Depressed Copywriter "Liberates" a 35 year old art movement.

Have you heard about Depressed Copywriter?

It's a website where someone takes little strips of paper and changes a headline on some ad to make it more, well, depressing. The site is one instagrammed photo after another, with depressing additives to random headlines.
Oh, and there's a quote by Banksy in the about section. Because you know, adding a Banksy quote makes stuff become very intelligent.

It's getting all the raves now. On Creativity and Huffpo and the San Ramona High Senior School newspaper, too. Have you seen it? Have you seen the image above?

Have you seen it anywhere else?

Unless you've been living under a rock or haven't paid any attention to things like art, you're probably aware of the Billboard Liberation Front. The group of fun loving satirists who have been doing the same concept more or less for about 35 years. In other words, when Banksy was still crapping his diapers, they were getting all rogue on outdoor media.

Outdoor. As in, getting a group of people together, going outside, climbing up ladders, taking spray paint, and then physically defacing a billboard, and risking arrest in the process.

Beyond the obvious difference of tumblr laziness, the Billboard Liberation Front's work systematically lampoons ads not just as a protest against the very intrusion of billboards themselves, but also as a pointed social critique against the corporations they choose to deface.

And by the way, the Billboard Liberation front started in San Francisco, the home of everyone's Patron Saint of advertising, Howard Luck Gossage. He also despised billboards, too.

Check out some more examples of the Billboard Liberation Front on their website Billboardliberation.com.

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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Tom Megginson's picture

I like the bad attitude of Depressed Copywriter. Derivative? Sure. But it's still very amusing.

Dabitch's picture

IMHO Billboard liberation is better at at. Both in words alone (or more often than not, the skillful removal of one), and proper gonna-get-arrested execution.

Looked through depressed copywriter and kinda pulled a smile at one of two of them - specifically this one was interesting - but I'm not finding them funny.

sprads's picture

I assumed the copywriter was depressed because he was constantly ripping someone else off, as is the way in advertising.

kidsleepy's picture

I could see that. Although that might be giving it a bit too much credit.

Dabitch's picture

I'm reading it more like they hate advertising. Which we all do, but most of us wait until we have a few years in the business under our belt before embracing this. If you're doing it already as a student you might want to study to be a fireman or something else useful to society instead, you know? But perhaps it's like teenage self-hate, a hormonal young thing.

Funny Quotes's picture

well what can be said in this regard they look very desperate and depressed :(

Dabitch's picture

Knowyourmeme

The blog was fairly received within the Tumblr community and subsequently picked up by a number of internet culture blogs as well as ad business blogs like FastCoCreate[17], Ad Week[15], Adland[16] and Business Insider.[18]

humorous quotes's picture

well this is hilarious and funny :D

Kissmekatey's picture

"Depressed copywriter" looks more like "misogynistic copywriter" to me.