
The Yes Men are a
culture jamming
Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication) is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It at ...
activist duo and network of supporters created by
Jacques Servin
Jacques Servin (also known by the pseudonym Andy Bichlbaum; born 1963) is an American media artist and activist. He is one of the leading members of The Yes Men, a culture jamming activist group. Their exploits in "identity correction" are docum ...
and
Igor Vamos.
Through various actions, the Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about problematic social and political issues. To date, the duo have produced three films: ''
The Yes Men'' (2003), ''
The Yes Men Fix the World'' (2009),
and ''
The Yes Men Are Revolting'' (2014). In these films, they impersonate entities that they dislike, a practice that they call "identity correction." The Yes Men operate under the mission statement that lies can expose truth. They create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they intend to spoof, which have led to numerous interview, conference, and TV talk show invitations. They espouse the belief that
corporation
A corporation or body corporate is an individual or a group of people, such as an association or company, that has been authorized by the State (polity), state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law as ...
s and governmental organizations often act in
dehumanizing ways toward the public. Elaborate props are sometimes part of the ruse (e.g.
Survivaball), as shown in their 2003 DVD release ''The Yes Men''. The Yes Men have collaborated with other groups of similar interest, including
Improv Everywhere, Andrew Boyd and
Steve Lambert.
Background
According to Servin, the Yes Men concept initially sprang from their creation of a fake website spoofing the
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...
. To the surprise of Servin and Vamos, many believed the site to be authentic, and the two were consequently contacted to speak at a conference in Austria. Since this time, the Yes Men have continued performing large-scale hoaxes, in what they describe as a collaborative effort with journalists to help the media tell stories which they believe are important.
The Yes Men often deploy a satirical approach: they pose as a powerful entity (typically a corporate or government representative or executive) and make ridiculous and shocking comments that caricature the ideological position of the organization or person. Furthermore, they acknowledge the idea that many corporate or government entities manipulate their ideology using
spin
Spin or spinning most often refers to:
* Spin (physics) or particle spin, a fundamental property of elementary particles
* Spin quantum number, a number which defines the value of a particle's spin
* Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thr ...
; in response, the Yes Men use this power of spin to their own advantage, and use media outlets to disseminate their personal interpretation of the situation. A sense of humor and shock value is usually employed to make these issues more palatable to the general public and to call greater media attention to stories of interest.
Some of these outrageous ideas include the prospect of selling one's vote or a proposition that the poor should consume recycled human waste. On most occasions, little to no shock or outrage is publicly evoked in response to their prank.
On occasion, the Yes Men's phony spokesperson will make announcements that represent fictitious scenarios for the
anti-globalization movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalization movement, is a social movement critical of economic globalization. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist m ...
or opponents of
corporate crime
In criminology, corporate crime refers to crimes committed either by a corporation (i.e., a business entity having a separate legal personality from the natural persons that manage its activities), or by individuals acting on behalf of a corpor ...
. This has often resulted in false news reports, such as those covering the demise of the
World Trade Organization
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...
, or
Dow Chemical
The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. The company was among the three largest chemical producers in the world in 2021. It is the operating subsidiary of Dow Inc., ...
paying compensation to the victims of the
Bhopal disaster
On 3 December 1984, over 500,000 people in the vicinity of the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India were exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate, in what is considered the world's worst ind ...
.
The Yes Men have posed as spokespeople for the WTO,
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...
, Dow Chemical, and the
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the secretary of housing and u ...
. The two leading members of the Yes Men are known by a number of aliases, most recently, and in film,
Andy Bichlbaum and
Mike Bonanno (
Jacques Servin
Jacques Servin (also known by the pseudonym Andy Bichlbaum; born 1963) is an American media artist and activist. He is one of the leading members of The Yes Men, a culture jamming activist group. Their exploits in "identity correction" are docum ...
and
Igor Vamos, respectively). Servin is an author of experimental fiction, and was known for being the man who inserted images of men kissing in the computer game ''
SimCopter''. Vamos is an associate professor of media arts at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (; RPI) is a private university, private research university in Troy, New York, United States. It is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere. It was establishe ...
, New York. They are assisted by numerous people across the globe. There are other full-time members, such as Whitney Black and Rocco Ferrer, who take a more behind-the-scenes approach.
Their experiences were documented in the film ''The Yes Men'', distributed by United Artists, the film documentary ''
info wars'', and the book ''
The Yes Men: The True Story of the End of the World Trade Organization'' (). Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno also directed a
2009
2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...
film entitled ''
The Yes Men Fix the World'', which premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023.
The festival has acted ...
. In 2009 they launched their online video channel on
Babelgum
Babelgum was a free-to-view Internet television platform supported by advertising. The project was set up in 2005 by Italian media and telecommunications entrepreneur Silvio Scaglia (one of the founders of Italian TelCo Fastweb (telecommunication ...
.
Their third film, ''
The Yes Men Are Revolting'', premiered at the
2014 Toronto International Film Festival
The 39th annual Toronto International Film Festival, the 39th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held in Canada from 4–14 September 2014. David Dobkin (director), David Dobkin's film ''The Judge (2014 film), The Judg ...
.
The Yes Men encourage activist and student groups to make their voices heard through crashing conferences, creating fake websites, and getting arrested.
Projects
George W. Bush
One of the Yes Men's first pranks was the satirical website
gwbush.com
, established for the
2000 US presidential election to draw attention to alleged hypocrisies on Bush's actual website. When asked about the site in a press conference on May 21, 1999, Bush responded that the website had gone too far in criticizing him.
In 2004, the Yes Men went on tour posing as the group "Yes, Bush Can!" and encouraged supporters to sign a "Patriot Pledge" agreeing to keep
nuclear waste
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...
in their back yards and send their children off to war. They appeared at the
2004 Republican National Convention and drove across the country at first in an RV with a George W. Bush body wrap, and then in a painted van.
Ice Age Petition
The Yes Men posed as working as part of the
Bush-Cheney campaign. They carried around a petition asking for signatures to support
global warming
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...
because America's competing countries will suffer while America only bears minor side effects.
Dow Chemical
On December 3, 2004, the twentieth anniversary of the
Bhopal disaster
On 3 December 1984, over 500,000 people in the vicinity of the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India were exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate, in what is considered the world's worst ind ...
, Andy Bichlbaum appeared on
BBC World
BBC News is an international English-language pay television channel owned by BBC Global News Ltd. – a subsidiary of BBC Studios – and operated by the BBC News division of the BBC. The network carries news bulletins, documentaries, an ...
as "Jude Finisterra", a
Dow Chemical
The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. The company was among the three largest chemical producers in the world in 2021. It is the operating subsidiary of Dow Inc., ...
spokesman. Dow is the owner of
Union Carbide
Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is an American chemical company headquartered in Seadrift, Texas. It has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company since 2001. Union Carbide produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more f ...
, the company responsible for the chemical disaster in Bhopal, India on December 3, 1984. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately from the hazardous chemicals and thousands more were killed by the plume from the UCC plant during the next few days.
The Indian government reported that more than half a million people were exposed to the gas, leading to numerous early and late health defects. The Bhopal Disaster became one of the worst chemical disasters in history and the name Bhopal became synonymous with industrial catastrophe. Immediately after the disaster, UCC began attempts to dissociate itself from responsibility for the gas leak.
The Indian Supreme Court eventually mediated a settlement in which UCC accepted moral responsibility and agreed to pay $470 million to the Indian government to be distributed to claimants as a full and final settlement. The average amount to families of the dead was $2,200. Warren M. Anderson, who led the Union Carbide during the Bhopal disaster of 1984, died in 2014 at the age of 92 after fleeing to the United States; his wife, Lillian, stated Anderson suffered "25 years of unfair treatment."
On their fake Dow Chemical website, the Yes Men said that Dow Chemical Company had no intention whatsoever of repairing the damage. The real company received considerable backlash, and both the real Dow and the phony Dow denied the statements, but Dow took no real action.
The Yes Men decided to pressure Dow further, so as "Finisterra," Bichlbaum went on the news to claim that Dow planned to liquidate Union Carbide and use the resulting $12 billion to pay for medical care, clean up the site, and fund research into the hazards of other Dow products. After two hours of wide coverage, Dow issued a press release denying the statement, stating that they had no employee by that name and he was an impostor, ensuring even greater coverage of the phony news of a cleanup. In Frankfurt, Dow's share price fell 4.24 percent in 23 minutes, wiping $2 billion off its market value. The shares rebounded in Frankfurt after the BBC issued an on-air correction and apology. In New York, Dow Chemical's stock were little changed because of the early trading.
After the original interview was revealed as a hoax, Bichlbaum appeared in a follow-up interview on the United Kingdom's Channel 4 news. During the interview he was asked if he had considered the emotions and reaction of the people of Bhopal when producing the hoax. According to the interviewer, "there were many people in tears" upon having learned of the hoax. Bichlbaum said that, in comparison, what distress he had caused the people was minimal to that for which Dow was responsible. The Yes Men claim on their website that they have been told by contacts in Bhopal that once they had got over their disappointment that it wasn't real, they were pleased about the stunt and thought it had helped to raise awareness of their plight.
At the
International Payments Conference on April 28, 2005, 'Dow representative' "Erastus Hamm" unveiled Acceptable Risk, the Acceptable Risk Calculator, and the Acceptable Risk mascot – a life-sized golden skeleton named Gilda – to an audience of about 70 banking professionals.
In February 2012, it was widely reported in the
2012 Stratfor email leak that Dow Chemical Company hired private intelligence firm
Stratfor
Strategic Forecasting Inc., commonly known as Stratfor, is an American strategic intelligence publishing company founded in 1996. Stratfor's business model is to provide individual and enterprise subscriptions to Stratfor Worldview, its online p ...
to monitor the Yes Men.
WTO
One of the Yes Men's most famous pranks is placing a "corrected"
WTO
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...
website at
https://www.gatt.org (
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is a legal agreement between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas. According to its p ...
). The fake site began to receive real emails from confused visitors, including invitations to address various elite groups on behalf of the WTO, to which they responded as if they were the actual WTO. At the WTO, the Yes Men gave speeches encouraging corporations to buy votes directly from citizens. They then unveiled a gold spandex body suit that they said would allow productivity to increase, as managers would not have to oversee workers in person but could keep track of them via images on an attached screen as well as implanted sensors.
New Orleans and HUD
The Yes Men appeared on August 28, 2006, at a "Housing Summit" in New Orleans, taking the stage along with New Orleans Mayor
Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor
Kathleen Blanco. Before an audience composed mostly of real estate developers, one of the Yes Men gave a speech in which he claimed to be Rene Oswin, a fictitious "assistant under-secretary" at the
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the secretary of housing and u ...
(HUD). In his speech he claimed that HUD would reopen public housing facilities that had been closed since
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina was a powerful, devastating and historic tropical cyclone that caused 1,392 fatalities and damages estimated at $125 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. ...
struck in August 2005. He announced this false claim because HUD had recently decided to only rebuild a third of the subsidized housing stock after Hurricane Katrina, and made plans to demolish four of New Orleans’ ten public housing developments, leaving thousands of New Orleans residents without homes. This decision was contested locally, nationally, and internationally. So, the Yes Men proclaimed that HUD had changed its mind about tearing down the undamaged housing units, and would not tear down the housing projects, as they had planned to do in order to replace them with mixed-income developments.
HUD called this prank, which was intended to bring attention to the lack of affordable housing, a "cruel hoax".
[ A former resident of the community was quoted by Bichlbaum as saying, "do whatever's most effective, do it, don't worry about how it affects us," however. HUD spokeswoman Donna White said no one named "Rene Oswin" works for the department. White commented, "I'm like, who the heck is that?"
The fictitious Oswin also announced that the big oil companies would contribute some of their record profits to rebuild the wetlands destroyed by the construction of oil tanker canals to prevent the city from being inundated by future hurricanes.
]
ExxonMobil
On June 14, 2007, the Yes Men acted during Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
's largest oil conference in Calgary
Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...
, Alberta
Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...
, posing as ExxonMobil
Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational List of oil exploration and production companies, oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the Successors of Standard Oil, largest direct s ...
and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representatives. In front of more than 300 oilmen, the NPC was expected to deliver the long-awaited conclusions of a study commissioned by U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman
Samuel Wright Bodman III (born November 26, 1938 – September 7, 2018) was an American businessman, engineer, and politician who served as the 11th United States secretary of energy during the George W. Bush administration, from 2005 to 2009. He ...
. The NPC is headed by former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond
Lee Roy Raymond (born August 13, 1938) is an American businessman and was the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of ExxonMobil from 1999 to 2005. He had previously been the CEO of Exxon since 1993. He joined the company in 1963 and serve ...
, who is also the chair of the study. When the Yes Men arrived at the conference they said that Lee Raymond
Lee Roy Raymond (born August 13, 1938) is an American businessman and was the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of ExxonMobil from 1999 to 2005. He had previously been the CEO of Exxon since 1993. He joined the company in 1963 and serve ...
(the promised speaker) was unable to make it due to a pressing situation with the president. The Yes Men then went on to give a presentation in place of Lee Raymond.
In the actual speech, the "NPC rep" announced that current U.S. and Canadian energy policies (notably the massive, carbon-intensive processing of Alberta's oil sands, and the development of liquid coal) are increasing the chances of huge global calamities. But he reassured the audience that in the worst-case scenario, the oil industry could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people who would die into oil.
The project, called Vivoleum, would work in perfect synergy with the continued expansion of fossil fuel production. The oilmen listened to the lecture with attention, and then lit "commemorative candles". At this point, event security recognized the Yes Men and forced them off stage, and the 'punchline' – that the candles were made of Vivoleum obtained from the flesh of an "Exxon janitor" who died as a result of cleaning up a toxic spill – was not delivered to the audience, but only to reporters.
''New York Times''
The Yes Men (along with the Anti-Advertising Agency) also claimed partial responsibility for a prank on November 12, 2008, where approximately 80,000 copies of a fake edition of the July 4, 2009 edition of ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' were handed out on the streets of New York and Los Angeles. The fake edition shows their ideas for a better future with headlines such as ''Iraq War Ends'' and ''Nation Sets Its Sights on Building Sane Economy''. The front page contained a spoofed motto, "All the News We Hope to Print" from the famous phrase "All the news that's fit to print". Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives, including an establishment of national health care, a maximum wage
A maximum wage, also often called a wage ceiling, is a legal limit on how much income an individual can earn. It is a prescribed limitation which can be used to effect change in an economic structure.
Implementation
No major economy has a direct e ...
for C.E.O.s and an article wherein George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...
accuses himself of treason for his actions during his years as president. There is also a Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency ...
photo of the fake cover page and a fake website, http://www.nytimes-se.com/.
Alex S. Jones, a former ''Times'' reporter and media scholar, said of the paper, "I would say if you’ve got one, hold on to it...it will probably be a collector's item. I'm just glad someone thinks ''The New York Times'' print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort."
''New York Post'' and SurvivaBall
On September 21, 2009, one day before a UN summit lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009
The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the Copenhagen Summit, was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 and 18 December. The conference included the 15th session of the Conference of the Partie ...
, over 2,000 volunteers distributed throughout New York City a 32-page "special edition" ''New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative
daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates three online sites: NYPost. ...
'', blaring headlines (cover story "We're Screwed") that the city could face deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of global warming within the next few decades. The paper had been created by the Yes Men and a coalition of activists as a wake-up call to action on climate change. Other articles describe the Pentagon's alarmed response to global warming
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...
, the U.S. government's minuscule response, China's advanced alternative energy program, and how the COP15 in Copenhagen could be a "Flopenhagen". There is also a fake website. A "climate change horoscope" satire on the Sally Brompton horoscope in the Post was commissioned from an environmental activist horoscope writer but was not published.
On September 22, 2009, the Yes Men demonstrated, on the alleged behalf of Halliburton
Halliburton Company is an American multinational corporation and the world's second-largest oil service company which is responsible for most of the world's fracking operations. It employs approximately 55,000 people through its hundreds of su ...
and dozens of other climate threatening corporations, an inflatable ball-shaped costume known as the SurvivaBall, claiming it was a self-contained living system for surviving disasters caused by global warming. Over two dozen people wore the SurvivaBall costumes as it was demonstrated in the East River. Police shut down the demonstration for lack of a permit. Co-founder of the Yes Men, Andy Bichlbaum, was arrested on an outstanding parking ticket charge and a handful of other Yes Men were served with summons and tickets for disorderly behavior and creating hazardous conditions.
The SurvivaBall was also used in a protest at the steps of the capitol. The protesting balls demanded action be taken on global warming to achieve the 350.org
350.org is an international environmental organization addressing the climate crisis. Its stated goal is to end the use of fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy by building a global, grassroots movement.
The 350 in the name stands fo ...
goal. Their strategy was to block the entrance until the government comes to a binding agreement on climate change.
US Chamber of Commerce
On October 19, 2009, the Yes Men spoofed the United States Chamber of Commerce
The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is a business association advocacy group and is the largest lobbying group in the United States. The group was founded in April 1912 out of local chambers of commerce at the urging of President Will ...
, declaring a U-turn on their climate change policy. The Yes Men were not able to complete the conference without being exposed as a hoax, although their message that the United States Chamber of Commerce needs to reevaluate their direction in terms of clean energy was their primary concern and was received. Major TV and news organisations carried this story briefly before the hoax was uncovered. The US Chamber of Commerce two weeks later did change their official policy though, according to Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American former politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. He previously served as ...
it was "not because of" the Yes Men's stunt. The Chamber launched a trademark and copyright infringement lawsuit against The Yes Men, who were defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties.
It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...
. The suit was dropped in June 2013.
This action appears in their film, ''The Yes Men Are Revolting''.
Canadian environment minister
During the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference
The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the Copenhagen Summit, was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 and 18 December. The conference included the 15th session of the Conference of the Partie ...
in Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...
, the Yes Men put out a statement in which they purported to be the Canadian environment minister, Jim Prentice
Peter Eric James Prentice (July 20, 1956 – October 13, 2016) was a Canadian politician who served as the 16th premier of Alberta from 2014 to 2015. In the 2004 federal election he was elected to the House of Commons of Canada as a candida ...
. The statement pledged to cut carbon emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The statement was followed by a response from the Ugandan delegation, praising the statement, that was also faked. Another fake statement was then put out blasting the falsehoods of the original fake statement. A fake story in a European edition of the ''Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' was also posted online. Jim Prentice described the hoax as "undesirable".
Niger Delta hoax
On March 28, 2010, a video was released on YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
with the title "Shell: We are sorry". A man called Bradford Houppe, from the Ethical Affairs Committee at Royal Dutch Shell
Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company, headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New ...
gave a four-minute-long apology to the people of the Niger Delta
The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. It is located within nine coastal southern Nigerian states, which include: all six states from the South South geopolitic ...
for ruining their land, water, and communities. This video was created in response to the numerous environmental problems and human rights violations that have occurred in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria
Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
since Shell began oil exploration in the region decades ago. Shell has yet to make any official statement about this video.
GE tax refund hoax reported by the AP
On April 13, 2011, a hoax website with a URL
A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...
similar to that of the GE press domain (genewscenter.com) designed to look like the GE news center website. The hoax site posted the claim "GE Responds to Public Outcry – Will Donate Entire $3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs." and it seems that the AP reported the story as fact, as reported by ''Good''.
Shell Oil and ArcticReady.com
In June 2012, the Yes Men collaborated with Greenpeace
Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by a group of Environmental movement, environmental activists. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its biod ...
and members of the Occupy Seattle
Occupy Seattle was a series of demonstrations in Seattle, Washington, United States in 2011 and 2012, that formed part of the wider Occupy movement taking place in numerous U.S. and world cities at that time. The demonstrations were particular ...
movement to create ArcticReady.com, a parody website criticizing Shell Oil's drilling activities in the Arctic Circle. The website launch was commemorated by a fake launch party held in the Seattle Space Needle
The Space Needle is an observation tower in Seattle, Washington, United States. Considered to be an icon of the city, it has been designated a Seattle landmark. Located in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, it was built in the Seattle Center ...
. Shell Oil disavowed any affiliation with the website or the launch party on June 14, 2012.
The Action Switchboard
The Action Switchboard is a platform the Yes Men launched to link up people who want to be involved in activism events with people organising them. As it says "The Action Switchboard is a platform that helps activists find each other, come up with direct action ideas, and get the resources they need to pull them off."
Edward Snowden Politicon interview
In October 2015, at the annual Politicon
Politicon was an annual, non-partisan political convention in the United States. Politicon's vision was to bring "Republican Party (United States), Republicans, Democratic Party (United States), Democrats, and people of all political stripes tog ...
non-partisan political convention, the Yes Men promoted an interview with whistleblower Edward Snowden
Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs.
Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...
, known to be living in exile in Russia. As they introduced the interview, they announced that Snowden had been pardoned and would join the group in person. As Snowden appeared before them, people cheered, applauded and many rushed the stage for photos. A short time later, another Edward Snowden appeared on the giant screen; however, this time, it was the real Edward Snowden from Russia.
Politicon: new DNC platform
In July 2017, The Yes Men pranked the Democratic Party at Politicon. Following up the "Better Deal" agenda released by the party a week earlier, prankster Andy Bichlbaum posed as Frank Spencer, Deputy Vice Chair for Civic Engagement of the Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is the principal executive leadership board of the United States's Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party. According to the party charter, it has "general responsibility for the affairs of the ...
(DNC). As part of the new #DNCTakeBack campaign, Spencer pushed a more ambitious and progressive Democratic agenda, including: Medicare for all, tuition-free college, public campaign financing, stronger unions, an end to corporate lobbying and the end of for-profit prisons.
VW/Dieselgate apology
In November 2018, Motherboard/Vice released a video about The Yes Men and their fake VW "Emissions Anonymous" project. In the prank, they apologize to the public for the Dieselgate emissions scandal, in which several models and years of VW car family diesel autos were engineered and built with a rigged emissions system that ran clean only while under test conditions, but otherwise released high levels of air pollutants. The ''Houston Chronicle'' even covered the pranksters' April 2018 entry in Houston's annual Art Car Parade as if an official VW PR campaign: "The marketing department has even turned the crisis into a publicity shtick".
Fake ''Washington Post'' edition
On January 16, 2019, parody editions of ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' were distributed in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
Dated May 1, 2019, the edition's headline read "UNPRESIDENTED" and the lead article described Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
's resignation from the presidency after a period of unrest. The Yes Men took credit for the edition.
COP26
In November 2021, for the United Nations COP26 climate action summit in Glasgow, the pranksters shared news of a private jet interior design company's membership in the UN's ‘Race to Zero’ program, convincing some that they'd trolled the gathering by getting their fake company admitted. The prank was highlighting the absurdity that such a company actually exists and is a member of a net-zero program.
Footnotes
Further reading
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External links
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''The Yes Men Fix the World – Peer to Peer Edition''
Free video download at Internet archive
The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
The official Yes Men video channel on Babelgum
Book website
IMDB – Info Wars
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on ''Bill Moyers Journal
''Bill Moyers Journal'' was an American television current affairs program that covered an array of current affairs and human issues, including economics, history, literature, religion, philosophy, science, and most frequently politics. Bill M ...
'', 20 July 2007
Interview with Andy Bichlbaum
from ''Democracy Now!'' program, May 12, 2006
''The Yes Men Fix the World'': In New Film
– video report by ''Democracy Now!''
''Shell: We are sorry''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yes Men
American performance artists
Anti-consumerist groups
Anti-corporate activists
Anti-globalization organizations
American contemporary artists
Culture jamming
Hoaxes in the United States
Impostors
Performance artist collectives
Political art