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Blog 11 - The Yes Men

The “Yes Men” critique of media is clever and different in ways rhetorical ways towards audience to really think deeper than what meets the eye. The main point portrayed in the film is simply that, the companies, like the prank of being a spokesman for Dow Chemical that they posed as in the film, don’t do what they COULD and have the power to do what is ethical, and not of greed (What about the victims of the Bhopal spill!?!? )and self-interest when they have such power of the economics of life’s stability and the like. This similar interest is worth noting the same argument that Noam Chomsky describes in the “Propaganda Model” that shows the very same economical power control over the masses!!

Another claim made in the film that is emphasized through the various pranks is the power of manipulation without notice. Marx’s “false consciousness” is very well demonstrated in this film as the viewers get a better sense of what really is going behind the scenes of the different companies. Again, like many other media, one needs to rethink and or be critical of claims made by even the most respected and powerful icons out there. In fact, those icons should be especially analyzed or researched before being manipulated.

Blog 10 - Video Vortex

The Art of Watching Databases: The article by Geert Lovink argues that Youtube is really "the art of watching databases" where receiving information on Youtube is not intended to be "informative" further than what is displayed on 2 minute videos and mastering the skills to watch databases require nothing more than the interest in looking for "brief peaks" of information.

Constructive Instability: Another author named Thomas Elsaesser approaches Youtube and Web 2.0 by describing the close merging of "art" and "life" that they bring to human and it is difficult to draw a fine line between nature/culture without really modifying how we define "life" of human as things become more life-like.

The similarities between the two arguments are understood through the processes of Youtube searching. Youtube-ing goes through the process of searching something up by a name (tag) leads to hours of endless database that always leads you astray the focus of your search! By this, I mean the endless hours spent "searching" for something (Rube Goldberg), but you find yourself somehow on the other end of the "tag" spectrum watching a video of a cat playing with a piece of yarn instead! However, the most fascinating part of this process is that most of us can't remember why we started watching the cat with the yarn in the first place without realizing the goal of looking for Rube Goldberg!!! (Alas, the power of tagging.) Thus, this leads to a second similarity between the two approaches of Web 2.0 (Youtube). Not only are we being drained with the massive overload of data, but we have an extensive enjoyment of the randomness and short lived information given to keep us happy! As Geert Lovink puts it, "we relive our childhoods, aware that unknown companies are watching over our shoulders." similarly, Thomas Elsaesser's experiment also lead to seeing benefits to human enjoyment as well, as he puts it, "Thanks to all of them[Youtube videos], I have found on YouTube ways of knowing and ways of being that are ludic and reflexive, educational and participatory, empowering and humbling."

So what else is there to say about Youtube? Geert exerts that Youtube-ing has brought out ADHD in all of us as we get very comfortable with simply "getting what we want" by playing with the on and off switch in our heads with a click of a button because we simply don't have the memory to be attentive to videos lasting more than 2 minutes! On top of our ADHD, we feed this behavior with more undivided total attention by multitasking, as did the home television has taught us.

For Thomas Elsaesser, he views Youtube and Web 2.0 as another piece that still divides "art" and "life" even though it may seem the two may be blending together because of the life-like processes embedded in today's culture and technology. Furthermore, he argues that in order for art to survive, it "may need to become more like life than life itself(as opposed to life-like)" because our form of life becomes more engineered and programmed and "made". Thus, I think is it a rather ironic solution for the defined lines between "art" and "life" to continue to exist by essentially being the other, that is, "art" being more like life, while "life" pushes toward art form because of technology and biology.

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.

the yes men

The yes men are political comedians. They expose the evil doings of big corporations through culture jamming and through pranks. Through their pranks they feel that they can reveal things otherwise hidden to the general public. Similarly to Jon Stewart, they are using irony and comedy to be political and use political commentary. Actually I've noticed a change in this recent movie and things that I've read from them in the past in TCS classes I've taken a few years ago. They seem to have become more "famous" and in doing so they seem less sincere, but putting this aside, they do seem similar to a concept we have learned in class. Marx's theory about false consciousness seems pretty inline with what the yes men are trying to reveal. They are trying to reveal that our consciousness is being manipulated, as was Marx. They are trying to reveal the truth and the constructs of how society works, and how it keeps most people in the dark and behind a hypothetical curtain.

Blog 11: The Yes Men

The "Yes Men" documentary, or mockumentary details events that they set up to fool and satirize public knowledge. They use mass media such as public news and private functions such as investor meetings to get their points across. They prey on the fact that people listen to the news and take the knowledge it conveys as true to the letter. Also, it shows that news is full of bias as the events that led to their impersonation of Dow/Union Carbide brought back news that viewers were not aware of. People did not know that the problems are not solved over at Bhopal. It would appear that corporate America does a fantastic job of containing news and controlling mass media, despite the fact that certain truths are filtered by medial bias. What I enjoyed the most was the comedic but impactful use of the New York Times to distribute artificial (optimistic) news through one of the most trusted sources. Many times I feel like the New York Times chooses what does into history, they make the news. If it wasn't for the internet and the ability for individuals to write their own information down, the NYT would be the only historical repository for information. The way the Yes Men depict corporate control is similar to commodity fetishism as the opinion the public has about a company can be broken down into monetary form.

video vortex

Geert Lovnik takes the stance that youtube and such things have forced viewers to be constantly stimulated and to be entertained. Lev Manovich on the other hand says that youtube has allowed for amateurs to do something professional. I can tell that Lovnik is taking the assumed, stereotypical, approach to addressing new media. He says it is ruining our minds and making us all forced to rely and more and more stimulation to be entertained. He seems be saying the same, negative, thing that alot of media critiques have said, with no resolution. Manovich instead argues that there can be positive outcomes of youtube. He approaches this new media as a positive, as a opportunity for people, instead of a negative. He argues that we can expand ourselves and our consciousness with youtube and with the internet and its ability to help us communicate.

Blog 11- The Yes Men

When I was watching “The Yes Men Fix the World” I could not help but think of Noam Chomsky and how he fought for the injustices that occurred in East Timor. The Yes Men were fighting for the people of Bohpal, and how their tragedy of the gas leak was not resolved or sufficiently compensated. The Yes Men portrayed executives from DOW chemical company, going as far as making a faux website and waited for invitations to go to conferences or interviews. After getting an invitation to a mass media outlet the Yes Men are able to seemingly right the wrong of DOW and Union Carbide. Although they were eventually discovered the Yes Men were able to bring attention to and shed light on a tragedy that Union Carbide has tried to sweep under the rug. The Yes Men’s other work is similar, take advantage of mass media and use it to assist them in spreading the message that is not commonly heard or known.
The method that they seem to be using is a false consciousness which is accompanied by commodity fetishism. Where the “institutional processes in capitalist society are misleading to the proletariate and to other classes.” The mass media does this, and the Yes Men use it to their advantage and do it also to show society that they too They also show the disconnect between reality and what the mass media puts up appearances. The mass media “obscures realities of exploitation and domination.” The Yes Men try to clarify the obscurities with their pranks.

Blog 11 The Yes Men

The Yes Men provide the public with “what if” scenarios, in which “big businesses” actually demonstrate concern for the well being of the masses. They play the characters of “yes men”, company spokesmen commonly associated with political and social spin, only instead of speaking in the interest of big businesses they claim to represent, the Yes Men speak in the interest of the public. There is no denying that big businesses show more concern for profit than they do for the consumers who buy their products or the workers who make their products. In the case of Dow Chemical, the business neglected to take responsibility for paying damages to the chemical spill victims in Bhopal, a chemical spill caused by their newly acquired asset, the Union Carbide chemical company. The Yes Men's prank of impersonating a Dow Chemical representative and informing the public that Dow was finally taking the initiative to pay these damages, demonstrated what could have been a possible action taken by Dow; the Yes Men wanted to show the world that Dow Chemical could have paid damages to the chemical spill victims by liquidating Union Carbide, but were, in fact, paying nothing. The Yes Men exposed Dow Chemical 's selfishness and greed on world television, as well as the greed of the company's investors who sold their stock following the false claim, causing Dow Chemical's stock to plummet $2 billion.

I believe that the concept of false consciousness is attacked throughout the film, which is of course aided by its partners, propaganda and commodity fetishism. Dow Chemical could have paid damages to the Bhopal spill victims, or at least paid for the area to be properly cleansed of dangerous chemicals, but instead chose to lull the public into a false state of consciousness. The plight of the spill victims was ignored, and Dow Chemical made a new commercial promoting the image of the company as “working to make the word a better place to live” (I cannot decide whether this is ironic, or hypocritical). The propagandistic commercial was essentially a cover up, a method by which Dow Chemical could acquire a new asset for itself, while quietly sweeping the asset's debts under the rug. This ties into commodity fetishism, because the company places more value on its inventory and its profits, than it does the health and safety of its workers and the people who live in the areas affected by the spill. The Yes Men showed that though Dow Chemical claimed to have human lives as its priority in its commercial, the only human beings the company was really concerned for were share holders and “loyal” consumers.

Blog 11: The Yes Men Fix The World

The Yes Men use somewhat illegal tactics to bring to light what they believe to be wrong with large corporations and how they treat people and profits. One instance of this is when they poked fun at Exxon for making ‘biofuel’ out of humans. Obviously Exxon does not do this, but by telling people that they do, The Yes Men try to ignite peoples’ sense of morality and get them to question big business. It invokes a sense of anger at the company for something that they did not do, which can be redirected to things that the company does do, such as unfair business practices, like price gouging or unfair labor or wages. Personally, although I think that big business is (on average) a horrible machine, The Yes Men go about it in all the wrong ways. The way they conduct their culture jamming is in and of itself immoral and untruthful. They should not be able to hurt a business just because, they as a group, think that it is the right thing to do. That is why we have a legal system and laws. The Yes Men are nothing more than vigilantes.

A TCS term that relates to what they did is commodity fetishism. They believe that big business turns people into objects, devalues life, and uses others for profit, which is what commodity fetishism is about. Commodity fetishism is a Marxist theory that states that social relationships are transformed into monetary ones within a capitalist society.

Blog 11: The Yes Men Fix the World!! Corporations, Big Business, Humanity, and Commodity.

Andy Nichlbaum and Mike Bonanno of Yes Man are critiques of media that believe that corporations and big businesses make decisions primarily for profit making and not for maximizing other aspects of life such as happiness, environment, and wellness of people.

They do several pranks to demonstrate this theory. One of their pranks was to act like a DOW executive who announced they would clean up their mess in Bhopal and compensate their victims. The stock market ended up dropping 2 billion dollars in 20 minutes, and the market began a contraction. By doing the “right thing,” lots of profits were lost by DOW. This is why companies do not do “the right thing.” It is to protect the money. If profits go down that means less money, and less money means more people will be unhappy. Where do we find a balance between, doing the “right thing” and making money?

Another prank they pulled was saying that some energy Exxon has created was made from a Human body. This kind of represents the same theme as expressed in the DOW prank, where humans life are traded money.

This relates to two concepts we learnt in class. False consciousness and commodity fetishism. False consciousness is represented by the fact that as citizens we know what is going on with Corporate interests but we chose to conceal these facts in our own obscure reality that allow these dominant acts to be executed. Commodity fetishism is represented by the creation of labor as a commodity that is separate than humanity, we can see that the interests of Corporations are for the benefits of labor rather than humanity.

Blog 11: The Yes Men

In the film, the Yes Men criticize the media through culture jamming playing pranks on the media and large corporations. Their goal is to raise awareness of the societal issues, specifically the exploitation of others by large companies. They do this by presenting extremes with the hope that this will shock people into realizing the issue at hand. They create fake websites, conduct interviews, and attend conferences pretending to be representative of big corporations that they don’t like. They are very critical of big business’ greed and lack of ethics. In response to the disaster at Bhopal, they created Gilda, the golden skeleton, for their presentation on the “acceptable risk calculator.” At this conference they discussed the price of human life stating that the loss of human life is acceptable if you can make money in the process.

Then at an Exxon Oil conference they presented a renewable biofuel made from the victims of climate change. They wanted to reveal the consequences of the actions of these profit-driven companies. They used these human flesh candles to bring businessmen face-to-face with the issues raised by their questionable business practices in a very shocking way.

During an interview at BBC news they announced that DOW was accepting responsibility for the Bhopal disaster and that they were going to liquidate Union Carbide and use that money to compensate the victims. They wanted to raise awareness for the situation by presenting as scenario that is the exact opposite of what DOW Chemical is doing. DOW is willing to spend money cleaning up their name through advertisements but won’t spend any to clean up the chemical mess in Bhopal. This use of culture jamming raises awareness for current issues grabbing the attention of their audience by shocking them with blatant images of an exaggerated reality.

Blog 10: Video Vortex

Geert Lovink argues in his article, “The Art of Watching Databases,” that with the advent of YouTube we now watch databases of endless short clips that accommodate our short attention span.

Lev Manovich, in “The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life” argues that there has been a gradual shift within the media allowing for more communication and an increased in nonprofessional producers.

Both articles look at the effect of the rapid growth of social media sites such as YouTube. Manovich discusses how users make ‘remixes' of different content from different sources. He talks about how industries now create designs that are intended to be customized by users. Companies, like Google, want users to contribute to their site. They make money by collecting data from users. For this reason they want as many users as possible to visit social media sites such as YouTube. They give users unlimited storage space allowing them to post as much as they want. This creates the massive amounts of clips found in the databases that Lovink discusses in his article. YouTube’s clip chain that continues forever provides users with an endless supply of videos. This endlessly branching database, Manovich argues is site of millions of conversations taking place at the same time. Users add comments or videos in response to other videos creating a conversation between users. This allows artists to be more easily influenced by each other as they respond to each others’ work as they produce their own art.

Blog 10: Video Vortex

The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life

With companies finding business and other economic motivations in Web 2.0 we have seen expansion in this industry. Sites like youtube, facebook, myspace create a new “communication medium” that allow users to produce and create personal videos. One new form of communication that has come out of Youtube is responding to a video with a video.

Codecs and Capability

Youtube has surpassed other file formats such as .avi, .divx, and .xvid – as being universal for all computers that have access to the internet. It is much simpler to share a friend a Youtube video than a video on your hard drive. Sharing a youtube video is easy because you can simply share the link with your friend, rather than sharing the entire video with them. With the help of adobe, codecs are easily transferred and installed on to personal computers worldwide. Many browsers come flash enabled. Youtube offers a quick and reliable video sharing network, storing the videos on a virtual cloud (or web 2.0), and thus connecting users via broadband interfaces.

Despite the positives of Youtube there are negatives. The quality of the media is severly worse when compared to 1080p HDTV, or Blue Ray. The frames per second and audio kbs are severely reduced. These factors are directly affected by the bandwidth cap of our modern day telecommunication lines. However luckily we live in a time where the Technology industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy. I foresee improvements in bandwidth in the future.

Comparison

Both Lev Manovich and Sean Cubitt brushed upon some similar concepts. First they discussed Youtube’s significance of being a medium of communication. Sean Cubitt goes more into the technological aspects that allow this to occur, whereas Lev Manovich focuses on the cultural aspects of these changes. Both would agree that Bandwidth is a major limitation of potential, but with our increasing Technology industry; time should solve this problem.

Blog 11: The Yes Men Fix the World!!

In the documentary, The Yes Men Fix the World are about two men named Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno who critique about the deception of company goals. They use media to expose these companies in order for the public to notice what is really going on through closed doors. When people think, "Oh this company is actually doing something for the common good" most companies mislead them and take the quicker route in establishing dangerous constructions at places that have 'bad' governments and is cheap to build the building. What the Yes Men do is to expose this greed and power for money to the public and try to reach their goal of protecting people's rights and safety. There were a few pranks lead to astonishing feedbacks from companies.
All of these pranks leads to idealism or ideology on how it is so common, people do not notice it. What the Yes Men do is to try to present the reality in most companies' projects to give them a sense of what they are doing is bad. However, it gave the opposite affect when companies gave them their company card.

By believing that their companies help or provide the common uses for "their" people/ consumers/ society, they do no realize the dangers that may be caused to others in the process of building and establishing that building. This is what society needs to be aware of in order stop these acts and to help other people.

Blog 11: The Yes Men

The critique of the media by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men is that it is primarily a means to benefit corporations monetarily. All of their pranks that were shown in the film "The Yes Men Fix the World" were done in an attempt to show this reality to the public. The assumption that the Yes Men made was that people accept that the corporations are making the best decision for the public when in actuality, they are doing a lot less than they could because is would make them less money. The pranks, such as when Andy pretended to be an executive of the DOW company attempted to show the public otherwise. This and all of the other political hoaxes were essentially the products of idealism, showing that companies could be making decisions to benefit the masses, but are not. In most of the cases, the Yes Men tried to give the other officials they were speaking to a glimpse at the reality, trying to perhaps make them feel some remorse for their purely capitalistic doings. However, none of these attempts ever seemed to get through to them. Fortunately, the regular people that were victims of the pranks seemed to take most of them very well and were in fact glad that someone was putting their situations in view of the rest of the nation and even the world. The most appropriate concept from class that applies to these pranks/situations is false consciousness. The Yes Men make the point that most people just assume the government and corporations are doing what is best for the public and try to bring reality to them, showing the real atrocities.

Blog 10_Wk_8_Video_Vortex: PP 9-44 Alex Elliot

The articles by Lev Manovich and Thomas Elsaesser point to a fascinating trend. Lev Manoavic states that the Internet is becoming a communications medium over a distribution medium while Thomas Elsaesser says that the Internet is leading to people becoming more in tune with technology “ post humans” as he calls them are people who have extensions of technology, the flesh being only the default extension to consciousness that you are born with and that using the Internet is essentially just adding on to body extension. Lev Manovic supports this, by sitting the growing numbers of people producing in the Internet broadcasting or web 2.0 phenomenon we see a clear connection to Elsaesser's claims. Consciousness is expanded though the Internet as people use you tube and social networking sites to share information and to experience things though social networking rather then real life, from personal experience I would site the popularity of Internet reviews as a supporting example to this. Thomas Elsaesser also talks about how the Internet is good for artist, siting large you tube traffic videos such as the honda cog, sitting that the video led him to a French mash up done by a well know avant grade artist; not only does this support Lev Manovich, that states basically says any thing to the inherent can find an audience but it also shows that big business can help independent you tube broadcasters and other social networks.

What I take away is that the Internet feeds of users and cooperations using both to build off of each other. It is a communications medium as much as a distribution medium feeding both our needs to consume as a capitalist culture and our needs to connect as human beings.... but thats just my opinion.

Blog 10: Video Vortex

Codecs

Youtube has definitely played a major role in the popularization in use of the codec/file extension .flv (flash video). The codec is widely used because it is a very compact one that is easily decompressed (not so much recoded easily), and also the container of the file is read easily by flash enabled browsers and does not require a download to play. Together these reasons have contributed to .flv prevalence across the internet media channels. In addition, the article goes into discussion regarding the need for the internet to have standardized protocols. He explains that many of the formats of media online are not great, but "good enough." Also the fact that the compression of .flv videos severely reducing viewing experience is debated as much of what is loss cannot be picked up by the standard human eye.

Conceptual Power of On-Line Video

This essay is formatted as five smaller ones, each detailing different points. We are obsessed with narratives and media show that narratives are becoming more complex and try to connect with larger audiences than ever before. With online media such a YouTube, there is no more "boundary" that separates who are allowed to contribute content to the public sphere, now anyones opinion can get anywhere (easier). Additionally, it is the falling cost of creating content that allows anyone's opinion to be made into a compact, transferable, and viewable media. Once enough media is generated, repositories such as YouTube serve as a great library of information that is accessed for a multitude of reasons. Web 2.0 allows mankind a new source of information; each other.

Contrast

Both articles do a great job of explaining evolved aspects of YouTube, be it the way that they share things or the sheer volume of what is shared. The earlier one did a better job of explaining why it is that YouTube is so successful on their part as the later explains that it is the users who generate the content who enrich YouTube and strengthen it.

Blog 10- Video Vortex

Lev Manovich’s The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life is about how sites sucks as Youtube, Facebook, or Myspace has given amateurs the power to create media and turn the internet into “a communication medium” from its original “publishing medium” form.

Geert Lovink’s ‘The Art of Watching Databases: Introduction to the Video Vortex Reader,” is about how society has turned their attention to internet databases, and the content that it has to offer satiates our hunger to be entertained quickly and easily.

Both authors agree that the social media sights have become more easily accessible to the general public, which explains the plethora of random media that can be found on sites like YouTube or Facebook. They both believe that the people uploading the material are using some sort of strategy or tactic to catch the attention of viewers everywhere. I think that Lovink put more thought into the strategic maneuvers behind viral media while Manovich only discusses the entertainment value of the media. It seems like Manovich believes that the “ADHD” like characteristic of viral media started a social evolution from a content society to one that needs instant gratification. While it seems like Lovink believes that people have changed the way we look at media and that now it is going to be difficult for real artists to differentiate art from random viral media.

Blog 10 Video Vortex

The Practice of Everyday (Media) Life
Lev Manovich
The phenomenon of Web 2.0 has inverted the producer “strategies” of producing social media and consumer “tactics” of making social media their own, in that producers now market the flexible option of customizing social platforms to consumers, and consumers now customize social platforms by adhering to and utilizing structured programs for customization.

The Art of Watching Databases
Geert Lovink
The phenomenon of teenagers and adults watching seemingly endless chain of online media clips is similar to the necessary entertainment of children: neither children, nor mature individuals desire to be engaged in activities they may consider boring or too complicated, so their attention must be regularly diverted to something visually and mentally gratifying in order to keep them content.

Agreements/Disagreements
Manovich and Lovink make arguments that describe YouTube as a means for individuals to express their individuality, though originality, a key concept in individuality, is rarely present. According to Lovink's research, only 1 percent of YouTube users create their own videos. Instead of creating new media, they use mainstream media platforms to alter original videos, to demonstrate how “original” they are as individuals. Likewise, Manovich explains how the carefully structured company strategies now “mimic people's tactics of... reassembly, and remixing”, which means that an individual's ability to reassemble and remix media as a method of self-expression, becomes limited by the constructs of the mainstream.

Their arguments differ in how they perceive “remixing” as an expression of individuality. It can be argued that Lovink believes that creating a remake of an original video is imitation, and therefore not an expression of individuality. Consider posters of the original art pieces sold as souvenirs at museums, or professional artist recreations of those same pieces for art enthusiasts; they are imitations of the originals, or to use a more harsh term, fakes. On the other hand, Manovich mentions how subcultures came into being, not “from scratch”, but by “cultural appropriation and/or [remixing] of earlier commercial culture by independent individuals and groups.” This could mean that a new artist can express artistic individuality if he/she uses the original piece as a jumping off point. A good example of original remixing, from YouTube, would be the video “Chad Vader Chocolate Rain.” In this video, Chad Vader, a YouTube persona created by Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, imitates Tay Zonday's original video “Chocolate Rain”, but the intent of the video was not to recreate Zonday's video; if it was, Yonda and Sloan would not have had a Darth Vader imitator singing the song. “Chad Vader Chocolate Rain” is original because it built upon a preexisting piece, and created something new.