Saturday, February 18, 2017



The Trump press conference the other day was a textbook example of 'culture jamming', as practiced most famously by Adbusters. The idea of culture jamming is to use the power of your opponent against them, like in jujutsu. So Trump spent a great deal of his speech railing against the corrupt mainstream media. And mainstream media (if they are doing their job) in turn have to report this without editorialising it, lest they be accused of bias. The net result is the media in reporting Trump, report against themselves. Furthermore, in addressing the American people directly, Trump demonstrates the irrelevance of media gatekeepers in the internet age. I image news editors are quaking in their boots. No wonder networks such as CNN are refusing to carry live briefings. If you want a historical parallel for the magnitude of this, think Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries. It might not happen now, nor with Trump, but the writing is definitely on the wall.

Culture Jamming and subvertising
Here is a PDF of my powerpoint slides for a lecture on Subvertising that I gave in 2014