THE YES MEN AND ACTIVISM IN THE INFORMATION ... - Index of

the images surrounding it. In the words of Debord, “The spectacle is not a collection of images,
but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” 71 The Situationists practiced the tactic
of détournement, the rerouting of ideas and images, to subvert the Spectacle. Images produced by
the Spectacle of mass media would then be reappropriated, “altered and subverted so that rather
than supporting the status quo, their meaning becomes changed in order to put across a more
radical or oppositionist message.” 72 Like the Situationists and Debord, RTMark and the Yes Men
see that capitalism has created a state of pure desire, in which consumers want certain products
because they are new, or, as in the case of the WTO, organizations because they are presented as
benevolent. 73 Yet while the Yes Men push the agenda of the WTO beyond its limits and attempt
to make it seem ridiculous, RTMark remains truer to the philosophy of the Situationists and
détournement. Here, comparison with the Canadian magazine AdBusters is useful. AdBusters
appropriates well-known ad campaigns and changes the imagery into anti-advertising works of
art. In a similar manner, RTMark diverts the corporate goals and tools to build anti-corporate
sentiment. AdBusters, for example, will take a Nike ad and alter it so that “rather than supporting
the status quo, [the] meaning becomes changed in order to put across a more radical or
oppositionist message.” 74 Both AdBusters and RTMark fight against what many consider to be
the corporate takeover of our Western collective consciousness. For Alexander Galloway,
71 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New York : Zone Books, 1994), §4.
72 Marshall, 151-153.
73 Ibid.
74 “Key Ideas in Situationist Theory,” Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.com, accessed November 2, 2004.
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