The Yes Men is a group of
culture jamming activists who practice what
they call "identity correction" by pretending to be powerful people
and spokespersons for prominent organizations. From their offices
in Milwaukee, they create and maintain fake websites similar to
ones they want to spoof, and then they accept invitations received
on their websites to appear at conferences, symposia, and TV shows.
Their newfound, self-proclaimed authority to express the idea that
corporations and governmental organizations often act in
dehumanizing ways toward the public has met both positively and
negatively with political overtones. Elaborate props are sometimes
part of the ruse, as shown in their 2003 DVD release
The Yes Men.
Their method is often satire: posing as corporate or government
spokespeople, they often make shocking comments which they believe
to be the real meaning of the organisation's ideology being hidden
by spin, or extrapolate what they feel is the organisation's
ideology in a '
reductio ad
absurdum' to come out with outrageous conclusions, such as that
it should be possible to sell your vote or that the poor should eat
recycled human waste. On most occasions no shock or anger has been
registered in the response to their prank, with no one realizing
they were imposters. Sometimes, the Yes Men's phony spokesperson
makes announcements that represent dream scenarios for the
anti-globalization movement or opponents of
corporate crime. The result is false news
reports of the demise of the
WTO, or Dow paying
for a Union Carbide cleanup, which the Yes Men intend to provide
publicity for what they see as problems in the current
situation.
The Yes
Men have posed as spokespeople for The World Trade Organization,
McDonalds, Dow
Chemical, and the United States Department of Housing and
Urban Development
. The two leading members of The Yes Men are
known by a number of aliases, most recently, and in film,
Andy Bichlbaum and
Mike Bonanno. Their real names are
Jacque Servin and
Igor
Vamos, respectively. Servin is an author of experimental
fiction, and was known for being the man who inserted images of men
kissing in the computer game
SimCopter.
Vamos is an associate professor of media
arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute
, New York. They are assisted by numerous
people across the globe.
Their experiences were documented in the film
The Yes Men, distributed by United
Artists, the film documentary
info
wars, and the book
The Yes Men: The True Story of the
End of the World Trade Organization (ISBN 0-9729529-9-3). Andy
Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno also directed a
2009 film entitled
The Yes Men Fix the World,
which premiered at
Sundance.
Pranks
George W. Bush
One of The Yes Men's first pranks was the satirical website
www.gwbush.com, established for the 2000 presidential election to
draw attention to alleged hypocrisies on Bush's actual website.
When asked about the site in a press conference on May 21, 1999,
Bush responded that the website had gone too far in criticizing
him, and that "there ought to be limits to freedom."
In 2004, The Yes Men went on tour posing as the group "Yes, Bush
Can!" and encouraged supporters to sign a "Patriot Pledge" agreeing
to keep nuclear waste in their backyard and send their children off
to war. They appeared at the
2004 Republican National
Convention and drove across the country at first in an RV with
a George W. Bush body wrap, and then in a painted van.
Dow Chemical
On
December 3, 2004, the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster
, Andy Bichlbaum appeared on BBC World as "Jude Finisterra", a Dow Chemical spokesman. Dow is
the owner of
Union Carbide, the
company responsible for the chemical disaster which killed
thousands and left over 120,000 requiring lifelong care.
On their fake Dow Chemical website, the Yes Men said that Dow
Chemical Company had no intention whatsoever of repairing the
damage. The real company received considerable backlash, and both
the real Dow and the phony Dow denied the statements, but Dow took
no real action.
The Yes Men decided to pressure Dow further, so as "Finisterra"
went on the news to claim that Dow planned to liquidate Union
Carbide and use the resulting $12 billion to pay for medical care,
clean up the site, and fund research into the hazards of other Dow
products. After two hours of wide coverage, Dow issued a press
release denying the statement, ensuring even greater coverage of
the phony news of a cleanup. By the time the original story was
discredited, Dow's stock had declined in value by $2 billion.
After the original interview was revealed as a hoax, Bichlbaum
appeared in a follow-up interview on the United Kingdom's Channel 4
news. During the interview he was asked if he had considered the
emotions and reaction of the people of Bhopal when producing the
hoax. According to the interviewer, "there were many people in
tears" upon having learned of the hoax. Bichlbaum said that, in
comparison, what distress he had caused the people was minimal to
that for which Dow was responsible. The Yes Men claim on their
website that they have been told by contacts in Bhopal that once
they had got over their disappointment that it wasn't real, they
were pleased about the stunt and thought it had helped to raise
awareness of their plight.
At the
International
Payments Conference on April 28, 2005, 'Dow representative'
"Erastus Hamm" unveiled Acceptable Risk, the Acceptable Risk
Calculator, and the Acceptable Risk mascot — a life-sized golden
skeleton named Gilda — to an audience of about 70 banking
professionals.
WTO
The Yes Men's most famous prank is placing a "corrected"
WTO website at http://www.gatt.org/
(
General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). The fake site began to receive
real emails from confused visitors, including invitations to
address various elite groups on behalf of the WTO, to which they
responded as if they were the actual WTO.
Appearing in newly purchased suits, The Yes Men gave speeches
encouraging corporations to
buy votes
directly from citizens. They argued that the US Civil War was a
waste of money because Third World countries now willingly supply
equivalent slaves. They also urged people to listen to the WTO, not
the facts. They then unveiled a gold spandex body suit that they
claimed would allow productivity to increase, as managers would not
have to oversee workers in person but could keep track of them via
images on an attached screen as well as implanted sensors.
New Orleans and HUD
The Yes Men appeared on August 28, 2006 at a "Housing Summit" in
New Orleans, taking the stage along with New Orleans Mayor
Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor
Kathleen Blanco.
Before an audience
composed mostly of real estate developers, one of the Yes Men gave
a speech in which he claimed to be Rene Oswin, a fictitious
"assistant under-secretary" at the United States Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD). In his speech he claimed that HUD
would reopen public housing facilities that had been closed since
Hurricane Katrina struck in August
2005. He said that HUD had changed its mind about tearing down the
undamaged housing units, and would not tear down the housing
projects, as they had planned to do in order to replace them with
mixed-income development.
HUD has called this prank, which brought attention to the lack of
affordable housing, a "cruel hoax." HUD spokeswoman Donna White
said no one named "Rene Oswin" works for the department. White
commented, "I'm like, who the heck is that?"
The fictitious Oswin also announced that the big oil companies
would contribute some of their record profits to rebuild the
wetlands destroyed by the construction of oil tanker canals to
prevent the city from being inundated by future hurricanes.
ExxonMobil
On June
14, 2007, the Yes Men acted during Canada
's largest
oil conference in Calgary
, Alberta
, posing as
ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC)
representatives. In front of more than 300 oilmen, the NPC
was expected to deliver the long-awaited conclusions of a study
commissioned by
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. The NPC is headed by former
ExxonMobil CEO
Lee Raymond, who is also
the chair of the study.
In the actual speech, the "NPC rep" announced that current U.S. and
Canadian energy policies (notably the massive, carbon-intensive
exploitation of Alberta's
oil sands, and
the development of
liquid coal) are
increasing the chances of huge global calamities. But he reassured
the audience that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry
could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people
who would die into oil.
The project, called
Vivoleum, would work in
perfect synergy with the continued expansion of fossil fuel
production. The oilmen listened to the lecture with attention, and
then lit "commemorative candles". At this point, event security
recognized the Yes Men and bundled them off stage, and the
'punchline' — that the candles were made of Vivoleum obtained from
the flesh of an "Exxon janitor" who died as a result of cleaning up
a toxic spill — was not delivered to the audience, but only to
reporters.
Milton Friedman documentary
In July 2007 an attempt to pretend to film a documentary about
Milton Friedman in order to obtain
interviews with right wing think tanks was foiled by the
Cato Institute when their cover story did not
work out. Paint was thrown on them by
Bureaucrash, the
Competitive Enterprise
Institute supported culture jammers, on their way out.
BP
On March 10, 2008, the Yes Men responded to a letter from
BP accusing them of
copyright violation, with a letter
apologizing for having forgotten BP with the spoof site
half-completed and that "BP does every bit as much damage to this
planet as does Exxon, Halliburton, or any other more obviously
nefarious company" and deserves its own properly completed spoof
site.
Captain Euro
In 1999, the Yes Men visited the offices of
Twelve Star Communications,
creators of the
Eurofederalist superhero
Captain Euro, "a comic book character
designed to promote European unification with young children.
Inside, the imposters discover the hidden, dark truth about
European Unification."
New York Times
The Yes Men also claimed partial responsibility for a prank on
November 12, 2008 where approximately 80,000 copies of a fake
edition of the July 4, 2009 edition of
The New York Times were handed out
on the streets of New York and Los Angeles. The fake edition shows
their ideas for a better future with headlines such as
Iraq War
Ends and
Nation Sets Its Sights On Building A Sane
Economy. The front page contained a spoofed motto, "All the
news we hope to print" from the famous phrase "All the news that's
fit to print". Articles in the paper announce dozens of new
initiatives, including an establishment of national health care, a
maximum wage for C.E.O.s and an article wherein
George W. Bush
accuses himself of treason for his actions during his years as
president. There is also a Reuters photo of the fake cover page and
a fake website, http://www.nytimes-se.com/.
Alex S. Jones, a former
Times
reporter and media scholar, said of the paper, "I would say if
you’ve got one, hold on to it...it will probably be a collector’s
item. I’m just glad someone thinks
The New York Times
print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would
have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and
handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of
effort."
New York Post and SurvivaBall
On September 21, 2009, one day before a UN summit lead-up to the
United
Nations Climate Change Conference 2009, over 2000 volunteers
distributed throughout New York City a 32-page "special edition"
New York Post, blaring
headlines (cover story "We're Screwed") that the city could face
deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of
global warming within the next few decades. The paper has been
created by The Yes Men and a coalition of activists as a wake-up
call to action on climate change. Other articles describe the
Pentagon's alarmed response to
global
warming, the U.S. government's minuscule response, China's
advanced alternative energy program, and how the Copenhagen climate
talks could be a "Flopenhagen".
"SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST by The
Yes Men There is also a fake website. On September 22, 2009
the Yes Men demonstrated an inflatable ball shaped costume claiming
it was a self contained living system for surviving disasters
caused by global warming. Over two dozen people wore the
SurvivaBall costumes as it was demonstrated in the East River.
Police shut down the demonstration for lack of a permit. Co-founder
of the Yes Men, Andy Bichlbaum, was arrested on an outstanding
parking ticket charge and a handful of other Yes Men were served
with summons and tickets for disorderly behavior and creating
hazardous conditions.
US Chamber of Commerce
On October 19, 2009, the Yes Men spoofed the
Chamber of Commerce, declaring a U-turn
on their climate change policy.
Footnotes
- http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/index.htm
- Gilbey, Ryan. " Jokers to the left, jokers to the right."
The Guardian. July 17, 2009.
-
http://www.theyesmen.org/hijinks/dow/movies/Channel4news.mp4
- http://www.theyesmen.org/faq#falsehopes
- http://fillip.ca/content/best-case-scenario
- 'New York Times' spoof circulated
- New York Times 'special edition' spoof perplexes
readers
- Der Spiegel
- [1]
- Liberal Pranksters Hand Out Times Spoof
-
http://gawker.com/5084164/fake-new-york-times-declares-iraq-war-over-heres-who-did-it
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7725973.stm
- http://nypost-se.com/ "WE'RE SCREWED" climate change special
edition New York Post online edition September 21, 2009
- Cops Arrest "Yes Man" Co-Founder in Latest Prank, NBC News,
September 23, 2009
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local-beat/Fake-Post-Guys-Pull-Another-One-Yes-Man-Arrested-60700217.html
- The Yes Men’s Andy Bichlbaum Arrested at ‘SurvivaBall’ Demo,
The Indypendent, September 22, 2009
http://www.indypendent.org/2009/09/22/yes-men-arrest/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYGcIhNGSIY "Will the real
chamber of Commerce please stand up?"
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