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

of mass advertising and propaganda. 98 In this way, the most successful and sophisticated culture
jams are not simply parodies or advertisement manipulations. They are “interceptions – counter-
messages that hack into a corporation’s own method of communication to send a message starkly
at odds with the one that was intended.” 99 Thus, according to the definition of culture jamming
established here, the Yes Men are not as fruitful at jamming as their contemporaries. Though the
group certainly “hacks into a corporation’s method of communication,” the Yes Men do not
often (as in the case of Gatt.org and their WTO impersonations) “send a message starkly at
odds” with the one they are trying to debunk. RTMark, on the other hand, makes its anti-
corporate message clear by acting as corporations do to show their abuses in a critical light. In
this way, Vamos and Servin, as the two principal figures behind RTMark (as well as the Yes
Men), claim closer ties with fellow culture jammers who are often underdogs using such tactics to
fight a much more powerful enemy.
In the 1980s, a feminist artists’ group calling themselves Guerilla Girls (and donning
gorilla masks) emerged, using tongue-in-cheek humor to raise awareness of women’s position
within a male-dominant art world as well as society as a whole. The Girls, much like eighteenth
century pamphleteers, canvassed New York with posters asking, “Do women have to be naked
to get into the Met. Museum?” to expose the injustice they encountered within the art world, of
which most non-artists (both female and male) were unaware. Their posters were biting and
sarcastic, and even their most humorous images seethed with a malicious undertone. Their signs,
98 Jordan and Taylor, 82.
99 Klein, 281.
48