Net­works, data­bases, videogames, social media. What, in this land­scape, is the 21^st cen­tury equiv­a­lent of a protest song? What is the mod­ern ver­sion of a song so spe­cific in its details, its con­dem­na­tion, its anger, that it could not pos­si­bly be mis­taken for bullshit?

Even if ‘Hello Kitty’ is not racist, some crit­ics argue, it is still morally wrong because it indulges in cul­tural appro­pri­a­tion. In their view, Lav­i­gne is blame­wor­thy because she has no gen­uine inter­est in or appre­ci­a­tion of Japan­ese cul­ture but selec­tively uses some of its ingre­di­ents to pro­mote her­self. The real issue, then, is not her (pur­ported) lack of orig­i­nal­ity but the man­ner in which she makes up for it.

For all its suc­cesses, farm-to-table has not, in any fun­da­men­tal way, reworked the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal forces that dic­tate how our food is grown and raised.

This is a very British revenge: cryp­tic, tor­tur­ous, edu­ca­tional. In keep­ing with his method, Joseph has expressed only the most benev­o­lent feel­ings towards his tar­get. When he started get­ting angry calls back from the scam­mer, he said that “I tried to ask him if he was enjoy­ing the plays, but he was very confused.”

To become pop­u­lar and “cool,” brands have had to learn the very tech­niques we learned as resis­tant teens to deal with power: our sar­cas­tic humor and our end­lessly remix­able memes.