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.

“Come drink beer here!”

Hearing English in a town where our white faces are exotic makes us pause, and several hours later we’re still drinking pitchers of Tsingtao beer with our new friend—a local named Laogai. He’s a musician and deeply political in a way that makes us uncomfortable. In China to criticize the government is a very, very serious crime—especially for a foreigner.

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Break the Trance

Advertising is the biggest psychological experiment ever carried out on the human race. Hypes, jolts, infoviruses, infotoxins, fake news and emotional blackmail have worked their way into the very fabric of our lives generating anxiety, mood disorders and mental dislocation on an unprecedented scale. If we hope to stay sane, keep our minds clear and create any kind of a viable future for ourselves, we need to stop seeing ads as a mere irritation . . .

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Time For Big Tech to Pay Up

Once called the “fourth estate” for its power, crucial to democracy, to check the three official branches of government — legislative, executive, and judicial — journalism has suffered a hemorrhage of resources since the advent of the digital era. While social media became a vaster and faster channel for news, papers’ print circulations and advertising revenues dwindled, forcing major newspapers to go online and many smaller, local ones to shut down entirely. “Between 1970 and 2016,” Jill Lepore wrote last year in the New Yorker, “five hundred or so [American] dailies went out of business; the rest cut news coverage, or shrank the paper’s size, or stopped producing a print edition, or did all of that, and it still wasn’t enough.”

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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 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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Are you Woke?

Do you have any sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic or fat-shaming thoughts?

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An Interview with Khaled Hourani: First Intifada Was an Artistic Project (by Lela Vujanić)

Khaled Hourani is a critical, peculiar institution. His prolific artistic practice encompasses painting, sculpture, writing, curating, and conceptual art, but he is also a part of the Palestinian collective body — crossing boundaries and limitations and constantly engaging in dialogue, the rule of art, and the possibilities of the present moment.

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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.

Google is watching. Here's what it knows about you

In 2018, an Irish technologist named Dylan Curran downloaded the information Google had collected about him. All in all, Curran found, the corporation had gathered 5.5 GB of data on his life, or the equivalent of more than three million Word documents.

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The Hypocrisy of Bilious Barr and Pompous Pompeo

American statesmen have breathed a lot of fire over the passage of Hong Kong's draconian, dissent-crushing national-security law. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in particular has been keen to lash out at China, the territory's increasing...

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Welcome to the Machine

Google "social media is ..." Depending on where you live, your search might return vastly different auto-completed results. Fun. Cool.

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