I have long appreciated Adbusters.

Adbusters offers … activist commentary from around the world addressing issues ranging from genetically modified foods to media concentration. In addition, our annual social marketing campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week have made us an important activist networking group.

Ultimately, though, Adbusters is an ecological magazine, dedicated to examining the relationship between human beings and their physical and mental environment. We want a world in which the economy and ecology resonate in balance. We try to coax people from spectator to participant in this quest. We want folks to get mad about corporate disinformation, injustices in the global economy, and any industry that pollutes our physical or mental commons.

Big issues. Surprisingly, Adbusters has a sense of humour.

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I want to make clear that adbusters is not really about “busting ads”. They have their own website visuals that almost look like ads:

Adbusters are about educating folks about useless consumption. Stupid consumption. Manipulating children to empty consumption.

As for me, I actually want better advertising. For example, I really want to know when new Lonely Planet travel guidebooks are published. But in 2006 neither the Lonely Planet website nor Amazon offer this functionality. I wish they would email me a daily advertisement on new travel guides.

Instead I get a daily dose of an ad for Clean and Clear zit cream with my MTV video podcast. A waste of their time and mine.