Adbusters Media Foundation | Journal of the Mental Environment

We’re stuck in a machine.

Its gears chew through us every day — capitalism, war, tech, finance . . . mechanized reality, swiped and scrolled.

It’s whirring faster and faster every day. Cooking the planet. Bleaching the coral. Mowing the ancient trees. Filling our oceans, our forests, our lungs with plastic.

Its algorithms scramble our minds and turn children into addicts. It captures every semblance of humanity and turns it into a product.

Now, with AI, it’s found a way into our souls.

And if we don’t stop it, this beautiful experiment of ours on planet earth will collapse into a ten-thousand-year dark age.

So we tried to come up with a solution . . .

The final volume of our DESIGN ANARCHY trilogy will pull you out of the slop . . . it’ll reignite the fire in your eyes and whack your soul into an all new, wild and wobbly kind of future.

This is a must read!!!

Pre-order it now — $5, shipping included. Offer goes poof this Monday midnight.

Stay human . . . or die trying.

Moment of Truth

I can’t believe it.

Raoul Vaneigem died. He was one of my heroes in the 60s.

His book, The Revolution of Everyday Life, was such a powerful force. The idea that every intimate, little aspect of your life can change if you really want it to. Fuck, what an epiphany.

That’s how I want to be . . . that’s the way I want to live!

Back then, it felt like we were on the cusp of world revolution. Young people were awake, alive, and fighting like hell to swerve our sicko world in a bold, beautiful new direction. In Haight Ashbury, Chicago . . . Tokyo, Beijing, Mexico City . . . Prague, West Berlin, and Frankfurt too . . . we all felt the spark. Raoul Vaneigem and other Situationists like Guy Debord carried it through.

The Revolution of Everyday Life has stayed with me ever since. Everything we’ve done at Adbusters — Buy Nothing Day, Occupy Wall Street, and now this idea of giving birth to a new political ideology and launching Blackspot Parties around the world — it’s all been driven by people like him and that extraordinary spark.

Now, the big question hangs over us:

Is there enough of that spark left to morph this doomsday machine of ours into a new orbit?

“Daydreaming subverts the world.”

— KL

Hey all you blackspotters out there,

Here’s the idea that scared the shit out of us in our brainstorms last week:

Social media made addicts of three generations. Now AI may turn us into zombies.

The more powerful these LLMs become, the more tempting it is to hand over your life to them. Bit by bit, you give away the very essence of what it means to be an empowered human being. Then one day you’ll have outsourced so much of yourself that you can’t even remember who you are.

Just a sad sack of zombie slop.

The secret to surviving this AI psychopalyse is to learn when NOT to use it . . . and never, ever, let it suck your soul.

Maybe we should look back at one of the green movement’s big wins: The Precautionary Principle.

Whenever a new technology raises a dangerous threat, it is up to the creator to prevent that damage.

Think of it as doomsday insurance.

Environmentalists pushed this idea until it became a part of global environmental law. If we mental environmentalists had done something similar 20 years ago, we could’ve nipped social media addiction in the bud.

It’s not too late to get it right with AI.

If the mindlords want to gamble with the fate of the human race, let’s demand they put some chips on the table.

You want to move fast and break things? Fine. Drop 1-trillion dollars in a DOOMSDAY INSURANCE INVESTMENT FUND. You break it, you buy it.

What d’you think?

Let’s fly this flag while we still can.

The symbol of a new world to come.

Vol. 2 of our design anarchy trilogy hit newsstands worldwide last week. It’s a must see for all designers and creatives fighting against the AI aesthetic now engulfing us. Check it out HERE.

That’s it for this week.

- Team AB.