Our Civilization has Advanced far Beyond what 100% of your Brain can Comprehend

I have really wanted to stay away from non-personal, non-travel, or non-European related topics in this blog, but some recent events in Boston have prompted me to comment on the high profile activity in that city at this time, since I am quite familiar with the issue as well as the subject material involved. Do I take it seriously? Yes. Do I think it is funny? Yes. Most importantly, there is a lesson to be learned here.

As many of you by now know, an ad campaign launched by Adult Swim (a late night adult themed block of Cartoon Network), involved hiring the third party viral marketing firm Interference Inc. to launch an ad campaign. The firm, in turn, hired two young urban performance and video artists to create installations, which they were to publicly display in ten cities across the United States in promoting the surreal cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force and its upcoming movie. The installations were, in effect, four batteries on a blackened poster board powering some LEDs. They were LiteBrites. The images were none other than Iknignokt and Err, “the Mooninites”, a popular pair of returning characters, flipping the bird at passersby.

On Wednesday afternoon, a call regarding a “suspicious package” was made to the police in Boston. When I went to bed here in Belgium, I was aware that some “suspicious packages” had been found in Boston, and it snarled traffic and transportation as bridges and such were shut down. I knew right then, when a dozen of these things had been found, that there was more to the story. I was shocked to learn in the morning that the whole hubbub was about glowing posters, and had nothing to do with bombs or packages, or anything resembling bombs or packages. (Though those that look silly will disagree). I was doubly shocked- and doubled over laughing, when I read an early article on the topic stating that they were ads for a cult cartoon. They explained the show poorly and didn’t name it at first, but as soon as they started referencing delinquent moon men, I knew exactly what they were talking about.

By then, the “oh, shit” game had already started. Now I won’t ever criticize law enforcement authorities for responding to and investigating a threat, but they should have been much more surreptitious about it. Had they investigated it immediately and quietly, they should have been able to determine that a poster board of a cartoon character flipping you off isn’t a bomb. As far as I know, terrorists also do not generally advertise the location of their weapons with glowing lights. Had they kept it on the low down (i.e. dome some cursory investigation and fact checking before panicking), then the media would never have known to report “suspicious packages” that were not packages. Only when the local news service started propagating rumors and quite frankly, false information, did all of the other “mysterious packages” begin popping up. I place a lot of the blame on those entities for providing feedback to the situation. (Note, this kind of thing happens all the time in airports, subways, and rural streets where kids just want to play live action Mario Brothers, with five teenaged girls being threatened with a law suit in the latter case. It fizzled.)

So it snowballed into a huge, snarling fiasco, and every official and their grandparents became involved, sweeping pronouncements were made- all over some glowing posters. So naturally, when Turner finally realized what was going on, and informed the authorities, it was chalked up as a bad misunderstanding and ill-advised ad campaign, right? Hello no. Apparently when you make the Boston police look stupid, somebody has to pay the piper, and the two artists who hung the poster boards up are being tried as felons- Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens. And here is where it gets interesting. This is now a PR spinfest, and its spinning rapidly and aggressively down into my skin. The tactic of Massachusetts is to now hit hard and fast, focus the blame intensely on these two young artists, and control the language and debate used to discuss the issue.

Assistant MA Attorney General John Grossman said “if they had been explosive, they could have damaged transportation infrastructure in the city”. Um. If your glasses had been explosive, it could have caused damage to the infrastructure of your face. The level of desperation and absurdity in this statement is self apparent- what kind of Attorney General makes an argument that doesn’t exist? A desperate one. “Sure your honor, our officer tackled an old man they thought had a gun. I mean, it did turn out to be a cell phone, but we’re going to try him anyway because if it had been a gun, he could have hurt someone.” Grossman insists on calling the LiteBrite poster boards “bomb-like devices”. Oh noes!!1!! Every pixel board, neon sign, matinee, and well- anything with glowing lights or wires is now a “bomb-like device”. Stay clear of Las Vegas, that place is a mine field! It was comforting to hear that the first time he showed the posters during the arraignment hearings yesterday and said “these bomb-like devices”, snickers rippled across the entire courtroom, and not just from people sympathetic to the defendants. He’s clearly trying to frame the terms of the case, but he isn’t fooling anyone, including the judge apparently (more on this later).

Among the other fun elements of the PR damage control spin machine: Said Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, "this is a product of “corporate greed”"? Really? Check your facts you ignorant tool, the show is the product of a handful of art school graduates that were given a budget of a couple thousand dollars by Williams Street to work on what was supposed to be a short-lived, badly animated, and absurd series of shorts. As a goof-off project. It just happened to attract a cult following and more episodes were made, and even now the artists cater directly to the fans and it was never intended to be main stream. They said as much to us in their panel at the 2005 Comic-Con. It isn’t Paramount, New Line, or some big network TV show or Showtime. It’s absurd sub-culture. You can’t slap down the “corporate greed” card on a show that generates comparatively little revenue and caters to animation geeks. Until yesterday, most people in the USA didn’t even know what the hell Aqua Teen Hunger Force was!

It’s also funny who calls them what- pay attention to who calls them “ads” and “posters” and “light boards”, and who calls them “devices” and “implements”. And who calls this a “stunt” and who calls it an “ad-campaign”. I don’t need to explain it to you.

My greatest irritation is the use of the word “hoax” to describe the advertising campaign, a term all other news sources have stopped using except for Faux News. A hoax implies intent to deceive. These were glowing posters of a cartoon character… advertising the cartoon. Orson Welles’ “The War of the Worlds”? That’s approaching a hoax. The Proctor and Gamble belongs to the Church of Satan thing? That was a hoax. These were simply ads, representing exactly what they were, and that Fox is still calling it a “hoax” after even the Judge presiding over yesterday’s hearing stated “it appears the suspects had no such intent” to deceive is ridiculous. Of course, Faux is already telling us how we should feel as they describe the “SHOCKING” video of the artists perpetrating the “HOAX”. Shocking? A video of a couple of guys hanging up LiteBrites is shocking? Faux news can go to hell.

And those young men are lucky they posted that video. Both the artists and the firm they were working with documented the plan and process very well, and it is clear that it was intended to be an ad campaign, with absolutely no intent to cause a panic. That video and the communications between the artists and Interference Inc. are going to help them a lot, because it shows Faux and the MA officials are full of crap. The hilarious part of all of this is in the fact that these posters were hanging up for three weeks before someone called the police- in ten cities. Hundreds of these things were hanging in Portland, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago… and in the entire three weeks not a single other city freaked out and caused a bomb scare. New York and Philadelphia only started taking them down after they learned of the panic in Boston. Indeed, in laid back Portland the police intend to leave them up, even after the circus in Boston. Portland Police Sgt. Brian Schmautz said to CNN “At this point we wouldn't even begin an investigation, because there's no reason to believe a crime has occurred.” (Lena and Lisa, did you happen to see any of them? They are selling for hundreds of dollars on e-bay now). I guess Portland wins the Free Speech award of the day.

So Boston is angry because they freaked out at a Mooninite flipping them off. Now as someone on the Adult Swim forums pointed out: “They claim that removing the (first) device “took three hours and cost thousands of dollars. If it took the bomb squad three hours and thousands of dollars to defuse a LiteBrite, Bostonians have a lot more to worry about than glowing ads”. So now I am going to buy my hilarious shirt to support the two scapegoat artists: here (It took all of two hours for that shirt to appear on e-bay)

I look forward to when this case is thrown out and/or, the men are acquitted. Because when this is said and done, there is no way that the felony charge is going to hold water. Everything the officials in Boston are doing is sound and fury, and the worst they can do is fine the artists for hanging up objects on municipal property if such an ordinance exists. They are already on record as being 100% cooperative. End of story. I’m sorry that the Boston Crew reading this had to suffer as an example of America being afraid of it’s shadow, but there is an important lesson to be learned here.

Do you see this Faux news? I hope you do because I'm doing it as hard as I can.