Analogue methods

Dave – the editor

A short while ago, we put up this post which was us thinking about how we should be developing and spreading our propaganda in these weird and troubled times: Getting the message across revisited – September 17, 2021. In that piece, we pondered on how we would deal with a future where our access to the internet was limited or taken away completely because of censorship. To some, this may seem like paranoia. Given what has happened over the last eighteen months, we prefer to describe it as prudent scenario planning.

One of the analogue methods we discussed was postering and stickering. We’ve been doing this for a while with some hyper-local stuff relating to the botched ‘re-development’ of the railway station at Stanford-le-Hope: Putting on the pressure… – July 12, 2021. The feedback from these has generally been pretty positive – that’s probably down to the fact that most people in Stanford-le-Hope feel the way we do about this debacle.

We’re now putting out posters and stickers with the aim of trying to get people thinking about what digital vaccine passports could well lead to with the imposition of a digital identity. What we’re trying, as you can see from the above image, is a slightly oblique approach that will get people thinking and hopefully talking about the issue as opposed to a cruder, literal tack.

The posters and stickers shown above went up on the evening of Saturday 25.9. There was a big anti-vaccine passport protest in London that day. I did in a momentary lapse into piss poor judgement, briefly think about attending but concluded that given the myopia of the mainstream media when it comes to these protests, it wasn’t worth the effort. Also, there are a growing number of dodgy elements on the fringes of these protests I really don’t want to be seen with. So, we decided the best course of action was a spot of post dusk postering and stickering.

What kind of reaction this will generate remains to be seen. If it gets people thinking and talking, the posters and stickers will have done their job. It has to be noted that the last time we did some postering with these, they were up for just two days before they disappeared. Whether that was people not liking the message and tearing them down or simply the council removing them, we don’t know. It may be that people liked them and wanted one for the wall at home! As I said last night, this could just be a way of distributing free art:)

The thing is that we’re continuing to experiment with different ways of gettinga message across, learning the lessons from the experiences we have and adapting our approach accordingly as we move forwards.