Yes Men Response

The Yes Men primarily operate as a cultural jamming group, in that their preferred tactics is to twist standard media in order to expose what they perceive as problems or lies. Their main critique of media is that large companies and other groups involved in big business can often avoid heavy scrutiny and consequences for their actions. The pranks they play are often designed to show what they view as a logical extension of exiting policies held by these companies, such as normalizing practices that can kill people so long as it makes enough money. By taking the logical to a usually ridiculous endpoint the hope is that people will realize that the underlying principles that the Yes Men use to arrive at their projects are morally or otherwise wrong, and then perhaps go on to question the tactics and practices of the company in question more thoroughly.

To use a specific example, by introducing the idea of the Department of Housing and Urban Development dropping its current mode of operation in New Orleans in order to rebuild the housing that had existed before Katrina- and thus allow many of New Orleans’ citizens to return- they hopped that people would wonder why the department wasn’t doing this in actuality. If the people were happy about this hoax plan, then why isn’t it implemented? The easiest conclusion to reach then is the one the Yes Men hold, namely that the current model is better for the big businesses.