Tag: Yes Men

  • Yes Men hoax uses Twitter, Facebook to put Big Coal on the defensive

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    Peabody, which launched a “Coal Cares” website to advertise the campaign, hoped to tackle the stigma associated with asthma by giving away a variety of colorful and hip inhalers to dignify the use of asthma medication.

    “For kids who have no choice but to use an inhaler,” the website reads, “Coal Cares lets them inhale with pride.” Above all, the empathetic hearts behind the “Coal Cares” initiative are seeking to make what they have deemed “Asthma-Related Bullying (ARB)” a thing of the past.

    Link: Yes Men hoax uses Twitter, Facebook to put Peabody Energy on the defensive | Poynter.

  • WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Model for Africa

    WTO Announces Formalized Slavery Model for Africa

    Yes Men:

    Philadelphia – At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for “full private stewardry of labor” for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa’s free trade with the West.
    The initiative will require Western companies doing business in some parts of Africa to own their workers outright. Schmidt recounted how private stewardship has been successfully applied to transport, power, water, traditional knowledge, and even the human genome. The WTO’s “full private stewardry” program will extend these successes to (re)privatize humans themselves.

    “Full, untrammelled stewardry is the best available solution to African poverty, and the inevitable result of free-market theory,” Schmidt told more than 150 attendees. Schmidt acknowledged that the stewardry program was similar in many ways to slavery, but explained that just as “compassionate conservatism” has polished the rough edges on labor relations in industrialized countries, full stewardry, or “compassionate slavery,” could be a similar boon to developing ones.

    Here.

  • The Halliburton SurvivaBall™

    The Halliburton SurvivaBall™

    Yes Men, from the fake site Halliburton Contracts:

    Halliburton’s reputation as a disaster and conflict industry innovator will be cemented by the SurvivaBall™, a one-size-fits-all solution to global warming.

    Here.

  • UK Serious Games Conference Pranked by Anti-McDonalds Activists

    UK Serious Games Conference Pranked by Anti-McDonalds Activists

    The Yes Men strike again!

    From Gamasutra, via boing-boing:

    According to online reports, the UK-based International Serious Games Event, which deals with games for educational, corporate training, and other uses, this week hosted its conference in Birmingham, England, complete with a session by Andrew Shimery-Wolf, Strategic Comm. Mgr at fast food giant McDonald’s, on “McChange: Serious Games from Training to Corporate Social Responsibility.”

    Shimery-Wolf claims to be part of an organization named McDonald’s Interactive, which has apparently announced that it “is striking out on its own from parent company McDonald’s.” “We can no longer stand by while McDonald’s corporate policies help lead the planet to ruin,” said Andrew Shimery-Wolf, co-director of the former Interactive Division.

    However, as is clear by the apparent text of Shimery-Wolf’s speech at the legitimate International Serious Games Event, someone has been hoaxed – the speech claims that McDonald’s has run an elaborate ‘serious game’ to help work out the future of its business.

    Here.