As I was making my way through Liverpool Street Station this morning, several hundred people were dancing on the main concourse…. it could have been a flash mob but it wasn’t… for those who don’t know, a flash mob is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then disperse… It turned out a T-Mobile ad was being filmed. By lunchtime there were reports of this stage-managed media event in the British national press:
“There are many ways to kill time while waiting for your train – read a paper, grab a sandwich . . . break into a synchronised dance?
“It certainly got the attention of commuters at Liverpool Street Station, as 400 strangers – including tourists and Underground staff – suddenly leaped into action, busting out a co-ordinated mix of hip-hop, disco and ballroom moves right in the middle of the London station.
“The dance was an example of ‘flash mob’, which occurs when people arrange to meet at a certain place and time to carry out a quirky action, before disbanding minutes later.
“Flash mobbing is seen as an anarchic, freedom-of-expression act, although this one was organised by T-Mobile for an advert which will debut on Channel 4 and YouTube tomorrow.”
This definitely wasn’t a flash mob because the filming was still going on when I returned to Liverpool Street station an hour later. Coming back I noticed a sign that claimed if I went into the area being used to fabricate the ad, I had consented to being filmed… Not so, since I hadn’t seen this sign until after I’d been through the station once, and besides which not everybody can read English… Liverpool Street station is a public space and a lot of people have no choice about using it if they need to catch the tube or an overground train. Therefore I’m using this blog to notify T-Mobile that I have not given my consent to appearing in their advert. If T-Mobile want to use footage that shows me I expect to be paid: I want a 1K (a grand, £1000) for every second or fraction of a second used that shows me from any angle (including my back)….. and a further 1K per day for every day after tomorrow in which the advert is either shown on TV or left up on YouTube or used in any other public way.
The production of adverts such as this around London often pisses me off. A few years ago I was making my way back home around midnight and was grabbed by some guys who told me they were filming a car advert and I wasn’t allowed to walk where I was headed. I told them I lived in the block of flats they were trying to prevent me from approaching and that they could fuck off. The wankers who’d manhandled me had to stop filming while I went into the block. Advertising, it’s the antithesis of a groove sensation!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by Michael K on 2009-01-15 15:56:33 +0000
I was there too and I want two grand!!
Comment by Michael K on 2009-01-15 15:59:25 +0000
ERRATUM: I’ve just checked my whereabouts on my T-Mobile and I was, in fact, still in America at the time of the incident. Clearly this misidentification is a spillover from previous blogs where I am unsure if I’m Stewart Home. Nevertheless, my demand for £2K stands. United we stand, divided we…erm..stand somewhere else
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-15 16:08:11 +0000
Wow I was in Liverpool Street station and the USA at the same time! I am amazing… and so are we… and maybe we should be getting £2K per second and per day and per split personality… So I make that about 20 billion quid T-Mobile owe us if they use a second or less of footage……
Comment by Michael K on 2009-01-15 16:19:52 +0000
Well since the USA is five hours ‘behind’ London, it could be that while I’m asleep and dreaming that I’m a train, you might be screaming along as you type. Later, while you’re doped up on goofballs in the evening, I could be spotting Yoko Ono’s bodyguards in Central Park and going over for a chat.
Comment by T-Mob on 2009-01-15 20:34:15 +0000
Oh I’m much too greedy to pay anyone for using and abusing them! Gimmie your quids kids, I got the best offers!
Pay monthly; Pay as you go. T-Mobile G1 black From FREE; Sony Ericsson C905 From FREE; Nokia N96 From FREE!
All the latest Mobile downloads including mobile games, ringtones and music tracks. T-Mobile offers the latest in mobile phone technology!
Comment by The Real T-Mob on 2009-01-15 20:56:05 +0000
I’m hated by many now these corporate hoez stolez my identity but confronted by none cause everyone run from this homie! Caught the link back to my home page, so I come here quick to stick it to doez pimps pretending to be me – but they gone to hide behind their mammas ass coz they ain’t got no class….
Comment by marc on 2009-01-15 21:17:07 +0000
do you ever stop moaning. it was fun and plenty of people enjoyed it. Smile, you may actually enjoy your life…
Comment by You.Are.On.An.Ego.Trip on 2009-01-15 22:37:35 +0000
Get over your self importance.
Comment by Dave Mitchell on 2009-01-15 23:09:14 +0000
Bread and circuses.
As P J Proby said ‘fuck em all and feed em beans!’
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-15 23:50:12 +0000
Too right Dave, especially as the two above you don’t seem to like humour…
Don’t see how Marc expects me to enjoy myself if I’m not allowed a bubble bath by using T-Mobile’s logic back against it? Now let’s look more closely at the rhetoric: ‘it was fun and plenty of people enjoyed it.’ People say exactly the same about a lot of other things…. for example, the hunt crowd say the same about blood sports, but that doesn’t make them any the less cruel. Ditto: “do you ever stop moaning…” and of course in my philosophy ‘moaning’ and ‘enjoying yourself’ mean pretty much the same thing… and mainly I’m ‘moaning for my baby after midnight…’
And as for “You.Are.On.An.Ego.Trip” it is clearly pointless telling someone who has declared themselves to be an ego maniac on a world historical scale (as I have on numerous occasions) to: “Get over your self importance.” After my ringing declarations of egotism this twit’s advice is rather like a fart after a good stool!
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-16 00:11:42 +0000
And talking of odd… when I searched for Marc by the fuller name on the front of his email address that as site admin I can see, and put this alongside various other word combos, I kept getting one UK Indymedia entry and a click thru Google ad that ran as follows: “T-Mobile – Join the Dance. Join the dance with T-Mobile. See our dance event here!… (url deleted).” So either this is a coincidence, “Marc” is being stitched up by a corporation or he’s working for T-Mobile; and if the latter presumably on the PR front! And hasn’t spontaneous fun always been better than so called ‘fun’ organised to benefit a corporation?????
Comment by Eric The Viking on 2009-01-16 02:17:06 +0000
Terrible innit, the Jormskings have a bad reputation for rape, pillage and plunder, but were in fact a model of social responsibility in comparison to these modern day capitalist corporations!
Comment by shrieking wizard howling toad on 2009-01-16 06:43:05 +0000
Flash Mobs are interesting becuase they subvert the imposed order of a stale daily life. But the co ercion of the idea, dare I say subversion ( It’s not only good guys who subvert )by advertisers and other commercial cretins is a ghastly example again, of how Capital voraciously co erces and absorbs all attempts at shattering the spectacle.
Comment by shrieking wizard howling toad on 2009-01-16 06:43:44 +0000
shrieking wizard howling toad doesn’t like that co ercion. How can we escape it?
Comment by shrieking wizard howling toad on 2009-01-16 06:45:23 +0000
shrieking wizard howling toad understansds the desire to be a Theravadin recluse, or the aspiration to be a Pacceka Buddha.
Comment by jf;kj on 2009-01-16 07:11:55 +0000
how can anyone enjoy themselves with such primitive bourgeois modes of production and consumption of media as promoted and practiced by t-mobile these people are scum they deprive most of the world of the practical means of communism, – communication . i tell u wot i would enjoy – a video of the t-mob ceo and board of directors stabbing each other in the head before fucking themselves in the arse with a rusty machete. now that would be a fine fine art
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-16 11:00:32 +0000
Let’s sock it to ’em!
Comment by Observe on 2009-01-16 11:06:20 +0000
Shrieking Wizard, I thought you were there? Wasn’t that you I saw dancing about in a trance, with your howling toad at your side?
Comment by shrieking toadstool psychedelic wizard on 2009-01-16 14:46:15 +0000
ain’t nobody here but us chickens… oh and me, the evil twin…..
Comment by Michael K on 2009-01-16 16:21:10 +0000
I.Am.On.An.Ego.Trip
Comment by Vivian Kilbride on 2009-01-16 21:41:22 +0000
They owe me £6.75
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-17 01:26:48 +0000
Wow! And cheap at one hundred times the price. I.Am.An.Ego.Trip.
Comment by Michael Roth on 2009-01-17 07:10:08 +0000
Please keep it down, I can hear the trip of your ego moaning! I’m on the fence about the flash mob phenomena. Like shrieking wizard above said, there is a jolt of surreality into an otherwise routine life. They also explore the creation of (temporary) fun zones and play that’s often missing/overlooked due to work etc. But I also get the vibe of hipster elitism and a sense of spectacle that’s devoid of a concern for larger social issues. It’s certainly become mainstream; I’ve seen it in a few ads myself.
But what do I know – I’m just an antisocial curmudgeon scowling across the frozen wasteland here in Canada.
Look forward to seeing you in the advert.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-17 11:19:01 +0000
Oh I’m mainly looking forward to getting paid for being in the advert…. and I guess I should stress I’m not against flash mob stuff, I’m against fake flash mob stuff being used to promote corporations like T-Mobile (even when they pay me thousands of quids for appearing in the resultant ads)….
And like wow! I just looked in the mirror and noticed that not only is my ego bigger than a forty storey buidling, it is also red with purple flashes! That is just like so cool!
Comment by Observe on 2009-01-17 13:08:59 +0000
Hi shrieking Wizard, I like your cave in the gardens of the link posted by the geezer above called “shrieking toadstool psychedelic wizard ” — I like your toad’s manor too. When does he howl?
Comment by Michael K on 2009-01-17 14:29:31 +0000
The CA$H!! In CA$H!! Nothing else will do.
Comment by dude on 2009-01-18 01:18:36 +0000
you dudes are so off the pace. people love it because it cheers them up in fucking dire times. love will save the day.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-18 03:47:22 +0000
Dire times for capitalism but the end of the commodity economy means good times for everyone who doesn’t support ongoing alienation and exploitation!
Comment by Observe on 2009-01-18 05:28:20 +0000
Blimey, I think I am far too embarrassed to list the bands I first saw in the mid 70’s, but Black Sabbath are definitely on the list — and they were pretty good actually.
After that, there were all those bands from the late 70’s many of whom turned out to be far ,far worse than Black Sabbath! The thing I learnt much much later, was that all those “garage two chord wonder bands” I saw in the late 70’s were actually divided into three camps — 1. Many of them could actually play very well indeed, and were into bands like Yes and ELP and progressive rock — but they pretended they couldn’t play, to jump on the band wagon. 2. Glam and/or r n b bands who cut their hair and got rid of their flares overnight. 3. A smaller category who actually couldn’t play at all, and were having a go. Their were some really realy awful bands in that category, but also some very eccentric , spirited one off characters, you’d never see the like of now in bland London.
The major bands of the day like The Damned, The Ramones, Banshees, and all those garage punk bands of the late 70’s were on my list too, plus quite a few late 70’s UK reggae bands, who didn’t seem to have found their own “individual voice” in many ways: some were amazing, some dire. Motorhead in their earliest incarnation, often playing with good punk/r n b pub rock bands, were something I will never forget. A phenomena, like a wind or gale force.In their earliest days They were faster and more intense , more punk rock , than the vast majoirty of the punk bands themselves. I’ve never seen a room full of punks and bikers and skinheads overlook all their differences so quickly — everyone was just open mouthed gob smacked at the sonic force released on stage by lemmy.
Comment by dude on 2009-01-18 10:22:47 +0000
resistance doesn’t mean being miserable. you need to get in touch with your emotions dude. you’re missing out. do you love me!
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-18 12:20:30 +0000
But who said anything about misery? Not me, that ain’t my bag… It is too easy to project something onto someone and then criticise them for it, when it comes out of you not them… Far better to concentrate on continually reforging the passage between theory and practice, so what you do has the effect you want….
Comment by Observe on 2009-01-18 14:14:04 +0000
Well, the concept of Simulacra is so convoluted and so many people have argued about it it has become a profession to many in that professors are employed to teach about it, books are published on it, PHD papers are written on it, even popular films are based on it ( The Matrix, even though Baudrillard says it’s a corruption of his view and not to be taken at all seriously.) To me that’s a banality, and not a mark of praise for the concept.
Baudrillard’s views ( esp Simulacra ) are rooted ( to some significant part ) in Dada , obscure absurd( ist) French authors, pre and post war 20th C European art theorists , with massive doses of Situationist theory. I love all of those theorists above — but I don’t take them at all seriously enough to debate about them for hours and hours — some of their theories resonate for me — but that’s about it. But once you start arguing seriously about these mavericks, outlaws, and absurd(ist) characters — it’s never ending,they were so full of shock statements, paradoxes, contradictions, downright lies and obscurantism etc. It’s nothing like debating logical ideas/theorists like , for examples sake, The Buddha or Schopenhauer, who were serious men with a logical , coherent set of propositions and conclusions one can truly debate conclusively about within established parameters.
Situationist theory , to which Baudrillard is indebted, is full of plagiarism and contradiction but it basically argues that life in our time has become lived through representation — we are separated from many events/emotions/real decisions and we “live” them through representations ( TV, newspapers, records, Cd’s ) that are mediated and prepared and codified and controlled for us.
Is Situationist thought solipsistic and resigned, lazy thought? Not at all — the Situationists were devoted to finding ways and means of shattering the representation, exposing the false images that masked the real suffering of humanity. To me, Baudrillard’s comments on Simulacra always fulfils that aspiration too — they expose, not further conceal, the false images. The concept of Simulacra shines a light directly on the lies of images and representation. Situationist theory, Baudriallrd/Simulacra doesn’t at all ever state that the events themselves are unreal — Baudriallrd never at any point said real bodies were not getting blown apart and shattered — quite the opposite. By saying certain events “never happened” he was trying to draw our attention to the fact that we were being fed representations, images — and not seeing or feeling the real thing. The simulacra shows us the real, the simulacra exposes the real.
That makes a lot of sense to me. I have no wish to defend Baudriuallrd,or post modernism — I am not interested enough in these men or their dogmas and professions and “status” to do so. I am just pointing out that I like aspects of Baudrialld’s Simulacra. That’s all.
I originally said that many of the Po Mo thinkers were full of outrageous, shocking statements, and I also said I wasn’t interested in them enough ( or foolish enough) to want to defend them and their often boring and self important beleifs. Hey — What’s in it for me to do so? I am not a fan boy or some religious devotee of Baudrillard et al, ready to defend him as some point of honour — I don’t really care. All I said was that aspects of Simulacra had great resonance for me. I never once said I agreed entirely with the Post Modernists ( often wild, inconsistent ) stances or even cared that much about them to want to do so. Read my first email again on the topic. Baudrillard and all the others are not some saints who I have to defend to their last word.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-19 00:06:46 +0000
The postmodern attitude is that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland…
Comment by Paul McCartney on 2009-01-19 02:09:27 +0000
Mmm. I think that’s one of the great ways that songs are written. And there’s something magical, mysterious about it. Which I like. You know, in some ways we live in a world where things appear to be very logical, very rational, and mechanical aspects of our world are rather scientific and rather straightforward. But I read something recently, it was just talking about trees and what they do as machines. The fact that they pump up these thousands of gallons of water, without anything we would recognize as a machine. It’s just a nature machine, it’s just a green machine. And the trees then convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. And we go, “Yeah, it’s just a tree.” But Jesus Christ, you try and do that! If only we had some people who could do that, we wouldn’t have global warming, we wouldn’t have these problems. Hence we’re encouraged to plant more trees.
Comment by Observe on 2009-01-19 05:51:24 +0000
Ah, the Fireman, Paul Mcartney’s project produced by Youth of Killing Joke. I still like the 45 version of “Wardance” and I like “Turn to Red” and a few others from their 78/79 work. I still listen to them now, and get a lot of pleasure from them indeed. I think Killing Joke’s first two albums were amongst the last rock records I ever bothered with. I considered rock a spent force after the Pistols, as did many of us at that time.
Comment by Observe on 2009-01-19 05:52:47 +0000
But what about Baudrillard’s debt to the Situationists Mr Home? Isn’t Simulacara a continuation of Debord and Vaneigem’s ( partially detourned) dialectic?
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-19 10:37:41 +0000
And didn’t Debord and Vaneigem develop a lot of their ‘theory’ (actually the ‘theory’ of the entire situationist group, with Jorn et al being just as important) at lectures where Baudrillard was the assistant, not part of the audience like D&V, back in the 1950s? And isn’t it about time people stopped fetishising the Situationists and instead got down to the serious business of really synthesising what is still useful from the councilist and the Borgiduist forms of left-communism into contemporary attempts to finally do away with capitalism???
Comment by Observe on 2009-01-19 11:00:29 +0000
Abstolutely — couldn’t agree more. Burn babylon.
And, what was the last punk/rock album you ever bought?
For me? I think it was Flowers of Romance, the 2nd Killing Joke record, and those early DAF albums. Even those I knew were cynical offerings, continuing a played out show and that “rock” was a finished circus.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-01-19 16:30:18 +0000
The last punk rock album I bought – “A Day Late & A Dollar Short” by The Queers… and that was a simulacrum….
Comment by Colours of White on 2009-04-14 10:10:15 +0000
Blimey, I think I am far too embarrassed to list the bands I first saw in the mid 70’s, but Black Sabbath are definitely on the list — and they were pretty good actually.
After that, there were all those bands from the late 70’s many of whom turned out to be far ,far worse than Black Sabbath! The thing I learnt much much later, was that all those “garage two chord wonder bands” I saw in the late 70’s were actually divided into three camps — 1. Many of them could actually play very well indeed, and were into bands like Yes and ELP and progressive rock — but they pretended they couldn’t play, to jump on the band wagon. 2. Glam and/or r n b bands who cut their hair and got rid of their flares overnight. 3. A smaller category who actually couldn’t play at all, and were having a go. Their were some really realy awful bands in that category, but also some very eccentric , spirited one off characters, you’d never see the like of now in bland London.
The major bands of the day like The Damned, The Ramones, Banshees, and all those garage punk bands of the late 70’s were on my list too, plus quite a few late 70’s UK reggae bands, who didn’t seem to have found their own “individual voice” in many ways: some were amazing, some dire. Motorhead in their earliest incarnation, often playing with good punk/r n b pub rock bands, were something I will never forget. A phenomena, like a wind or gale force.In their earliest days They were faster and more intense , more punk rock , than the vast majoirty of the punk bands themselves. I’ve never seen a room full of punks and bikers and skinheads overlook all their differences so quickly — everyone was just open mouthed gob smacked at the sonic force released on stage by lemmy.
Comment by al on 2009-08-24 11:35:40 +0000
You sad hippy scrounger mutherfuckers! instead of moaning about how much you dislike t mobile why dont you all go out and get jobs instead of scrounging of the very people who work for t mobile and pay taxes in order to fund your sad existence.