Last week, @lenskonig and I attempted to overthrow the British government. But we failed. This post is a retrospective on our mistakes and will hopefully serve as an educational resource for anyone wishing to overthrow the British government in the future.

Mistake #1: We used an advertising strategy from the 90s.

Because I'd grown up on a diet of Adbusters, I relate to the anti-advertising strategies of the mid-90s. And so, @Lenskonig and I came up with this billboard concept. It was designed to wake people in the UK up to the fact that society's healers were being attacked by rich land owners (the UK government and its financiers). As a result they are having to get their food by donation:

Artist's impression of our planned anti-advert.

Cool anti-ad right?

No. Not cool at all.

We were trying to overthrow the government using guerrilla advertising techniques from the 1990s. We forgot that nobody looks at adverts anymore, and if they do, they assume they are being tricked into buying something. For all a bystander knows, our billboard was an advertisement for new Nike sneakers called "Food Banks".

Yeah, so you can see the problem here.

The problem is that corporations have repurposed the counter-culture as an advertising device so many times there is no counter-culture message that cannot be mistaken for a corporate ad-campaign. There is nothing that the fashion-industrial complex cannot zombify and turn to money.

Che Guevara is wearing a jean-jacket by Kenzo and shirt by, surprisingly, H&M. Now what? Now, where is your revolution?

Oh dear.

Also, through crowd-funding, we raised $0.57 globally to install our billboard. Not quite enough.

It's hard to rebel against a government financed by a corporate battalion that repackages rebellion and sells it back to you.

Perhaps all that we have left are dank memes and cryptocurrencies. These are complex 'consciousness-shifting' technologies that circulate rapidly and seem, so far at least, to have (sort of) escaped the clutches of the advertising men and their dead-eyed fang-plunger.

Advertising executives: Your revolution could be part of our new ad-campaign!

How can we protest in a corporate hellscape?

How does someone who wants to change society have an impact when all attempts to protest look like a potential advert for Levis? Where is the public space for citizen-messaging that counteracts the mainstream ideology? Should all advertising billboards be required by law to include a counter-advert by a community-interest group? Would these adverts be mistaken for 'ironic' corporate campaigns?

What brand of sneakers does Edward Snowden wear and where can you buy them?

Is billboard protest possible anymore?