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.

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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The Unofficial History of America

In high school the cool kids smoked. So I started smoking too. And I continued to smoke in university. I just changed brands. Gaulois were too pretentious; I went for British brands like Peter Stuyvesant, with its pure white pack.Then I started to hear murmurings: cigarettes cause lung cancer.It was still just a rumor — at least that’s how the industry spun it. “The link hasn’t been proven,” said Philip Morris. PM had marshaled a team of corporate lawyers and PR flacks — not to mention publicly skeptical doctors on their payroll. The evidence just isn’t there, they said. The average smoker’s chances of getting lung cancer from cigarettes is roughly the chance of being struck by lightning.So I kept puffing.But I tried to quit, again and again. Problem was, I couldn’t edit a film without smoking. You can imagine it: you’re immersed in the flow, the rational part of your brain is in park, the wild reactive part firing on instinct, and your hand instinctively reaches for a dart. For me back then smoking was woven into the ritual of doing creative work on a deadline.The magic of tobacco is that it’s both a stimulant and a relaxant. The smoke cloud itself is hypnotic.One morning, after a lot of boozing and chain-smoking through many nights of editing, I woke up feeling like shit. And I stopped smoking. Again.But this time I stayed clean. One, two, three days. On day four I woke up feeling . . . amazing. Clear skies.Not long after, I ran into one of my mother’s neighbors. He looked awful. I learned he was dying of lung cancer. He had only a few months to live. I looked in his eyes and saw that he had given up. I’d gotten lucky; many hadn’t.It dawned on me that Philip Morris did this. They knew they were killing people and they covered it up. They built their empire on a business plan to sell toxic addictive products to people who didn’t know any better. They were literally getting away with murder and had been for decades.That’s the moment I started to hate corporations.

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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.

Culture Jamming 2.0

In Early 2020, as the pandemic shut down the world and drove everyone deeper into cyberspace, word began to spread online about a massive and sinister cover-up. One that ought to have every every freedom-loving American very afraid. Had you heard?

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Kensho Moment, a Quantum Transformation

“This is what capitalism does best, right?” she told the journalist Ezra Klein on his podcast not long ago. “It first creates this enormous appetite for things, and then it tells us that whatever we have is not enough. I mean, I think that is a form of madness. It seems to me there’s no question about that.”

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What Would The Buddha Do?

Maybe every generation feels confronted by some crisis that will determine the fate of the planet. But unless your head is buried in the sand, it’s not possible to be ignorant of the extraordinary planetary crisis that confronts all of us today.

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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.

Adbusters 161: Hope/Nope

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.

"The Social Dilemma" director hopes to spark a movement

A new report from the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel deems that Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook have abusively wielded their monopoly-like power. The panel found that the "tech giants" hobbled innovation, slashed consumer choice, and threatened democracy itself.

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In Hong Kong, Beijing Asserts Its "Might Is Right"

The law of the Mainland is coming down hard on long-suffering Hong Kong. In July, teenage pro-independence activist Tony Chung became the first political figure arrested for violating the Beijing-imposed national-security law.

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As hundreds of thousands die, billionaires rake in riches

Amid the global pandemic of coronavirus that has seen over a million dead and millions more out of work, the wealth of the world's richest has reportedly risen beyond $10 trillion.

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