How to make money from the antiglobalization
Dementia | 21.12.2001 08:05
In the web addresses below is demonstrated an institutional web page which involves the investigation and analysis of the today’s “trendy fashion”.
Investigators of this research team (consisted of about 30 persons, mostly students directed by university professors) “go with the flow of the trends, participate deep into it, detect, describe and analyze”
The fields of investigation are commercial markets, that have been, or they are still developing. Youth culture, fashion etc
Until now nothing exciting to notice, except that one of the markets investigated is also the so called anti-globalisation movement!
It seems that the activity of the last years has impressed the trend analysts by its mass character, giving them a clue to consider this portion as a growing market. Thus, they have realized investigations on the movement's tendencies and preferences in a way that companies interested on entering in the supposed market can exploit the data by buying them! All the information is presented to whom is may interested and that stands usually for companies of clothing, advertising enterprises etc. In this way these can plan their next steps of the market designing and promotion.
In a few words the entire above mean:
Organized speculative institutions are having an eye on the movement by pseudo-participating in the act, so can isolate the characteristics that can be a source of profit! That is, they observe what kind of music do they listen to, what kind of clothes they fit in and generally what kind of life-style the movement purposes and all these, after being carefully sociologically analyzed, can be sold to companies interested.
Conclusion?
All the above consist a strong element which reveals the real function of the today’s commercial society of the spectacle and maybe gives reasons for raising question about the character of the very same so-called “Anti-globalization movement”. Maybe too much attention given to the spectacular side. Too much T-shirts, too much “cool” character display? Maybe. Next time you will buy a T-shirt that expresses radical feelings, thing it twice. Somebody has already analyzed you and gives you what you want. You only have to pay for it…
Check out the sites:
-
http://www.signs-of-! the-time.nl/ and
- http://www.signs-of-the-time.nl/coolsummer/1.html
 Dementia http://www.geocities.com/deladementia/
Investigators of this research team (consisted of about 30 persons, mostly students directed by university professors) “go with the flow of the trends, participate deep into it, detect, describe and analyze”
The fields of investigation are commercial markets, that have been, or they are still developing. Youth culture, fashion etc
Until now nothing exciting to notice, except that one of the markets investigated is also the so called anti-globalisation movement!
It seems that the activity of the last years has impressed the trend analysts by its mass character, giving them a clue to consider this portion as a growing market. Thus, they have realized investigations on the movement's tendencies and preferences in a way that companies interested on entering in the supposed market can exploit the data by buying them! All the information is presented to whom is may interested and that stands usually for companies of clothing, advertising enterprises etc. In this way these can plan their next steps of the market designing and promotion.
In a few words the entire above mean:
Organized speculative institutions are having an eye on the movement by pseudo-participating in the act, so can isolate the characteristics that can be a source of profit! That is, they observe what kind of music do they listen to, what kind of clothes they fit in and generally what kind of life-style the movement purposes and all these, after being carefully sociologically analyzed, can be sold to companies interested.
Conclusion?
All the above consist a strong element which reveals the real function of the today’s commercial society of the spectacle and maybe gives reasons for raising question about the character of the very same so-called “Anti-globalization movement”. Maybe too much attention given to the spectacular side. Too much T-shirts, too much “cool” character display? Maybe. Next time you will buy a T-shirt that expresses radical feelings, thing it twice. Somebody has already analyzed you and gives you what you want. You only have to pay for it…
Check out the sites:
-
http://www.signs-of-! the-time.nl/ and -
http://www.signs-of-the-time.nl/coolsummer/1.html  Dementia
http://www.geocities.com/deladementia/
Dementia
e-mail:
deladementia@yahoo.com
Homepage:
www.geocities.com/deladementia/
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
Well, duh
21.12.2001 12:55
Clubbers go to Ibiza, do drugs, and have as their heroes Armand Van Halden, Roger Sanchez, etc. They wear clubby clothing. They listen to club music. Clubbers have friends who like to go clubbing.
Protestors go to Genoa or Gothenburg or Prague, eat organic food, and have as their heroes Noam Chomsky, Marx, Bakunin, etc. They wear hemp clothing or Che Guvera T-shirts. They have drum circles. Protestors have friends who protest.
A market niche like any other.
chris
chris
This has been going on for years
21.12.2001 14:37
undercurrents
Didn't GAP try this earlier ?
21.12.2001 19:42
And, I've also seen mail order catalogues with shitloads of Che, Marx, Lenin, anarchist stuff (tees, hoodies, posters etc.). As the MR. Chris said; we are a market as everybody else is.
Midnight Moron
speak for yourself
21.12.2001 20:54
I'm alive, not a stereotype, and I don't think I'm that unusual in that among 'protesters'! ta.
zedhead
watch out for recuperators
21.12.2001 23:01
We know you ain't serious just playing at revolution....
hugh heffner
digging in
22.12.2001 00:02
Sure, lonely souls awash in the information and media economy can be influenced to take up the latest trend without even knowing that by so doing, they are helping drain away its substance. And this strategy - dissolving meaning into meaninglessness - is the basic approach that the capitalist system as whole evolved to face the challenge of serious questioning back in the 60s and 70s. But time has passed. Today it is clear that to resist having your own words, images, symbols and arguments taken away from you and given back in an empty form, what you need is connections to a political community where people are not copying and stylizing those things, but rather inventing them and arguing about them, working on the signs and symbols and acts, making them better. This "community" is also something different than the clichés of drum circles that we used to get into back then... it's a vast community of people who refuse simple answers.
When you see somebody wearing the trendy Zapatista ski mask, just ask them publicly about their politics, and how it fits into their life.
Brian Holmes
e-mail:
106271.223@compuserve.com