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It’s time to create the pop stars of activism, the idoru of communication guerrilla; it’s time to threaten and charm the masses by the ghosts coming from the net, to play the myth against the myth, to be more nihilist than infotainment!
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0. LUTHER BLISSETT AND NET.ACTIVISM
Luther Blissett is a pop myth, a collective “open” pop star. The name is the same as that of a Watford soccer player. But the virtual Luther Blissett has a computer-generated face. LB is a multiple name: anyone can become LB and use his/her name for whatever purpose.
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2. THE POP TURN
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The title of the intro of the nettime bible ‘read me!’ is: “nothing is spectacular if you aren’t part of it”. I don’t know if this is a quote or where it comes from (Debord..? it’s pure Debord philosophy!), but it is quite rhetorical, politically correct, and puritanic. We should say: nothing is spectacular if you are part of it! Activism has to perform a u-turn: let’s call it the ‘pop’ turn. Barthes: “The best weapon against the myth is to mythicize itself, is to produce an artificial myth: and this reconstituted myth will be a real mythology”.
Net hype is a myth that activism must parasite and overcode. As the a.f.r.i.k.a gruppe writes: “Increasing attempts to police the net, to establish state and corporate control will, paradoxically, increase its attractivity as a field of operation for communication guerrillas: Possibly, even those of us who until now have not even owned a PC will get Wired. Fakes and false rumours inside and outside the Net may help to counteract commodification and state control - after all, the internet is an ideal area for producing rumours and fakes … Communication Guerrillas are fascinated by possibilities offered by the internet also in a quite diferent sense: Beyond its reality, THE NET is an urban myth, and perhaps the strongest and most vital of all. Social discourse conceives THE NET as the location where the people, the pleasures, the sex and the crimes of tomorrow already take place. Go Internet, learn the Future! Fears and desires are projected onto THE NET: this is the mythical place where we can see the future of our society.” The mass media stage is inglobing the net step by step. The Spectacle is hybridizing itself within the net. Activists have to attack and parasite the collective imaginery which has already penetrated cyberspace. The mass media imaginary is becoming increasingly interactive, or “democratic”. The Old Left’s theories about media manipulation have long ago become obsolete.

3. POP INTERFACES FOR THE MASSES: A POLITICAL IDORU
The ”Pop Turn’ means that activists have to become less boring and learn to speak the language of the masses. Like all interfaces, it’s a compromise. Some puritanical activist, some anarchist or eco-raver will disagree. But the only way to face infoteinment is to become more nihilist than it itself. The ‘pop’ turn is not only a strategic choice, it is also a way of building a communicative link to the masses.
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Gateway to the media. Hacktivists have to organize gateways between the net and the “traditional” media. This net-media gateway should be an interface to feed and control the spread of news media. It includes contacting and cooperating with on-line staff of TV and newspapers, and making up idiot-friendly interfaces for journalists. The history of EDT demonstrates this necessity: without making the NY Times front page on October 31, 1998, EDT would have a merely on-line existence.
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We have to stop producing new theories. We simply have to connect one strategy to another, to make hybrids of activism. Learning from the phenomena of the hackers, we can integrate net.artists and designers into activism. I mean an euphoric, subversive, iconoclast, prankish activism! If net.artists began to design pop interfaces and strategies for activism, they surely would be more spured, inspired, and useful. We don’t need to become a “rhizome”. Deleuze & Guattari once asked: “how can we distinguish between subversive schizophrenia and capitalistic schizophrenia?” Capitalism is schizo and rhizomatic as well. The rhizome myth is not only dangerous for this proximity, it has reached such a level of saturation, that everything today is proclaimed a “rhizome.”

5. THE REVOLUTION OF ‘99
The net-media-art activism scene is fragmented in a lot of groups, close sub-networks, alternative culture ghettos, avant-garde loners, and hyper-egos. Jodi’s map is an effective bird’s-eye view of “our” network. This scene can migrate overground only through the interconnection of each group of artists, activists, writers, theorists, designers, journalists, moderators, organizers, etc. This network could become a mediatic icon–the next sub-cultural movement, after punk, techno, cyberpunk! We should find a quite pop and stupid name: “the revolution of ‘99″?