Inspired by the design of the Followthethings.com website, Worrisons was ‘designed to have the look, feel, and navigation of a familiar online store’ (Cook et al, 2014: 2). It is only when you dig a little deeper that you find the activism in the form of workers comments, utilizing online technologies to raise the unfiltered voices of social movements, activists and artists (Kneip, 2009: 173) For me this was an interesting experience because although web design comes almost as second nature to me, I had never created a spoof website focused on activism. Using the internet in this way was unprecedented for me and it wasn’t until I started writing this journal that I realized how ‘the internet appears to be an affective ‘weapon’ for Anti-Corporate campaigns’ (Kneip, 2009: 173). Much like Followthethings.com we hoped that first impressions of Worrisons would be a familiar online shopping experience, clicking through the site ‘might then turn into vivid, puzzling, empathetic engagements with the hidden and often disturbing stories’ (Cook et al, 2014: 8) behind the commodities, transforming what Kotler calls ‘the asymmetry between sellers and customers’ (Scammell, 2003: 120). However, for me, what stands out the most when exploiting the internet in the name of activism is how it ‘enables individual groups to remain small, independent, and minimally resourced yet collectively have the impact of an entire movement’ (Blood, 2000: 166).

 

An important part of activism, as I have learnt throughout the course, is that no one like being made to feel guilty or blamed. Being blamed for poor working conditions or damaging the environment rarely promotes action. So in order to tiptoe around the blame game we adopted the cultural activist tactic of ‘détournement’. Instead of directly opposing overriding rhetoric’s we aimed to ‘playfully and provocatively fold existing culture forms in on themselves’ (Cook et al, 2014: 8), described as a kind of ‘rhetorical jujitsu’ (Harold in Sandlin & Callahan, 2009: 98), a tactic we applied to the Roses video mashup more than anything.