any trend towards change in the attitudes of the type of organizations you've lampooned. I wonder sometimes if the most lasting effect of your efforts isn't simply to boost morale among activists who share your views and love seeing you skewer your targets? What do you think? In your opinion, what is the lasting impact of your work?
Have you ever been impersonated by somebody else?
I've been watching the movie and HO LEE SHIT it is so funny and so wrong. You all must see this. It's like Michael Moore's old TV show, on crack. Holy shit this is wrong and funny.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
n/t
What do you guys think of the occupy wallstreet protests?