The Yes Men is a pair of pranksters, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, who have been in
operation for about twelve years. They target corporations and
government organizations that act in corrupt or dehumanizing ways.
They’re first prank that attracted international attention was when
Bichlbaum posed as a spokesman for Dow Chemical and announced on the BBC that Dow Chemical was pledging to completely clean up the site of the Bhopal chemical spill
and compensate the victims, including paying for medical care for the
rest of their lives. Since then, Bichlbaum and Bonanno have released two
movies and a book, and pulled numerous pranks around the world.
Up until now, The Yes Men have been the primary operators with support from outside people and organizations. Now, they are opening The Yes Lab, headquartered in New York City. The Yes Lab will reverse the roles, making The Yes Lab the source of support for other organizations pulling pranks of their own.
I would like to spend time volunteering my services at The Yes Lab to
help get it going as well as observe the way Bichlbaum and Bonanno
work, and research how they leverage social networking to organize,
expand and how they use the Internet to disguise themselves as
representatives of other organizations. I would do this with
observation, participation and qualitative interviews of Bichlbaum,
Bonanno and people who have participated in their pranks in New York
City.
This project is simply awesome. I’ve never heard of The Yes Men before, but I like their philosophy and the playful atmosphere of it all. It seems to tie well into the playful activism that often takes place on the web. I take it you’ve already been accepted to volunteer at The Yes Lab, otherwise I would be a little concerned about time since the travelogue is due in only a couple weeks. Have you considered starting your own project and using social media to gather support for your own prank? I hope that you get the green light for the project, and it’s refreshing to see a travelogue move away from the standard topic of “explore a social media platform.” I look forward to seeing how it goes.
Peter, I agree with Alex, this is a great proposal for a travelogue, but if you haven’t made contact with the Yes Men yet a couple of weeks may be a very short time window for joining The Yes Lab and writing a full reportage. Alternatively, you can try to get in contact with people who have collaborated with them and interview them to try and understand how they operate. The first step to take, if you haven’t taken it yet, is to join their mailing list. While their web site functions mainly as an archive of their projects, Bichlbaum and Bonanno still rely a lot on email both to mobilize their network of supporters and pull pranks. In this respect they are still very much a Web 1.0. activist group.
Second, I would do a little more background research on the history of the group. The group did not start with the Dow Chemical prank, it started much earlier, with a series of fake impersonations of the World Trade Organization. (Their previous feature film, titled “The Yes Men” tells the story of these pranks.) This article explains where the Yes Men come from and how they mobilize collaborators and volunteers.