Comments on: They dance and eat as they steal.

They dance and eat as they steal.

Mo Nickels — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:30:31 -0800

dance and eat as they steal. Yomango, a counter-but-consumerist-culture of shoplifting, surfaced July 2002 in Spain. It's shoplifting as a movement—taught in workshops, choreographed, organized as missions, and executed with prankish gusto on three continents. Why? One, it's civil disobedience that believes stealing to stay alive should be permitted. Two, it takes back what once belonged to everyone. Three, there's humor in it, even with the communistic undertones and its little red book. Discussion: Dark Matter, Las Agencias, and the Aesthetics of Tactical Embarrassment. A Poliedric Debate On Collabora Art. ¿Lo quieres?¿Lo tienes? (Spanish). More about Yomango: Ten Style Tips for a Yomango Life. A gallery of promos, news, and event photos. Yomango fashion show. Yomango tango. Yomango dinner.

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:36:03 -0800

...a counter-but-consumerist-culture of shoplifting, surfaced July 2002 in Spain. It's shoplifting as a movement—taught in workshops, choreographed, organized as missions, and executed with prankish gusto on three continents. The first rule of Shoplifting Club is that you don't talk about Shoplifting Club.

By: nyc stories

nyc stories — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:54:08 -0800

It's true that our society has become about consumerism, and that the choice of spending your money on one thing versus another is not really a choice, but is stealing the items instead really the answer? How about creating home made versions instead to avoid the consumer/name brand society all together? The Yomango website says "Capitalism sneakily manages to create needs that are then costly (in every sense) for us to satisfy. Don't renounce your desires: just don't let the market determine how you manage them." How about realizing that many of those "needs" are only "wants," and that you don't need them at all. Renounce the desires that capitalism has falsely created. Not only is this better for your pocketbook, but it's good for the environment. Maybe I am missing the point, but Yomango does not seem like a sound movement to me.

By: bugbread

bugbread — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:54:24 -0800

Winona Ryder se alía con Mao en una protesta anticonsumista. "Winona Ryder allied herself with Mao in an anticonsumerist protest" Heehee.

By: all-seeing eye dog

all-seeing eye dog — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:55:26 -0800

nyc stories: you hit the nail on head.

By: all-seeing eye dog

all-seeing eye dog — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 16:55:50 -0800

..."the head," i mean.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:04:36 -0800

Well. That's weird. Seems like it could get the people 'promoting' it into a huge pile of legal shit. I mean, dosn't spain have Anti-conspiracy laws?

By: wendell

wendell — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:07:51 -0800

MetaFilter: It's like Yomango without the dancing and eating and stealing.

By: kcds

kcds — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:13:59 -0800

This is sophistry at best, and anti-social lawbreaking behavior disguised as political protest at worst. I propose a counter-movement that consists of whacking shoplifters over the head with baseball bats while reciting some leftist philosopher's viewpoint about violence being purely a product of "the media".

By: bugbread

bugbread — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:17:01 -0800

My guess is performance art.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:20:22 -0800

How about realizing that many of those "needs" are only "wants," and that you don't need them at all. Depends on what you're stealing. I think their justifications for stealing things that advertisers tell us we need are, well, absurd. They should concentrate on the basics: stealing money and food. I mean, if you have no marketable skills, or can't find a job, are you supposed to simply die? Utilitarians need not respond. :)

By: IshmaelGraves

IshmaelGraves — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:38:37 -0800

Trust fund babies try to convince themselves that their morally anemic little lives are 'edgy.' They make fancy web sites about it and right manifestos whilst congratulation one another on how 'liberated' they are. Meanwhile, the guy who's actually homeless and slips a Snickers bar into his pocket will still go to jail and these tools still won't give a fuck. News at eleven.

By: IshmaelGraves

IshmaelGraves — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:39:38 -0800

s/right/write

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 17:39:56 -0800

Yomango to jail.

By: davy

davy — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:00:12 -0800

What Civil_Disobedient said. While it was more fun to get away with it than to get caught, as a teenaged runaway i shoplifted to survive. When I got busted in Berkeley in 1978 it was over a pair of bootlaces, a small bag of dried figs, and a bottle of shampoo. I don't have anything against overprivileged kids who shoplift for thrills, except they shouldn't whine if they get caught -- I didn't (but I did grumble a bit). And no, I didn't run away from home for the adventure. I escaped from a juvenile detention center because it was painful.

By: RedEmma

RedEmma — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:42:21 -0800

i guess Abbie Hoffman lives. hurrah, if only because the world could use more Abbie Hoffmans. like about a hundred. How about realizing that many of those "needs" are only "wants," and that you don't need them at all. Renounce the desires that capitalism has falsely created. Not only is this better for your pocketbook, but it's good for the environment. Maybe I am missing the point, but Yomango does not seem like a sound movement to me. i agree with you wholeheartedly and earnestly. however, i think your humor dial needs to be turned up a tick or two. i doubt very much that these folks are buried in third-car-garage loads of chinese made plastic crap like my parents' neighbors. I propose a counter-movement that consists of whacking shoplifters over the head with baseball bats while reciting some leftist philosopher's viewpoint about violence being purely a product of "the media". yeah. cuz shoplifters should die. right. woo-hoo. the list of capital punishment via vigilante justice just grows and grows. i so love america. Meanwhile, the guy who's actually homeless and slips a Snickers bar into his pocket will still go to jail and these tools still won't give a fuck. News at eleven. yes, so everyone should always be grim because Les Miserables is all too true, right? no laughing. it makes the little baby jesus cry.

By: eustatic

eustatic — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:43:12 -0800

i see nyc stories' point, but couldn't one see shoplifting as a naturally capitalist endeavor? i don't shop at the huge, centrally-planned economies that pop up in strip malls, but, for the people that do, isn't shoplifting just a way of reclaiming a consumers' ability to negotiate prices?

By: dial-tone

dial-tone — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:48:52 -0800

My problem with shoplifting as any sort of political message is that it's just another form of consumerism, but without limits. When you shoplift, anything you can get away with is something you can own and that's a very negative mind set to have.

By: eustatic

eustatic — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:50:23 -0800

By: dial-tone

dial-tone — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:50:50 -0800

cuz shoplifters should die. That's not what they said.

By: eustatic

eustatic — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:50:55 -0800

By: eustatic

eustatic — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 18:57:39 -0800

When you shoplift, anything you can get away with is something you can own and that's a very negative mind set to have i think the political message is that this is exactly the attitude of multinational corporations. steal a chocolate bar, and you're a thief rob a bank, and you're a criminal steal Cochabamba's water, and you're the most envied corporation the world over

By: uncanny hengeman

uncanny hengeman — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:07:33 -0800

Seems like it could get the people 'promoting' it into a huge pile of legal shit. The student guild at a Perth university got in major do-do for doing such a thing in the campus newspaper. I think it was the actual students involved, not the guild, who eventually got prosecuted. Or at least threatened with prosecution. What made them extra hard core (stupid?), is that the cops got wind of it and they were officially warned prior to publication, but they went ahead and printed it anyway. I can't for the life of me find a link, which is strange coz it was fairly big news at the time. I think this was the newspaper in question (link to homepage, not offending edition).

By: dial-tone

dial-tone — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:21:44 -0800

i think the political message is that this is exactly the attitude of multinational corporations. True, but it's better not to emulate that attitude then. I could be wrong about this, but shoplifting hurts retailers more than it hurts the multinationals (except for multinational retailers), because once the item is in the store, the store is going to have to pay for it.

By: davy

davy — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:35:28 -0800

once the item is in the store, the store is going to have to pay for it. This is why one should not steal from small mom-&-pop stores if one can avoid it. But I have no such sympathy for Wal-Mart.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:40:56 -0800

one should not steal from small mom-&-pop stores if one can avoid it If one can avoid it?

By: Satapher

Satapher — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:43:09 -0800

Yomango to jail. Genius!

By: Satapher

Satapher — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:47:15 -0800

did anyone have any serial shoplifter friends in college? I knew a group of girls that made it a daily mission to steal wine and food from a ratty ol' budget supermarket

By: gregor-e

gregor-e — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 19:54:12 -0800

As a fashion statement, Yomango has many of the same compelling features as Gangsta Rap - it's rebellious, outlaw, sure to be found repulsive by parents and other "establishment" members, and has the attraction of personal wealth enhencement (even more so than for the average adherent to the Gangsta Rap lifestyle). So it is easy to imagine this lifestyle choice become a durable part of modern culture. As an economic/philosophical/socioligical statement it is pure stupid tripe. They appear to think they can effect change by stealing from corporations. What they ignore is that corporations exist purely because they are able to organize people and material in a way that creates more wealth than these same people could otherwise manage on their own. Stealing from such an organization merely reduces the amount of wealth amplification, causing the price of their products to rise. The net effect is that they're stealing from later purchasers of these products, or, in the extreme case where the amplification is reduced to zero, from the people who formerly composed the corporation and who are now without a job.

By: cpchester

cpchester — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 20:58:57 -0800

Yo' mangos so fat....

By: davy

davy — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 21:16:47 -0800

Me: "[O]ne should not steal from small mom-&-pop stores if one can avoid it. IndigoJones: "If one can avoid it?" Not everybody is fortunate enough to have a Wal-Mart or a Macy's nearby, and sometimes having to walk or ride public transit makes getting away with the purloined goods problematic. But on principle, yes, it's always better to steal from the big chains than small shops -- and besides the big chains have more stuff. And gregor-e, should they simply loot the Wal-Mart and then burn it? Or are you proposing, as I would, the abolition of the corporations? Or do you mean that the wonderful and necessary corporations must be protected from hoi pilfering polloi? (I suspect the latter, but then I'm tired.) And no, of course I don't think that stealing is always wrong.

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 23:11:20 -0800

Linguistic aside: In Spanish slang "Yo mango" means "I pilfer". Anyway, a bunch of spoiled brats dreams up a faux-rebellious philosophy to justify their thieving ways. Big news, never happened before...

By: PeterMcDermott

PeterMcDermott — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 00:11:02 -0800

> sometimes having to walk or ride public transit makes > getting away with the purloined goods problematic There are other real advantages as well: losses come directly off Mom and Pop's bottom line, so in my experience. they are much likely to be more careful about watching their stock and keeping an eagle eye on those of us likely to purloin it. Staff at Walmart, in contrast, often feel some resentment at the way they are being screwed by the company, so they're often happy to see someone walking away with the goods, and are rarely likely to risk a pop on the nose to protect them. > I think their justifications for stealing things that > advertisers tell us we need are, well, absurd Their justifications may be absurd -- that doesn't particularly bother me. However, there's a certain poetic irony about people who buy into the advertisers inculcation of artificial desire so totally that they believe they have to steal to feed that desire. This is precisely the same sort of engine that feeds so much underclass crime (ie, the belief that I'm nothing and nobody unless I'm wearing certain designer labels), so I do see a certain symmetry in the idea that a quasi-political movement -- no matter how naive and inarticulate -- emerges out of the artificial desire that corporations and advertisers have done so much to nurture.

By: different

different — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 02:05:46 -0800

uncanny hengeman, google brings up this, suggesting that it was Murdoch Uni voting to reprint an article from Melbourne's La Trobe University.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 04:59:46 -0800

Davy: "[O]ne should not steal from small mom-&-pop stores if one can avoid it. IndigoJones: "If one can avoid it?" Forgive me, the phrase struck me as really very funny. Every day millions of people the world over, many in worse straits than yours past or present, do manage to avoid it, whether from self respect, respect for law and order, common decency, hope for better things to come. They, or at least the ones I've known, tend away from your kind of Dickensian bitter. As a result, they are, to me at least, more awe inspiring. They make me want to be a better person. As to the subject at hand, I'm always struck by self indulgence masking as a protest gesture. As with illegal downloading, practicioners have to style itself as a strike against The System because you can hardly claim that you'll simply die without Madonna's latest offering.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 08:49:39 -0800

Jesus, I'm amazed to see so many people here taking this so seriously. C'mon, can't you see that having workshops and a manifesto pretty much means that it has to be a joke? Sure, no doubt some of these people are artfully shoplifting, but this is so obviously a goof. But hey, go back to your haughty dismissals and your complaints over their "absurd" justifications. (Of course they're absurd. That's why it's funny. Jesus.)

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 08:49:52 -0800

Oh, and great post, by the way.

By: Goedel

Goedel — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 09:18:15 -0800

C'mon, can't you see that having workshops and a manifesto pretty much means that it has to be a joke?

Er, why does it have to be any more a "joke" than the Black Bloc's pseudo-intellectual justifications for vandalism and thuggery?

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 09:33:37 -0800

Goedel: Does the Black Bloc encourage dancing as they riot? Do they encourage an artistry to violence? If you can't tell the difference between this and Black Bloc, I'm afraid that you might not be very sophisticated and might want to stay away from manifestos in general. (Or "Why is the manifesto of Situationalism, which encourages vandalism, different from the Communist Manifesto, which encourages the destruction of the state through armed conflict?")

By: cleardawn

cleardawn — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 09:58:55 -0800

All the best jokes make a serious point, klangklangston. That's what makes them amusing, rather than merely pointless. The yomango meme is amusing because it reminds us of what we already know in our hearts: that brand-name goods are worthless crap, and there's no need to pay for them.

By: bugbread

bugbread — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 11:06:39 -0800

cleardawn : "All the best jokes make a serious point, klangklangston. That's what makes them amusing, rather than merely pointless." In my experience, the best jokes are the ones unburdened by serious points. That's what makes them amusing, rather than didactic.

By: RedEmma

RedEmma — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 13:55:15 -0800

dial-tone wrote: "That's not what they said." hitting someone over the head with a baseball bat is quite clearly a potentially murderous act, and one that often results in death. in fact, it is more likely to kill or maim than not. yeah, so, i wouldn't recommend it for shits and giggles. Yomango on the other hand--well, that's up to you.

By: uncanny hengeman

uncanny hengeman — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 19:46:33 -0800

Bugger. Thanks for the heads-up, different. And thanks for the link to Google, ya smartass. I guessed the university wrong and that was a parameter in all my attempted searches. Hence me having no luck. I coulda sworn it was ECU, not Murdoch. I've made similar mistakes before. All in all a good reminder on correct Googling strategies.

By: davy

davy — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 22:27:29 -0800

IndigoJones, you will of course understand why I, a left anarchist, don't care very much for the argument that "Breaking the law is illegal!" And please, don't preach about "self-respect" and "common decency" when the effect of those tropes is to reinforce subjugation; I could just as well claim that no self-respecting poor person should pass up a chance to steal from a big corporation that gets rich by contradicting common decency. This would indeed boil down to slightly more than me pointing to "definition 1" while you emphasize "definition 2", unless of course you think that the American colonists should have had the common decency and self-respect to follow the laws of their God-given King and Parliament, or that a self-respecting slave should have had the common decency to not deprive his master of his property by running away. That's the problem with conservative defenses of propriety: at what point does one start the clock -- and which people do you count as "human"? So while I might agree about "those bratty and/or spoiled kids", I consider them at the very worst the lesser evil. And if choosing the lesser evil is not what America is all about, why do we have elections between politicians?

By: Goedel

Goedel — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:35:11 -0800

"If you can't tell the difference between this and Black Bloc, I'm afraid that you might not be very sophisticated and might want to stay away from manifestos in general."

It seems your definition of "sophisticated" is "stealing other people's property and making up bullshit pseudo-intellectual rationalizations to justify it", in which case, yes, I'm not "sophisticated", nor do I want to be. If you participate in "yomango", you aren't some uber-cool protestor against "capitalism", you are a thief, period, and you deserve to be treated like one.

"The yomango meme is amusing because it reminds us of what we already know in our hearts: that brand-name goods are worthless crap, and there's no need to pay for them."

Bullshit! If they're "worthless crap", why do you want these goods badly enough to steal them? What a ridiculous excuse to indulge in antisocial narcissism.

By: cleardawn

cleardawn — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:33:57 -0800

Goedel: I believe brand name goods are worthless crap, while you, perhaps, do not. Neither of us would steal them. "Antisocial narcissism" to my mind is a good description of the whole brand-marketing culture.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 11:35:07 -0800

Goedel: "If you participate in "yomango", you aren't some uber-cool protestor against "capitalism", you are a thief, period, and you deserve to be treated like one." Right on! And we should cut their hands off, goddamnit! Then fire 'em outta a rocket into the sun! That'll show 'em that there's nothing funny about threatening private property rights, buncha commie fags! We take this shit seriously! U! S! A! U! S! A!