There's an old saying that goes: "A fish doesn't know it's in the water until it's taken out of the water." With a slight manipulation of the wording, the same can be said for humans: "A person doesn't know s/he is living in a socially constructed consensus reality until s/he is removed from it." Sociologists are fond of making this point again and again, but what really constitutes 'consensus reality'?"

Certainly in a consumer culture like the one in which we are embedded, corporate advertising is a significant part of our reality. Everyday, our perceptual spaces are invaded by flashy billboards and annoying television commercials. Even aspects of our personal identities are co-opted by corporate agendas: kids sporting huge swooshes on their T-shirts are walking commercials for Nike, yuppies showing off their $40,000 Toyota 4-Runners are doing the work advertisers should be doing, and all those little Fred Durst wannabes with their backwards red caps and their sideburns are unknowingly promoting Limp Bizkit CDs. So is all this as ridiculous as it sounds? Yes, which is why we need people to reveal this absurd matrix of social reality we're in before we drown in our own frivolity. And that's exactly what the Giant sticker campaign sets out to do.

Begun as a prank to poke fun at rival skateboard crews, the Obey the Giant guerrilla media campaign (which I'll hereafter refer to as OTG) has somehow blossomed into a small-scale artistic and philosophical movement. OTG is the brainchild of Rhode Island School of Design graduate Shepard Fairey, who started making stickers bearing the face of Andre the Giant (of WWF and 1987 film The Princess Bride fame) back in 1989. The stickers initially served as an emblem for Shepard's skater clique "because it would sort of make fun of all the other posses who thought they were cool." Next to Andre's menacing mug was the befuddling phrase "Andre the Giant Has a Posse!", which drew the attention of young skaters looking for a group to attatch themselves to. Thus began a trend that would end up making fun of just about everything and everyone, including itself.

Fairey tackled his first large-scale operation in 1991, during the mayoral election in Providence. As part of a school assignment (!), Shepard plastered a four foot Andre face on then-candidate Vincent "Buddy" Cianci's billboard advertisement. To Shepard's surprise, this created quite a stir in the local media, as people apparently thought some industrious rebel was commenting on Cianci's Mafia connections. That's when Shepard realized that people's innate curiosity could catapult OTG into something much bigger than a facetious inside joke. If a simple 15 minute installation could receive attention from the media and at the same time force a few people to reevaluate their opinions, then why not push the project to it's most absurd boundaries?

Seizing an opportunity for success, Shepard began devoting most of his time to OTG. Like fellow consumer culture critic/artist Andy Warhol, Shepard got his start by mass producing his images using silk screens. It wasn't long before Shepard, then just a junior in college, was running his own silk screening business called Alternate Graphics. It has taken just ten years for OTG to expand into a global phenomenon, generating posters, T-shirts, tattoos, banners, two documentary films, and over a million stickers. Andre's solemn eyes stare at confused passersby everywhere from Tokyo to New York, and publications such as Wired, Salon, and Feed Magazine have published articles about the movement. So what's this "movement" all about?

As stated in the manifesto, OTG is "an experiment in phenomenology." The aim of phenomenology is to show things as they truly exist, unobstructed by desires, formulaic models, or unexamined preconceptions. Like the great 'philosopher of mind' Terrence McKenna, phenomenologists favor "direct felt experience" to the abstractions and paradigms most of us dream up to replace reality (Buddhism). It is a philosophy of subjectivity, centering on how we consciously experience reality as individuals. The OTG stickers and posters are phenomenological exhibitions: their enigmatic imagery forces onlookers to question the meaning of phrases like "Andre the Giant has a Posse!" and "Obey the Giant!" The Giant means something different to everyone: for some it is irritating, for others it is a revelation. Of course, if you look deeply enough you will find that it's absolutely meaningless. Its purpose is not to inform or promote, but rather to make people think for themselves. Thus, it acts as a Rorschach test of people's subjective interpretations and common knee-jerk reactions ("cognitive distortions").

OTG is also a social psychology experiment, as it can "reawaken one's sense of wonder about one's environment," leading us to question the nature and purpose of our society. Paradoxically, OTG attempts to make us aware of our environment through reinforcement and repetition, though repeated stimuli often numb the senses, including common sense. Fairey offers a brutal criticism of ”conspicuous consumption”: a term used to describe the widespread trend of people showing off their material wealth to gain acknowledgment and status. The stickers are sometimes bought by such desperate status-seekers who want to seem hip and up-to-date, but (as I mentioned earlier) the self-labeling fad has the reverse effect: it limits one's personality and makes them less interesting.

OTG also resonates with the philosophy of the Pop Art movement. Like many pop art pieces, OTG displays the iconography used by advertisers in a repetitive, ubiquitous fashion to highlight the intrusive way in which commercialism overloads our senses.

More than anything, OTG is a culture jam. It is a comment on some of the more absurd aspects of everyday life, especially advertising. The Giant stickers and posters parody some of the advertising techniques that corporations use to manipulate us. Four of those techniques are used by OTG: power of demand, unnecessary hype, enigmatic symbolism, and exploitation of the familiarity instinct. The power of demand is a favorite technique among advertisers. Anytime you hear a commercial saying"Do it now!", "Hurry, before it's too late!" or "Don't miss out!", you are being told what to do. You might notice that advertisers purposefully isolate these demands, because of their profound effect. It's successful because it appeals to deeply hardwired neurological networks. As children we are forced to unquestioningly obey our parents, as adolescents we learn to obey our teachers or pay the price, and as adults we are even more saturated with demands. Deadlines, bills, stoplights, stop-signs, busses, and everyday conversation force us into doing things unquestioningly.