Above Photo: From Abillionpeople.org
Seven years after igniting the global phenomenon of Occupy Wall Street, Adbusters Media Foundation is launching #OCCUPYSILICONVALLEY, an ambitious, global blowback campaign against Big Tech’s four most powerful corporations—Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, and Facebook—that dominate so much of our social, political, and emotional lives.
On Monday, September 17th, millions of people around the world, in millions of different ways, will unleash a one-day flood of memes, posts, pranks, tweets, and statuses—each of them overflowing with everything Silicon Valley wants to keep offline.
“Our aim is to shut down Big Tech for a day,” says Adbusters’ Editor-in-Chief Kalle Lasn. “We want to teach Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, and the rest of Silicon Valley a lesson they will never forget: We the people—not you—rule the internet.”
First, September 17th will be GOOGLE NO SEARCH DAY: Occupiers will forego the omnipresent search engine’s services for 24 hours . . . Only one soul-searching question will still flood Google servers: “Does google do evil?”
An uncanny lull will descend upon amazon.com when the people decide to BOYCOTT BEZOS. Some boycotters will go to amazon.com anyway . . . to fill their carts with giant orders, only to abandon them before checkout.
Facebook users will demand payback for the billions of advertising dollars Zuckerberg’s platform makes off them every year. They will “Report a Problem” and attach an invoice—billed to CEO Mark Zuckerberg—detailing the steep price of the personal detriment his algorithm has cost them.
Meanwhile, in the physical world, Apple stores everywhere will have their glossy windows swamped with subversive stickers and slogans that draw attention to the company’s scandals of enforced obsolescence, dodged taxes, and flouted labour laws.
For millions who just want a break from the daily digital madness, September 17th will become DO NOTHING DAY: They will leave their devices at home and find out what it feels like to live without dead time, to be magically present in the moment again.
On September 17th, we take back control of our lives and minds. We flip the power balance. For one day, we make the internet ours again.
Founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz, Adbusters Media Foundation is a global collective of writers, activists, designers, artists, philosophers, poets, and punks. Adbusters is known for spoof ads, culture jamming, sparking the global rituals Buy Nothing Day and Buy Nothing Christmas, and for igniting Occupy Wall Street seven years ago.