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Blair non-fan club announcement Those Samizdata readers who like to see Blair attacked, but do not read The Guardian paper edition – which I guess includes most of you – are missing a treat this Monday morning. Have a look at the NO2ID website, and enjoy a very crisp piece of advertising created for the campaign pro bono*. I am glad to say that the Guardian is distributed in bulk to Labour Conference delegates.
* PS – But not, unfortunately, inserted by the Grauniad pro bono. If you want to see more of this sort of thing, then you know the words of St Bob.
PPS – I did not put in any picture for copyright reasons. Perry put in the version from the Mail, which is a crude mock-up. So I have changed it back to the original version, by linking to the properly licensed copy on the NO2ID website. The Daily Mail’s crop and bland retouching destroys the entire intention and subtlety of the adveritisement.
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Oh the irony of a non national database website that has a data entry field on the front page that allows you to enter your details on their database.
And when we start sending people around to drag your paranoid arse off to jail if you refuse to do so, then and only then, will there be any irony involved.
Or was Guy Herbert standing next to you with a gun to your head when you entered your (phony) details?
I must say, I do like that bit of advertising. Very effective.
The surgical excision of the humour glands seems to have been a success I notice?
In the meantime, trust nobody bearing data entry fields on the internet.
Nice one! More of this please (and ignore the trolls)!
Just to say congratulations Guy on that brilliant poster. Hope to see that all over Manchester this week.
Or was Guy Herbert standing next to you with a gun to your head when you entered your (phony) details?
Don’t encourage them Perry, we waste enough money sending materials to phony addresses that we can’t filter out by inspection, and visually inspecting for people who think they are being clever by typing in rubbish. (Would you believe the predominant form of entry into that form is spam for viagra and the like?)
However it does help us by adding to our supporter-base by a few dozen in an average week. Many more this week, we hope.
Guy,
How I would have loved having No2ID as a client when I was in the ad business. Brilliant work.
Somebody’s noticed:
Outrage over ads depicting Blair as Hitler
Godwin’s Law on a poster 😐
Still, I hope it is effective…
“Somebody’s noticed:”
Aye, but they didn’t publish my comment which was :-
Just replace the word Hitler with Blair and New Labour for Nazi in the following passages…..
“Hitler’s police state worked on the rule that if you said nothing, no harm, could come to you. If you had doubts about the way the country was going, you kept them to yourself – or paid the price. As nearly 17 million people had not voted for either the Nazis or the Nationalist in March 1933, a large and visible police force was required to keep this sizeable group under observation and control.”
Also:
In Nazi Germany the police were allowed to arrest people on suspicion that they were about to do wrong. This gave the police huge powers. All local police units had to draw up a list of people in their locality who might be suspected of being “Enemies of the State”.
I’ve created a similar one for Bush. Luckily my pic of him shows him with his hand up in the air like a nazi salute, so its even better… anyone who wants to carry this email me or pass a note through my blog and I’ll send it to you..
Mike’s comment illustrates why my verdict on it (so far) is that it has been a failure. We have even with this presumed too much knowledge on behalf of the reader, and most people aren’t getting the true bitterness of the satire.
It is being overlooked because it’s assumed we are just naughty boys scrawling a fuhrer moutache on a picture of Blair, making the same sort of idiot ‘point’ that the Leftist protest movement does with its equation Blair = Bush = Hitler.
It is not good enough to be good. The hard bit is to get understood.
I read this web site because it’s normally free of childish idiocy like this.
Can you please explain why this is any different from the moonbat pictures posted above?
In that we are not trying to preach to the converted. The moonbats are looking to express their crude feelings and endorse a collective trope. We want people to disagree with us and meet our challenge, because that brings them into contact with the horrifying facts of state ID management.
As I note above, I think it may have been unsuccessful (time will tell), because people are not arrested enough to read, and not informed enough to understand, the copy – even though it is only eight words, and even though our target audience is supposed to be intelligent.
The context – an ad in a serious newspaper on the day it is read by everyone in the media – is supposed to deal with that; and we are deliberately courting controversy as a way of getting ID discussed. I would be appalled if it were to be waved at demos, or, as one person suggested in a call to NO2ID, put on t-shirts.
We are trying to prod people in the educated media class to think and argue about ID. We are trying to get them to take the huge threat to freedom seriously. It might be a mistake to believe that’s achievable.
LOL BlairHitler!. You do know that moronic arguments like “OMG you’re Hitler!!!” actually put normal people off? The fact that ID cards piss off the sort of people who make retarded analogies like this is, frankly, the only good argument I have ever heard for ID cards.
SuperduperdoubleLOL!
Maybe next week you could put up some “Zionazi” banners as well!
The Mail’s report of the origin of the ad is as inaccurate as its reproduction. I begin to think we have vastly overestimated the visual literacy of the potential audience as well as its knowledge of the question.
Guy,
What about Godwin’s Law?
I’m afraid that preaching to the converted doesn’t make for changing anyone else’s mind.
It’s no better than Bush = Hitler and undermines the campaign.
Peter
“our target audience is supposed to be intelligent. “
If it were, there would be no need for this debate. The electorate would have cried aloud with one voice NO!
“I would be appalled if it were to be waved at demos, or, as one person suggested in a call to NO2ID, put on t-shirts”
Why? As my post above points out, there is a direct comparison with this government’s activities and the Enabling Acts that plunged first Germany then all Europe into darkness.
There is little point in producing a tool that you are not prepared to use to it’s best effect. It’s like sending our troops to Afghanistan with ridiculous rules of engagement designed not to offend the sensibilities of the taleban.
Granted, anyone wearing such a T-shirt will most likely be arrested by the plod for thought crime because free speech is no longer allowed under the benign regime of that nice Mr. Blair…..
“our target audience is supposed to be intelligent. “
If it were, there would be no need for this debate. The electorate would have cried aloud with one voice NO!
Which is a misunderstanding of targeting. The ad was intended to be seen by an upmarket, politically savvy, media-literate segment of the public: that which reads The Guardian on the Monday (media section day) of the Labour party conference – and was designed to engage them, not to convince them.
The electorate is oblivious as you point out – but also unreachable.
We have won the debate among political commentators and activists. But it makes no difference in a technocratic state. We now are struggling to extend to the media class as a whole, and need to have the debate again. How does one get their attention? In theory through a clever, shocking ad that gets talked about.
So far, the right sort of reaction is entirely lacking, and it is hard to tell why. Not, I think, the vulgar version of Godwin’s Law. But perhaps the debasement of the currency of shock. With every idiot drawing spurious comparisons between Blair and Hitler, then I suppose many have just turned the page on another one of those… without wondering what our point was. We thought we would get away from that because of the precision of the execution.
There is little point in producing a tool that you are not prepared to use to it’s best effect.
Precisely. A press ad, or perhaps a paid poster, where one can control the presentation is using it to the best effect here. And maybe not good enough. Using it in the context of the very sort of moonbattery we are trying to avoid would greatly weaken it, quite apart from being waste circulation.
The fact that I’ve had lots of positive reactions so far from people who were already on-side, and almost no negative ones, save people making the same point as Peter Reavy, suggests that we are indeed, despite our intention to do otherwise, preaching to the converted again and NOT attracting new attention to the campaign.
The Guardian?
A “serious newspaper”?
Guy,
My physics tutor at Nottingham said that the way to get into a subject was to understand just one thing about it. Once you “got” the double-slit experiment Quantum Mechanics would fall into place (with a little work, obviously).
I think something similar is what you’ve got to do to engage the electorate. Truth be told, the majority of the population doesn’t (yet) give a monkey’s about ID cards. The UK population is very compliant – the populace of how many other countries would put up with needing a license for a TV?
So… an ad campaign which just focuses on one specific point might be the ticket. What is the one thing which will really hit home with a large enough proportion of the UK electorate?
Of course, depending upon budget, several specific, focussed ads would be even better.
I dunno off the top of my head what the killer issue here is. The one that springs to mind is the cost. I know this isn’t a ideologically “pure” argument but I suspect a very large number of Brits are very antagonistic to the idea of paying money to assert their identity – something which of course already belongs to them.
Another point is that, as you acknowledge, Blair has been bashed to buggeration by the press. He’s yesterday’s man. He’s finished. God alone knows who is gonna replace him – which is why I’m digging a bunker in the backyard.
But the electorate are reachable; note the success of other campaigns.
If you tell the sheeple the same thing often enough they will believe it e.g. the success of branding the war in Iraq “illegal” (despite the dozens of UN resolutions Saddam thumbed his nose at, nor the terms of the 1991 cease fire which itself was not a peace treaty, or that guns are inherently evil things that turn normal citizens into mass murderers by their very existence.
Other examples are that we need to pay the highest fuel prices in galaxy to stop global warming from destroying all life on the globe, there is no alternative to VAT and best of all, the wonderful sacred cow that is the NHS; despite it being almost criminally inefficient (some times fatally), the politicos stick to the line that it’s the best system on earth, and the sheeple believe it.
Although Stalin would perhaps have been a better metaphor for this poster, it’s still very effective, but needs to be seen by a broader audience than the readers of the Gruaniad and the Mail
I think Nick M. is on to something.
Here are two possible things to focus on. One is the governments propensity of misshandling information. The other suggests the government will handle data so well that your entire life ‘privileges’ will be interlinked. The two campaigns run together might lead people to ‘discover’ all on their own that the gov could mess up the data and punish nonexistent violations.
A possible advert would be to show a picture of one of the most unpopular government officials (in a frightening or creepy way) and caption it –
“Who knows where you are?”
Or some picture suggesting identity theft* with the caption –
“What could possibly go wrong?”
A picture of a well known official with the reputation for missusing government data or privilege with the caption –
“Trust me.”
Or suggest possible consequences, “Mr. Smith, the rules state the NHS may not provide non-emergency services until the national database shows you’ve paid your telly fee.”
Or someone in a bar, just had his ID checked, bartender says “I’m not allowed to serve anyone with unpaid parking tickets.”
Or someone trying to renew a driver’s license. – “But ma’am, if the computer says you haven’t paid your (pick-any-fee) then you haven’t paid it. You may not renew your license until the system says you’ve paid.”
* I’m not sure if they’re in the UK but there is a fantastic series of identity-theft-protected-credit-card commercials here in the US showing the card owner’s face and body but lip syncing the voice and body motions of the identity thief bragging about what he or she is doing with the credit card.
Good idea Midwesterner; something along the lines of (say) John Cleese as a government official telling a little old lady “Your biometric ID card says quite clearly you are Lord Lucan and the system is never wrong…”
Just let everyone know Crapita are getting the IT contract. ..
I think the tricky thing here is that the real dangers are not what they’re going to do immediately but what they’ll try to do with better technology in ten years time. I think that’s hard to get over to the general public unless you’re a Sci-Fi writer. It’s bloody lucky for George Orwell that he’s already dead because this would have killed him.
The government has made a number of half-arsed attempts to say why an ID card is a good idea. They’re usually along the lines of “it’ll make it easier to open a bank account…” Like that’s difficult! Unfortunately criticising this kinda thing just ain’t forceful enough.
I just keep thinking of Orwell. Remember Winston Smith’s enforced exercises? Considering certain trends in the UK Gov I can see that happening. I think we have to hit the population with truly horrific Orwellian imagery.
And also with the arbitaryness of the whole thing and it’s spectacular capacity for meaningless cruelty. I rather like Stuart’s idea and Cleese would be a good choice. But I dunno if we don’t need something which suggests malignity as well as incompetent jobsworth behaviour.
What I especially like about Stuart’s idea is using the tag-line “The system is never wrong”. Place that below a suitable image and bingo! I like it because it has an ambiguity about the two senses in which something can be “wrong”.
Gor blimey, I’m rambling today…
That was intended to be the inference of the license vignette. If it’s too subtle for this audience, then it’s to subtle for the market.
Humor works. But there should also be ads that tap what Nick calls the “malignity” of it. Something darker than what I called “creepy”.
It’s most effective to set it up and let the viewer put in place the keystone fact with their own mind. That “aha!” moment is when you convert the ambivalent.
I think it might be a mistake to rely on people regarding the present government as a bunch of crypto-fascists, whether or not they actually are. Clearly Blair isn’t Hitler and portraying him as such immediately invokes Godwin’s Law.
Historically, although ID schemes have been most dangerous in the hands of totalitarian regimes, they have been introduced much earlier on for benign motives. Maybe this somehow needs to be got across.
For example, I believe the Dutch had their religion put onto itheir identity documents quite ealry in the 20th century. This was so that if someone died away from home and relatives could not be contacted quickly enough they could be given a funeral appropriate to their religious beliefs. All very caring and high minded.
What problem could there be?
But of course this information was later put to a much different use by the Nazis, who found it very helpful in picking out Jews in the Dutch population.
So one line of approach might be:
“Did you know that with ID cards, and the NIR, the government will be able to do XYZ…~??
Are you happy for them to have these powers and this information about you and your family?
Yes?
OK . What about the government after that?
And the one after that?
Are you happy for these powers to be placed in the hands of your worst political enemy?
No?
Then oppose the scheme.”
Or, put something like the above paragraph about Dutch ID papers, ending with “what problem could there be” on a poster below a picture of Ann Frank..
johnse18, in an ideal world, that would work. Those are some of the real reasons that people should react.
But the nature of the media beast is that you have about a quarter of a second to make your point. This is why ads like ‘Trust me’ will be disproportionately effective. People just don’t reason their way through advertisements. They react quickly. This is why No2ID’s product branding is probably quite effective.
Guy, et al are on the right track. An eye blink to get people to do their own thinking. My first three suggestions contain a single thought. The next two are compound NHS/telly fee, pint/parking tickets and require a pause. The third one needs an at least slightly primed reader to think it through but has the potential to be the most effective on those who do get it.
Hopefully the No2ID branding brings a lot of people to their website to see the deep picture and very real consequences you describe.