The price of harmless fun

Ostensibly a clearinghouse for the organization and funding of media pranks, RTMark is an archive, network, and subsidizer of late 20th Century Agitprop at its best. But in its ultimate execution, this artfully clever web site may be something of a media prank in itself.

RTMark's named target is corporate America ­ those giant companies who, thanks to laws passed in Abraham Lincoln's day, enjoy the privileges of citizenship without any of the responsibilities. In the United States, corporations have all the rights of people; but when they do something wrong or very wrong, no human being is held accountable. This is why, according to Artmark, corporations continue polluting our waters and murdering thousands through negligent industrial practices.

Even when they are caught, the offending corporation only needs to pay a fine in order to continue business as usual. No one goes to jail. Meanwhile, with more money at their disposal than most countries, these multinational corporations can donate to elections and pay for lobbyists who give them more access to and influence on public policy than any group of "private citizens."

In order to promote the kinds of pranks and protests that will call attention to corporate greed and the resulting atrocities, RTMark's founders came up with a unique idea: exploit the same corporate veil that the big boys use. RTMark is a fully registered corporation dedicated to matching the resources of anonymous donors with the pranksters who hope to topple the corporate hegemony.

Through RTMark's web site, Internet users can scroll through dozens of proposals for media terrorism, select a prank they wish to fund, and then offer financial assistance with the click of a mouse. The corporation guarantees the donor freedom from liability, using the same laws that protect a corporation's officers from blame when they make a mess.

RTMark's most successful "grant recipient" to date is probably The Barbie Liberation Organization, an anonymous collective of media activists who made world headlines by successfully switching the recorded voices of hundreds of Barbie dolls with those of military action figure GI Joe. Unsuspecting consumers in 43 States were horrified when their children's dolls spoke in the voices, and sexist dialogue, of their supposed gender counterparts.

The site offers dozens of such opportunities to put one's money to work. The only rule is that its pranks are limited to the mediaspace, and cause no physical harm to anyone. RTMark also features "Mutual Funds," through which donors can support a variety of actions researched and approved by the fund's manager.

The "Media Fund", overseen by writer and filmmaker Andrei Codrescu, is currently dedicated to a variety of Y2K-hype bashing efforts. One project Codrescu has chosen for his fund hopes to "make and distribute a videotape with packaging that claims it will 'scan any VCR for Y2K compliance.' When played, the video should reveal that Y2K bug hysteria is a smoke screen, the function of which is in part to obscure continued consolidation and dominance of corporate power in everyday life and government."

Ironically, RTMark has come under greater criticism from fellow activists than from its corporate targets. At the Ars Electronica festival in Austria last year, more than one card-carrying leftist publicly scolded these purveyors of "radical chic" for trivializing the efforts of more genuinely productive groups.

And then there's also the question of whether or not RTMark actually makes any real money available to the groups it claims to sponsor. Several activist groups currently listed on RTMark's web site as successful funding efforts told me they yet to receive any actual money from the organization.

The Electronic Disturbance Theatre's "FloodNet" program, for example, is an RTMark "sponsored" effort that attacks web sites run by the US Pentagon and Mexican government, mostly on behalf of the Zapatista movement. The simple Internet hack works to overload and incapacitate the offending web sites with millions of hits. Floodnet's spokesman, Ricardo Dominguez, says that although he appreciates RTMark's public support, some cash would have been nice, too. Still, RTMark did buy Floodnet's programmers a few bottles of a beer, and the much-publicized sponsorship did account for what Dominguez says was "a great propaganda spasm, and more than enough payment for us."

© Douglas Rushkoff - April 21, 1999

* Douglas Rushkoff has written extensively on the Internet, pop-culture, cyber culture, media and technology. He serves as a technology and culture consultant to the United Nations Commission on World Culture, and has lectured at Harvard and Princeton. His published works include: Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace, Playing the Future, and Media Virus! Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture.

Published weekly by the Electronic Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, South Africa. Send email comments to the editor, Gavin Dudley