Come Visit Camp Okutta

August 22, 2007 9:34 AM

Camp Okutta: give your child a summer to remember!
posted by generichuman (35 comments total)

I wish the camps that I went to had live grenade ranges.

/jealous
posted by porpoise at 9:39 AM on August 22, 2007

I liked the logo's typeface.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:42 AM on August 22, 2007

Haha clever.
posted by awesomebrad at 9:52 AM on August 22, 2007

Hello faddah, hello muddah
Here I am at Camp Okutta
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.

I went grenading with Joe Spivy
He developed poison ivy
You remember Leonard Skinner
He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner.

All the counselors hate the waiters
And the lake has alligators
And the head coach wants no sissies
So he reads to us from something called Ulysses.

How I don't want this should scare ya
But my bunkmate has malaria
You remember Jeffrey Hardy
They're about to organize a searching party.

Take me home, oh faddah, muddah
Take me home, I hate Okutta.

(W/ apologies to Alan Sherman)
posted by Floydd at 10:04 AM on August 22, 2007 [3 favorites]

If people stopped having kids we wouldn't have these problems. It isn't the children's fault, but if they have children willingly then they are part of the problem. It's mindblowing that the poor, and others going through hard times, willingly have children. It's the very example of stupidity and why there are so many problems in the world.
posted by Gnostic Novelist at 10:20 AM on August 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

I've given money to War Child in the past and I kind of feel like they wasted it on an expensive PR campaign.
posted by gwint at 10:22 AM on August 22, 2007

Gnostic Novelist -- given that the problems attributed to population pressure are usually resource exhaustion problems, it's mindblowing that the wealthy, and others with high resource-consumption lifestyles (and in global terms, that includes nearly everyone in the US and Canada), willingly have children. Those wealthy children will contribute far more to our global resource exhaustion than will the children of the poor and worse-off. Talk about an example of stupidity!

On topic: this ad campaign is brilliant. Whoever thought it up understands the fine art of button-pushing to get people's very real attention and outrage. I hope they can harness some of the energy to work toward systemic change to abate the incentives to war.
posted by dkg at 10:28 AM on August 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

It's mindblowing that the poor, and others going through hard times, willingly have children.

In many cases, depending on the type of economy in which a person is living, children can be a net economic benefit instead of a drain. In other situations, having a child can be the only form of control a person can impose on their life.
Boiling it down to "poor people are having kids because they're stupid" doesn't tell us anything or help to solve the problem. Let's attempt to consider the reasons why said people have children that, to our eyes, do nothing but impair their lives- maybe if we know what purpose the children serve in their lives, we can either reconsider whether or not having the children is bad or see about filling that void another way.
posted by 235w103 at 10:32 AM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

You know what would solve this overpopulation and child soldier problem? If we just ate them. They'd be delicious.
posted by dismas at 10:39 AM on August 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

It sounds like a great campaign. Though I've been to Queen Street three times in the past week and haven't seen them - that's unfortunate.
posted by alona at 10:43 AM on August 22, 2007

There are plenty of wingnuts who would gladly send their kids to this place if it existed.
posted by 2sheets at 10:58 AM on August 22, 2007

I was just thinking that my son would love a camp with guns, grenades, and a minefield.
Abuse, drugs, and maggots ... not so much.
posted by Dillenger69 at 11:04 AM on August 22, 2007

Given the lousy day camps I've paid hundreds of dollars to (hello you lazy fucks at the Boulevard Club!) at least this (fake) camp is going to have the kids doing something other than sitting around.

Now I have to go and find one off those posters and show it to my wife. Without getting the kids' hopes up.
posted by GuyZero at 11:09 AM on August 22, 2007

"It just brought up so much anger in me," Heywood said. "I immediately thought, wow, this is real, this is happening, people are now actually providing these kinds of services and opportunities for people who actually allow their children to go and experience something like that here in Canada."

She said she was so upset that she ripped down all the Camp Okutta signs that she encountered during the afternoon, "until my fingers were actually sore from tearing at the tape and ripping them off."

Uh, wow. What a nut job.
posted by brundlefly at 11:22 AM on August 22, 2007

Or wait until they are 17, sign the form, and send your youngsters to "Camp" Parris Island, where they can learn to throw grenades and much much more...
posted by geos at 11:27 AM on August 22, 2007

That's a KILLER way to deliver the message. Great site and those videos are beautifully put together.

Any links to the original posters?
posted by Lord_Pall at 12:55 PM on August 22, 2007

I'd disagree on the design. Bad use of Flash. I did like the typeface of the camp name too, but I didn't read or learn anything.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:04 PM on August 22, 2007

It's mindblowing that the poor, and others going through hard times, willingly have children.

Wow. The ignorance in that statement is the truly mindblowing thing. There are many reasons why the poor have kids - not the least of which is that oftentimes their kids are their retirement fund; it's what guarantees they'll be taken care of when they can't work anymore. Or do the poor not have the right to survival if they can't get a 401(k)?
posted by chundo at 1:48 PM on August 22, 2007

Goddam! That's all there is to it, I'm fucking going.
posted by mattbucher at 1:51 PM on August 22, 2007

Wow, I'm only sad that I saw this on Metafilter before seeing it advertised locally. As much as I hate Flash, popup sites, and uncontrollable video, I'm actually impressed with what they've come up with.
posted by Meagan at 2:00 PM on August 22, 2007

Gnostic Novelist writes "It's mindblowing that the poor, and others going through hard times, willingly have children. "

Yeah, stupid poor people. Why don't they go to the pharmacy and buy some condoms? Oh, that's right, they don't have any money.

It's a child, not a choice, especially when you don't have access to anything that would help you with birth control or family planning.

Get ready to salute the commander in chief:

Bush’s campaign against reproductive rights is not limited to the United States. On his first day in office, Bush reinstated the global gag rule, which prevents international family planning organizations with any U.S. funding from providing abortion services or counseling, even with non-U.S. funds. Bush also withheld $34 million in funding for birth control, maternal and child health care, and HIV/AIDS education from the UN Population Fund, based on unfounded claims that the fund supported coercive abortion practices. At the UN Children’s Summit, the U.S. delegation humiliated itself before the international community by opposing sex education, as well as rehabilitation for girls who are the victims of war crimes, usually rape, because such rehabilitation might involve contraception or abortion, and the promotion of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Despite international repudiation of this retrograde stance, by denying crucial funding to international population organizations the United States helps increase the spread of HIV, STDs, unplanned pregnancies, and dangerous illegal abortions around the world.

posted by mullingitover at 2:14 PM on August 22, 2007

brundlefly: That jumped out at me, too. Only, I pegged her as a complete fucking idiot rather than a nut job. I guess it's hard to tell, really.
posted by Marla Singer at 2:21 PM on August 22, 2007

"It's mindblowing that the poor, and others going through hard times, willingly have children."

Who said they were willing? Do you live in a box or something, or did your mom buy you a MF account for your 12th birthday?
posted by The Light Fantastic at 2:23 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

You know what would solve this overpopulation and child soldier problem? If we just ate them. They'd be delicious.

Wow. The ignorance of this statement. Everyone knows that poor kids are way too stringy. Give me the high-fructose fattened, Wii-atrophied western kids! Succulent!
posted by Pollomacho at 2:27 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

posted by Dillenger69 I was just thinking that my son would love a camp with guns, grenades, and a minefield.

Has he considered the camp called the United States Army? Guns, grenades, minefields, mental and physical abuse, and all the maggots a kid can eat!
posted by fandango_matt at 2:53 PM on August 22, 2007

Has he considered the camp called the United States Army? Guns, grenades, minefields, mental and physical abuse, and all the maggots a kid can eat!

Exactly! and they can still go to "camp" when they are only 17... Africa isn't the only place with "child soldiers."
posted by geos at 3:04 PM on August 22, 2007

Here's the accompanying commercial.
posted by progosk at 3:08 PM on August 22, 2007

Do you live in a box or something, or did your mom buy you a MF account for your 12th birthday?

And this is exactly the kind of thing people go to Metafilter to avoid. I mean seriously, for all of our youtube and internet forum bashing, we have the same people saying the same moronic things.
posted by KingoftheWhales at 3:38 PM on August 22, 2007

GnosticNovelist, if you want less children being born in impoverished countries, struggle to empower women enough that they can refuse coerced sex and rape.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:17 PM on August 22, 2007

BrotherCaine, if coproGnostic does that, how will he ever get laid?
posted by Dataphage at 6:11 PM on August 22, 2007

The biological argument to having more children: if you think more are going to die, you should have more, and then at least one of them might be successful in the world (e.g. not die.)

When everything's going well, you know your children are going to be fine, so it's no big deal. I am sure people rationalize it one way or another, but I bet when your life is as fucked up as it tends to be in third world countries, you just feel like having more children.

But anyway, that isn't the point of the post, is it?

This is a pretty intelligent ad campaign but I think it probably would have helped if the website was a bit more clear about the real message.
posted by blacklite at 6:48 PM on August 22, 2007

Yeah, at first I just thought that it was the coolest summer camp on earth. Once I saw the cabins though, I figured it was about child soldiers in Africa.
posted by KingoftheWhales at 7:06 PM on August 22, 2007

I thought it absolutely brilliant. The shock value was a bit lost on me as I tabbed through all three links before reading the first one, so I basically knew what was going on. But man, that would get people pissed off *nods* Props to whoever came up with that.
posted by Phire at 7:15 PM on August 22, 2007

Activities look great but the accommodations seem decidedly sub-par.

Still, I wonder how many kids have seen this and are disappointed to find out it's not real? (Speaking as a former twelve-year-old boy, I'd have eaten maggots if it meant playing with live grenades.)

Actually, I'm a little bummed that I missed out on real-life exposives camp. Far cooler than anything I ever did over a summer vacation.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:48 PM on August 22, 2007

My humble contribution: http://totaltactics.org/archives/2007/08/22/camp-okutta/
posted by gillo at 12:43 AM on August 23, 2007