Friday, July 22, 2005
united against...
I haven't checked Snopes yet, nor have I ran it through the AFU - Urban Legends Archives, so I'm not sure wether this is not just another urban legend. Or worse (more details below). Its yet another chain-mail attachment that's been making the rounds lately, about an advertising campaign supposedly 'cancelled' by the US government that was supposedly run only once on MTV's networks.
I like the message but since the attachment is so damn big (and since chain letters goes against RFC 1855) I decided it'd be better if I just posted it here in my own private mass-medium (hey, its potentially accesible by millions worldwide; even if my blog's hit count since inception two years ago has only reached the low 2000s :p). The following is more or less a recreation of the PowerPoint™ presentation distributed with the chain letter.
Shameless plug: images extracted using OOo Impress (a component of OpenOffice.org), captured by clipboard and prepared for online display using WinGIMP
This MTV advertisement was canceled by the US government. It was aired only ONCE....
The text next to the WTC Manhattan twin towers: "2.863 people died"
(the cardboard sign the sitting man is holding: HIV+ PLEASE HELP)
The text next to the sitting man: "40 million infected worldwide"
"The world united against terrorism. It should do the same against AIDS"
next to the towers: "2.863 people died"
next to the kid: "824 million people starving in the world"
"The world united against terrorism. It should do the same against HUNGER"
next to the towers: "2.863 people died"
next to the old man: "630 million poor homeless people in the world"
"The world united against terrorism. It should do the same against POVERTY"Solidarity is needed.
- Help, donate, sponsor -
This advertisement was forbidden, but not everything can be hiddenThank you...MTV
I'd like to add something, though. I sure hope this story is real, but my advertising spider-sense tells me that this is guerilla marketing by MTV. Its a clever one though, if it turns out to be guerilla marketing. The message is nice and commendable, and I certainly agree that it'd be hard to run, even on their own private cable networks.
(And if it is guerilla marketing by MTV I'd like to add that IMHO it has failed. I think it distributes more widely among non-US persons than among US residents; Too touchy.)
And of course this whole terrorism thing is more than just about numbers. Its not about how "only 2.865 people died," its about how they died, and within the intrinsicaly inpenetrable US border defenses nonetheless. There's a very real geopolitical security dimension to this whole shenanigan; I'm sure y'all US folks would agree. "How did they attack us within our homes? Its unimaginable." Very unimaginable for the citizens of the sole remaining Superpower state. From the very start of the US campaign (and all the way through at least until they invaded Afghanistan; that's before Iraq in case you've forgotten), I'd always thought to myself that its a pretty fucked-up move to make by such terrorists. But personally I'm not too sure of Bush's handling of the retalliation...
The point is, terrorism is not the world's sole urgent problem. There are others, and they are arguably just as urgent, if not more.
--
And as an added note: I'd like to think that a better alternative to distributing chain letters would be to post them on your blog. That way if people would like to read about them then they must decide to actually visit the page containing the letter; nobody wastes any bandwidth unless he/she actually chooses to waste said bandwidth. We should post chain letters as blogposts
Oh and it should be noted that I took some creative liberties with the captions; if you'd like to check the original PowerPoint™ Slideshow you could get a copy from my Ripway. Even then I think the captions in the PPS are different from the original copies actually contained in the ads. I'd love to get my hands on the originals...
And there's a CC twist to this whole thing, too: its actually illegal for me to be posting these pictures; I have not cleared my use of MTV's imageries with MTV. The story would be different had MTV slapped a By-Nc-Sa license on these. The use of CC licenses to allow grassroots redistribution of commercial advertising messages have been discussed before, but sadly I can't remember where exactly...
Oh and please don't distribute the PPS via email; if you want then you could should actually replicate this post in your blog, I think that would be better. And if you're going to do so please save a copy of the pics in your own server (you can use Ripway, Photobucket, or Flickr), since the bandwidth of my Ripway server is limited...
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?
