Excellent wrapup on Moominite T(h)reat

Before they slip into the collective unconscious until they are briefly resurrected by MTV on a show called "I Love The 00's... 2007!" here is an excellent wrapup (courtesy Boston Metroblog) on the little blinky advertising signs that threw the Boston Police Dept. (if not the city itself) into a panic last week.

Among the revelations are a detailed description of the open-source origin of the devices as tools for underground graffitistas, their co-optation by marketers, the recruitment of the hapless pair of Bostonians who were paid $300 each to put them up, and how the marketing firm ordered them to place the devices in "Train stations, over passes (sic), hip and trendy areas..." But best of all:

Is there now any doubt that advertising has become the vandalism of the Fortune 500? Each week it becomes more clear in the media that advertising is using illegal methods, yet the fines and arrests remain disproportionately on graffiti writers and activists. We hope more people will see the hypocrisy of arresting, jailing, and fining individual expression of people like BORF, countless street artists, RNC protesters, and cyclists from critical mass, when there has still been zero jail time for CEOs of advertising and marketing firms that knowingly and repeatedly break the law promoting corporate products.

Mooninites, marketing, co-optation