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.

We decided to call our magazine Adbusters.

We vowed never to sell any space to advertisers.Then we embarked on an aesthetic journey. A journey, you might say, to get off the grid . . . to blow up the precepts and norms of print . . . to create a magazine that was less about content you “consume” than a river you jump into and are swept downstream.

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Keepers of Mindscape

Do we still have it? Can we invent new aesthetics, design sustainable products and rid our cities of waste . . . cultivate new sensibilities for our post-materialist age?

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Structures of Feeling

The critic Raymond Williams once wrote that every historical period has its own “structure of feeling.” How everything seemed in the 1960s, the way the Victorians understood one another, the chivalry of the Middle Ages, the world view of Tang-dynasty China: each period, Williams thought, had a distinct way of organizing basic human emotions into an overarching cultural system. Each had its own way of experiencing being alive.

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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.

Outfox the algorithms! One man’s attempt to live one day absolutely free

As a once-and-future free-range human, I’ve been thinking about how to shake off the commercial algorithms that have hacked into my life and are now driving it. The key, I’ve concluded, is novelty. Whether it’s true, as the ethobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna claimed, that the pursuit of novelty is “the only one way to live a truly progressive life,” it’s a mighty tempting strategy to air out. “From a species perspective, the job of each individual is to be unlike anyone who’s living or who ever lived,” McKenna wrote. “To do things, and react to things, in a way no one has quite done before.” This is of course pretty much an act of cultural treason. There’s a reason Atomic Habits was a #1 world bestseller and nobody has written Atomic Novelty. Habits are safe. Flout them and people in charge start furrowing their brows, because now you’re likely to start breaking rules, too. Even

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Rewiring Society for Survival

Inventing a new way to live, one that will allow us, as a species, to go on living, is what economists call a "wild problem." It will take a mighty imaginative leap, really a heave of consciousness. But we can do it. We have to.It's easier to imagine the end of the worldthan the end of capitalism.— Frederic JamesonI. The TaskThe time for tiny tweaks to the status quo is over. We've run out of time for that. The only thing that will save us is massive buy-in to a major paradigm shift, a different way of living and loving on planet Earth. A lighter, looser, sparer one. More, because less.Here's how people typically change their minds. They do it the way a climber scales a rock face, inching out beyond the last point of protection — so that if they fall, they fall only as far as what they last believed.Our rethinks are not big stretches, in other words. Just variations on what we think righ

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Defying the Straight Line

He couldn't stand straight lines and right angles, which aren't much found in nature. Things not made by us mostly curve. Nothing worthwhile is plum, level or square.So observed Gaetano Pesce, the great Italian designer, who died at age 84.From this man's brow burst organic, protoplasmic designs for things like bookcases and sofas, blazing with intense, saturated color.

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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.

Kalle Lasn on Radio New Zealand - Saturday Morning with Kim Hill

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.

An "intergalactic memorial carnival" for David Graeber

"This is an invitation to come together across the world for a memorial carnival in the spirit of the one and only, David Graeber, who just left us so suddenly and unexpectedly.

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COVID-19 Strikes the President. What Now?

After months of downplaying the threat of the virus that has killed over 200,000 Americans (and, tragically, counting), the president and first lady have both tested positive for COVID-19.

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Can Universal Values Survive in the People's Republic?

In his book Rethinking China’s Rise: A Liberal Critique, Xu [Jilin] gives a wide-ranging analysis of China’s recent history. His main point is that China has headed down the dangerous path of historicism...

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