Blog 11_Wk_8_The_Yes_Men by alex ellito

The yes men's pranks work to show what companies could be doing but aren't. They reveal the Marxist false consciousness and demonstrate how it is being manipulated. The cooperate think tanks work to reveal this in the video as there are directly lying to us; my favorite being “that global warming will result in less cold related death” lol.... it gets me every time. What the yes men are essentially doing is fighting fire with fire, they try to manipulate the false consciousness, be it on a smaller scale mostly qualified to the business community, to their favor and the favor of the common public. Their video reminded me mostly of manufacturing consent, mainly because the yes men seem to share Noam Chomsky's view that the media and cooperate interest under report media events; one example is that people were surprised to learn that there was still toxic wast in dow/ union carbine's old energy plant in India. Where the Yes men go a step further is that they take steps to reveal the false consciousness and even go so fare as to halt or reverse the process of manufacturing consent; mind you they have been unsuccessful, but their trying at least. What they do accomplish is that they show that two people can make a difference and get notoriety and that is very inspiring.