Please allow me to
recommend the glories of
monkeywrenching and
culture jamming. It can be as
simple as going to the
AdBusters' website at
www.adbusters.org, printing some of their
flyers, and handing them out at your local
Wal-Mart and
McDonald's. If you prefer to
gum up the wheels of corporate culture without pre-printed brochures, here are some things you can try.
First, some
no-nos:
Don't commit any felonies,
don't vandalize property, and
don't hack anyone's website--they are ineffective methods of
persuasion, because
John Q. Public associates all of these activities with murderous thugs who deserve to spend at least five years in
prison.
Don't stand outside a store and
holler at
customers--anyone who hears you will write you off as a crazy street preacher.
Don't insult customers;
you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Don't lose your
sense of humor--people
remember funny stuff. And most importantly,
don't get caught--if the store owner chooses to press any kind of charges against you, the cops'll be on to your
scheme, and you'll never be able to successfully
monkeywrench again. Be prepared to drop the
gag at a moment's notice, if necessary.
Now here's some stuff to do: If you have some
artistic skill, make
disturbing works of
art out of recognizable products sold by the offending corporation:
sculpt a
baby out of
meat from the non-
unionized butcher area at Wal-Mart, then re-package it and sneak it into the meat case. Construct a
diorama of the destruction of the
rain forest using McDonald's food packaging and display it in the restaurant. Of course, these won't last long, so you may want to take
photographs of your work and post them instead. Or you may want to enter your works in
art shows.
Put together some colorful anti-corporation
brochures or flyers (a quick web search should turn up several sites opposing
corporations like Wal-Mart, McDonald's, the
Gap, and
Disney--snag something factual and eye-catching, then slap something together on your word processor). Then take the flyers and hide them around the store. This is fairly tough to do in a restaurant--they're too small, too quick to patrol, and too easy to clean--but it's a
piece of cake in a big store like a Wal-Mart or in a large
department store. Just take a
bunch of your flyers into the store (hide 'em in your hat or your jacket), then tape them to products--if you tape one to the back of a cereal box, the inside of a
saucepan, the back of an over-priced
T-shirt, or on the front of one of the
CDs in the back of the bin, the store employees probably won't notice what you've done until well after you've left the store. Make sure you spread your brochures around a wide area--more
shoppers will be exposed to your
propaganda that way. Best of all, when the store finally realizes what you've done, they'll have to check
every piece of merchandise they sell to make sure your message doesn't accidentally get out.
Here's a quick one to pull in
fast food restaurants. Go in during the busiest part of
lunch hour, start to make your order, then point behind the counter and yell, "Oh my God, it's a
RAT!" Then high-tail it for the door--others will follow you. If you aren't
squeamish and have some talent for
sleight of hand magic tricks, try this: catch and kill a
cockroach (probably in your home, you
filthy pig!), take it with you into a restaurant, order a
burger, take a bite,
gag, and spit on the floor, dropping the dead roach on the floor in front of the lunchtime rush (
extra points for cutting the roach in half to make it look like you bit it in two). Do NOT accept your
money back or any free food for
compensation--that's called
fraud and it means
jail time. Just enjoy the spectacle of an entire restaurant turning green and bolting for the bathroom.
If you're
lucky enough to get your grubby mitts on some
stationery and
envelopes with the
corporate letterhead, you've reached the
holy grail of monkeywrenching. Send some letters to students offering generous
scholarships. Send random letters to people informing them that they are no longer welcome in the store. Send out
Burger King coupons in McDonald's envelopes. Send
public service announcements to radio stations promoting
charitable events that don't actually exist (don't make it look like an advertisement--radio stations will call the store asking for payment first, but for charities and fundraisers, they'll usually read those on the air for free). Just make sure you type your letter and envelope, do NOT sign it, and mail it from a drop box in a high-traffic area, not from a
post office or from your home mailbox--if the store wants to accuse you of
mail fraud, that's a
federal felony and 20 years in
Leavenworth.