Taking The Piss

Chances are pretty good you've recently seen the ‘Banksy on Advertising’ quote that begins, ‘People are taking the piss out of you everyday.’ The passage is from Banksy's 2004 book Cut It Out, and it presents the idea that if advertisers are going to fill your world with ads, you have every right to ‘take, re-arrange and re-use’ those images without permission. The quote has been posted widely on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, which is where I found it.
Here's the interesting part:
Most of it is swiped directly from an essay I wrote in 1999, in the ‘Death, Phones, Scissors’ issue of my zine Crap Hound. The first paragraph is more or less original, but the rest is mine, right down to the same words and phrases.
See for yourself. Here's the Banksy quote followed by the relevant part of my essay as it appeared in Crap Hound. (The full essay is linked at the end of this post.) Pink indicates indirect references, and yellow shows the direct swipes...

Continue reading

Sean Tejaratchi @'Reading Frenzy'

What Banksy looks like...