didn’t expect this to happen…
at first i wasn’t going to publish this video at all, not wanting to make mutual understanding between me and the advertising industry (lol) even less likely — or at least not wanting to amp up the antagonism.
then after a few weeks i thought maybe i should post it — i mean it happened, and the whole idea of all the lengthy videos on this site is to fully document the whole thing, boring warts and all — but i was going to pay a friend to blur the face of the angry adshel worker who repeatedly requested that he not be shown on video.
as time passed i ultimately decided i don’t owe this man any favours — there’s no law against filming in public, nor against recording an interaction where one party consents — i’d only be doing it out of respect for his wishes, and he certainly didn’t treat me with respect, if he had, things would be different.
if this man didn’t want to be on video acting like a psycho he shouldn’t have ran right in front of the cameras and started behaving like a psycho — i certainly didn’t cover myself in glory either, i didn’t like that i let him get to me and got angry at one point, but it happened.
one thing that i would like to make clear is that i have no ill-feeling toward this man at all, one of my reasons for deciding not to post this video initially was that i wouldn’t want him to lose his job or suffer any negative consequences — i mean obviously i want his entire industry to be abolished, but i don’t want him to get fired or have to change jobs before then (unless of course he has started thinking more and more about advertising and has come to the decision he’d like a more ethical job).
some of the highlights include:
1:05 — an overzealous yarra trams tram driver gets out of his tram to take some pictures on his phone and generally stress-the-fuck-out.
1:55 — a friendly supportive bystander approaches and starts asking questions, then not long after…
2:45 — angry adshel worker comes running down the platform, calls me a “cockhead” repeatedly, then immediately denies he said that.
6:30 — angry adshel worker nearly punches me and then threatens the bystander who had come to my defence.
7:48 — a much calmer (zen-like) adshel worker appears and is told by angry adshel guy that he’s on camera, responding “yeah, i can see” — haha, yeah, no shit.
8:10 — angry adshel guy gets on such a “you’re breaking the law!” roll that he starts telling the innocent bystander he’s breaking the law too — i guess he believes, like the police tend to, that anyone who doesn’t think i’m doing the wrong thing by “breaking the law” is also “breaking the law” — thought crimes, seditious thinking, publicly sympathising with a criminal dissident — sadly, in the current political climate, legislation against that seems more likely to happen than the legal abolition of advertising, but i’m a hopeful guy :)
9:27 — angry adshel guy tries and fails to rip up my posters — proving that “hulking out” does not give you the super strength you see in the comic-book movies.
10:29 — a uniformed adshel guy shows up and says “guys don’t argue with them” while looking directly at me — just clarifying that that confusion was caused by the unconventional “look-away-and-right-at-another-person” inter-personal communications protocol implemented down at adshel pty. ltd. inc. headquarters.
it seems unnecessarily mean to go through and point out all the plainly incorrect things that were said in anger, but they’re all there for your education.
it was unfortunate i couldn’t deploy better arguments against the “you’re breaking the law!” refrain, but it seemed kinda pointless to say things at a person who was not listening, and was constantly and loudly interrupting.
if he was listening i could have spoken about the activists that were historically considered to be “breaking the law” and were jailed in their eventually successful attempts to have the law changed — people for causes like: abolition of slavery, workers rights, end of colonial rule, equal voting rights, ending racial segregation, the list goes on…
another thing that influenced me to publish this video is what happened the next time i went out — the skin-head sergeant that appears in this video was also the sergeant on duty the next time, and he ordered his crew of 8 cops to arrest everyone, including 3 journalists — i’ll talk about this in a separate post soon.
i think it’s possible/probable that adshel spoke to the police after this incident, trying to get them to take a harder line against the journalists, and that the police listened — if adshel hadn’t done that, if it wasn’t for everyone getting arrested the next week, i probably wouldn’t have changed my mind from my initial decision not to publish — see what happens when you escalate a situation adshel? see what happens when you encourage the abuse of police power and the wrongful arrest of journalists on trumped up charges that will never stand up in court?
to angry adshel guy: if you have seen that this video has been posted, and really want it taken down, then all you have to do is agree to meet and talk calmly with me, if we can both hear each other, i think we’ll find we aren’t on opposite sides at all, and i’ll pull this video off the site — we don’t have to agree, but if you want me to respect your wishes, you’ll have to treat me with respect.
