Culture jammers and the pawns computers make us

The Yes Men are hackers, culture jammers, both isolated and interconnected more than most. This is a strange dichotomy. Hackers and culture jammers cannot belong to a group, outside of the general ethereality of being called a ‘hacker’, a term which seems to be as vague as saying one belongs to the human race. If they belong to too a larger hacker group, they become the targets.
Their MO is one of subversion of power.
The culture jammers’ method is a cell operation, where a few people attack a specific target, then disappear. If one hacker is caught, there will be another to take his place. The cell operation is extremely hard to stop, and if the operations can be carried out through the democratic anonymity of the Internet, then it becomes impossible to stop. In fact, this is where most of the subversion is taking place, as the connectivity and the anonymity make it ideal for hackerism. The Yes Men, for instance, began with a website, which connects a person on a global scale while keeping them isolated. Your name’s Granwyth? Sure. Why not. Who’s going to know? Interviews that take place via satellite, conversions that take place over email, seem up for grabs to whoever wants to claim themselves as being true. This truth is something modernists strived for, a hegemonic grip on what is real. The Yes Men tear down that hegemony left and right, along with any concepts of what is “true”.
It is interesting that the Yes Men chose a huge phallus as a satirical prop, since the subversion of the hegemony is a feminist action, toying with patriarchical ideas of trust. Of course, some might argue that the anonymity of it all doesn’t account for liminal experiences.
The Yes Men also blur the lines between virtual reality and reality, as whatever their personas are in the virtual world are mimicked in reality. Usually it is the opposite, with AIM and Facebook displaying real people virtually, or there is a complete rift between the two, like in second life where there doesn’t have to be any relation between real and virtual characters. But the Yes Men have to become WTO members because that’s what their persona is in virtual space.
In the context of the Yes Men this might not seem like a stunning conclusion. They are only a few guys playing elaborate practical jokes for a specific purpose. But the idea of virtual technology reversing psychologies—the computer manipulating humans instead of humans manipulating computers is a large, and to some, terrifying concept. It makes me question my attachment to my computer. How influenced are we by these machines. Is the computer using me as a vessel to play out its virtual experience? Of course, it must have the most boring existence in the world if it manipulates an MFA student in Boulder, CO, where the time is equally passed between reading theory and watching anime.