header image

Latest Hijinks

The Yes Men agree their way into the fortified compounds of commerce, ask questions, and then smuggle out the stories of their hijinks to provide a public glimpse at the behind-the-scenes world of business. In other words, the Yes Men are team players... but they play for the opposing team.

  • The Tribute Begins
    Vivoleum
    June, 2007 | Imposters posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council (NPC) representatives delivered an outrageous keynote speech to 300 oilmen at GO-EXPO, Canada's largest oil conference, held at Stampede Park in Calgary, Alberta, today.
  • WTO's Schmidt and colleague visit historic Philadelphia
    Wharton
    November, 2006 | At a Wharton Business School conference on business in Africa, World Trade Organization representative Hanniford Schmidt announced the creation of a WTO initiative for "full private stewardry of labor" for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa's free trade with the West.
  • HUD Speach
    HUD
    August, 2006 | Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco speak. After pitching his administration's policies in the usual way, Nagin tells a long story in which truth and lie go skinny-dipping; lie steals truth's clothes, and truth chases after. "What you have is truth running naked after well-clothed lie."
  • SurvivaBall Handshake
    Survivaball
    May, 2006 | "The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way," said Fred Wolf, a Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida. "This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change," he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.
  • It's different in here
    Dow Annual Meeting
    May, 2005 | Dow wasn't taking any chances at this year's Annual General Meeting (AGM). For the first time in Dow's existence, each and every shareholder was being searched on entry. A phalanx of guards had been hired, and a battery of eight metal detectors were set up at the entrance to the Midland, Michigan Center for the Arts. Every one of the two thousand shareholders who would show up had to empty pockets, check cellphones, get wanded. Old ladies had to let guards rifle through their purses.
  • Golden skeleton keychain!
    Acceptable Risk
    April, 2005 | On April 28, 2005, at a London banking conference to which they had accidentally been invited because of their satirical website, "Dow representative" "Erastus Hamm" unveiled "Acceptable Risk," a Dow industry standard for determining how many deaths are acceptable when achieving large profits.
  • BBC Bhopal Appearance
    Bhopal on BBC
    November, 2004 | Jude announces a radical new direction for Dow, where they take full responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal India disaster.
  • May, 2004 | We have been out for half an hour, and already we have collected a dozen on-camera signatures supporting Bush's new pro-America ice age.
  • It's a suit, really
    Heritage
    April, 2004 | Heritage is the biggest free-market think tank—in fact the biggest think tank period—in Washington. It has a budget of $25 million and provides "talking points" to conservative Congressmen who don't have time to do their own research. Heritage is a kind of "grey eminence" behind Congress, and very actively helps direct U.S. politics.
  • December, 2002 | On Dec. 3, 2002, the eighteenth anniversary of the Union Carbide (i.e. Dow) disaster at Bhopal, a press release was sent out by Dow-Chemical.com, telling Dow's story more honestly than Dow ever does.