Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge--And Why We Must

Charmingly naive, just like I was in the 90s! History has shown that the methods in this book haven't really done anything to improve the quality of our lives and the safety of the natural world, yet they are still being advocated by liberal campaigners today. Desperate to avoid having to advocate any form of communism, they repeat the same errors that we made in the 90s, which repeated errors made back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. This book is full of sensible information surrounded by nonsense, category errors next to solid facts, citation requirements next to well evidenced horrors, and good plans next to underpants gnomery. Despite all this Lasn is correct about so much stuff, even if he has a tendency to wrap it liberal magical show more thinking, and like all of us back in the 90s who were ignored and vilified for our predictions of future society, we were only wrong in that things are worse now than we thought they'd be. show less

A little rabid, and may have needed more rigorous fact-checking, but philosophically brings up some interesting questions.

Interesting if you want to read a Situationist manifesto, not so much if you're looking for a book detailing why America's consumer culture is, economically, heading to a bad end.

I found it somewhat funny that this is a booklong ad for AdBusters. It's made me go from loving them to somewhat hating them for their disingenuity.

Ah, the dream of the 90s. With all the untapped potential of cyberspace to change the world. At least that's how this book opens, before cyberspace and culture jamming were co-opted by advertisers.

This book was written by a crotchety old guy who thinks the best time in US-ian history was the post WWII era when women cooked and men were real men with real jobs. He doesn't actually say it that way, but he does admit that post-WWII was awesome, and that feminists are just a whiny "victim group". When he claimed that the Internet was going to change the world because it would make people stop sitting in front of their TV sets, I just pictured the author now, whining that kids sitting in front of their computers aren't doing anything to help show more change the world.

In general I would just recommend not reading this book and just reading No Logo by Naomi Klein. Her book is more well written, less surly, and most importantly, doesn't claim that feminists are wrong. show less

An all right description of the process of culture jamming, but the author goes a bit too far in disdaining culture, refusing to give any merit to those things that might be worthwhile in western culture.

Feeling hypnotized by advertising? Tired of the corporate agenda? It's time to become a culture jammer, and this is the instruction book. Written by Kalle Lasn, the editor of Adbusters magazine, Culture Jam takes an activist (almost militant) approach to attacking our brand name culture.

Naive, self-indulgent, and hypocritical. The author makes a couple anemic attempts at a cogent analysis of consumerism before giving up and lapsing into a loose recital of silly and self-congratulatory schemes. After reading Mediated and Nation of Rebels, both of which offer startling insights, this book is only memorable for being aggravating.