I Think Adbusters Sucks, And So Does jwz

Browser genius and DNA Lounge boss Jamie Zawinkski is fed up with Adbusters, something I’ve been for a long, long time. See, there was a time a few years back when I thought about being a web/graphic designer. I’m not half bad at design stuff when I put some time into it, and it seemed like a pretty engaging educational path. That is, until I toured CalArts and got a patronizing earful of theoretical horseshit. “See, we employ an idea called deconstr—Oh, you know what deconstructionism is?”

I digress. When I was into design, I was interested in Adbusters. They preach, essentially, that consumer culture and corporate dominance are the worst things to ever touch human civilization. Their “campaigns” include TV Turnoff Week, Buy Nothing Day, and few things that target those in the design profession who use their skills for the “evil” of designing corporate adverts.
It is, of course, bullshit. Ignoring the hypocrisy, the overflowing pomo irony of an anti-corporate magazine that owes its popularity to the same corporate mechanisms as the rest of your Barnes & Noble periodicals, Adbusters is still utterly wrong-headed. Essentially, you have a bunch of elitist fashionista designers who’ve decided that consumer culture is ugly and creepy, and therefore must be eradicated. Nevermind that most people are just trying to live and eat, much less concerning themselves with wearing expensive indie clothes made by expensive indie kids. Nevermind that genetically engineered crops could save thousands of lives per year in drought-ridden communities that don’t give a shit if it’s Monsanto or bloody Mikimoto who owns the patent on those gengineered seeds.

What disgusts me about Adbusters, ultimately, is that they prioritize their absurd “cultural warfare” over people dying in the streets in their own neighborhoods. But, of course, charity work in dingy church basements with people who smell of their own shit is hardly as glamorous as sitting in your loft in front of your Mac and Photoshopping the next “culture jam.” It’s not to say that cutting down on needless consumption is a worthless goal, but it’s one that follows squarely after ensuring that people have places to sleep, food to eat, and so forth. Dictating lifestyle to people who barely have lives is far uglier than any fat Middle-American consumer.