Adbusters Archive

The (almost) complete archive of all the stuff that Adbusters has ever made - Articles! Podcasts! Spoof ads! - in one convenient place for your viewing pleasure.

Articles

Usually exclusive to our physical magazine, we’ve treated non-subscribers to a selection of some of our best print pieces.

World War 3

The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's top nuclear scientist, was carried out by Israel's Mossad using an autonomous machine gun.‍Russia is developing an undersea Poseidon nuclear torpedo that can travel across an ocean under its own guidance, evading existing missle defenses to deliver a nuclear weapon days after it is launched.‍This is the brace new frontier of the 21st century warfare. Nothing will stop the current crop of nuclear powers from pushing their autonomous warfare capabilities to the limit. It will be an arms race like no other (with China quite likely coming out on top).‍Will autonomous killer robots lock out their human creators and duke it out in WW3? ‍Is a ghost-nukes showdown between the forces of autocracy and democracy inevitable?‍Only We the Poeple of the world, coming together forthefirsttimein history as a global community, can stop the madness.

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Vibe Shift

You know this world, where the sunlight is electric and the currency is fame, and all the taxis heading there are single- occupancy, and your driver had better gun it cuz the stale-yellow light’s about to turn. You know this world if you’re a Gen Z kid – or at least, a certain kind of Gen Z kid, one who has bought the ticket and is enjoying the dream, from the comfort of your gaming chair, as the dopamine hits come fast, and someone on a scooter is bringing you dinner, and the future is a joke.

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What Happens When AI Completely Decodes and Synthesizes Reality?

As we realize A.I. can do what we do, better – and for free — we’ll experience a kind of false dawn of euphoria. It steps up, and we happily step back. Students stop writing essays. Job seekers stop writing resumes. Designers use MidJourney to create book covers. All life’s gruntwork is over, and the finished product isn’t suffering at all. Hallelujah! But here’s the deal we can’t quite grasp: Bit by bit we humans lose our skills . . . our agency . . . our creative spark . . .

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Deep Dives

Dive deep into long form features on everything from smartphone addiction to what a True-Cost global marketplace would mean for the economy.

The Savior Meme

The late Stanford philosopher and therapist Paul Watzlawick had a good way of explaining how to get out of impossible jams. When change is required, there are different ways to think about the level of creativity that’s needed.A “first-order” change is to stamp on the gas pedal. A second- order change is to shift gears. A third-order change is to get out of the car and find another way to get there.That’s where we are now. Here’s a radical new way to think about it all.

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Erasing Time

On an average day, a Palestinian who works in Jerusalem and resides in the West Bank must wake up at four in the morning in order to arrive at work by nine. The reason is not the distance between workplace and home. With the construction of the separation wall that began in 2002, and is still underway as of 2022, the Israeli state entered into a new stage of encroachment on Palestinian territory. The Palestinian worker has to wait in line for hours at checkpoints staffed by soldiers who are incentivized to make the line move as slowly as possible. Most of these bor-der-crossers have a long day ahead of them in various kinds of construction work. After crossing into Israel, they must spend hours every day passing through checkpoints to get to work, even though they often have only a few kilometres to travel.

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The Revolution of Everyday Life

I passed a guy the other day, maybe 16, 17 years old. And as he gota little ways down the street I heard him holler at the top of his lungs:“I hate my fucking life and everyone in it!” (I guess that included the defeated-looking woman I took to be his mom, who was walking 20feet behind him.)I felt sorry for this kid, and I hope he gets help. But I also found myself giving him a little private salute. At least he’s facing it. Bellowing his sad truth to the heavens must have felt like a bit of liberation.Who hasn’t felt a hint of that existential frustration? Maybe you even feel it now. Like: Really? This is the life I have settled for? Starbucks, Safeway, smokeshop, home. Bang, bang, bang, marching to the drumbeat of capitalism.In the car you catch the news that the UN has declared a “red-alert emergency” for humanity.

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Spoof Ads

Our fingers are on the global pulse, counting beats as we stutter towards the throes of death. If you want to know what Adbusters thinks about the news, this is where you find it.

KalleCasts

We're in the middle of a guerrilla marketing war for the future of the planet. Conventional weapons are useless — all we have are ideas. These are the best of our culture jams.

Hummingbird

Media

Listen to the voice of Adbusters proffering sweet ASMR vibes about the end of capitalism and where Occupy Wall Street went wrong.

MindBombs Teaser 6 - Smoke

The Pulse

Memes can be cinematic too. Turn up the volume and watch the chaos of the world unfold and disintegrate before your very eyes.

Unprime Day

Prime Day, Amazon’s yearly deal-hawking hoopla for its swindled subscribers, begins on June 21. And there’s never been a better occasion to cancel your Prime membership and boycott Amazon and all its subsidiaries (which include AbeBooks, Amazon Studios, Audible, Book Depository, ComiXology, Goodreads, IMDb, Twitch, Whole Foods, Zappos, and dozens more).

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Why Don’t We Put the Head of the Sackler Family in Jail for Life?

For two decades Purdue Pharma peddled the falsehood that OxyContin, the painkiller at the heart of the deadly opioid epidemic, was safe and non-addictive. “More people in the United States died from overdoses involving opioids in 2017,” in Nature’s account, ”than from HIV- or AIDS-related illnesses at the peak of the AIDS epidemic.”

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Who Will Win the Planetary Endgame?

Our world is being carved into two spheres of influence. For now, those spheres are limited merely to economic competition. But as the the tension mounts, there is a real possibility that the China-vs-U.S. face-off could spill over into an all-out war — a global fight for worldwide hegemony — maybe even World War 3.

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