{"id":16704,"date":"2018-02-22T21:51:32","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T05:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=16704"},"modified":"2018-02-23T10:27:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T18:27:29","slug":"the-rebel-sell-worked-on-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-rebel-sell-worked-on-me\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rebel Sell Worked On Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though I was just a 10-year-old boy, I still remember the moment Hulk Hogan, pulled out the black and white nWo (New World Order) shirt and turned his back on the WCW and betrayed his partner with a leg drop. Hogan was the good guy! He was the Real American! Fight for the rights of every man!<\/a> How could he do that? The nWo were street thugs breaking all the rules, trying to take over my beloved Monday night wrestling experience.<\/p>\n

WCW Announcer<\/strong>: \u201cI have been with you for so many years, for you to join up with the likes of these two men absolutely makes me sick to my stomach! And I think that these people here (points to the crowd) and a lot of other people around the world have had just about enough of this man (pointing at Nash), this man (pointing at Hall), and you want to put yourself in this group? You’ve gotta be kidding me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hogan<\/strong>: \u201cWell, the first thing you gotta realize, brother, is this right here is the future of wrestling! You can call this the New World Order of wrestling, brother!\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Watching this as a 10-year boy, my feelings went from betrayal and hopelessness but quickly turned into excitement as I clenched my fist and decided I too was on the side of the nWo. Down with the system!<\/p>\n

The Rebel Sell worked on me. <\/strong>And just like that, the WCW stepped into one of its most successful and lucrative storylines in professional wrestling history.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s proof of my entertainment choices below. (Courtesy of my mom finding this picture for me.) I\u2019m second to the left, 10 years old at a 1999 live WCW event.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And from a young age, I became a rebel at heart and bought into the counterculture movement. Of course what I didn\u2019t realize at the time is that I was actually just joining the mainstream consumer culture with new packaging. I myself had joined the system allured by the marketing scheme of being a rebel, which ironically was all theatre and still owned by the same company. A gimmick to keep me interested as I was aging out of wrestling, and slowly coming to the realization that it wasn\u2019t actually real. *gasp*<\/p>\n

This is a perfect analogy of Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter\u2019s thesis of their book Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture.<\/em> This book is a new title rerelease of their book The Rebel<\/em> Sell<\/em>, but as far as I can tell it is completely identical. I suppose the new title was more catchy and would sell more copies. (Go capitalism!) Or maybe the Che Guevara image on the original cover was too rebellious? For those who don\u2019t know, that Che Guevara logo is the most reproduced image of all time, \u201cVersions of it have been painted, printed, digitized, embroidered, tattooed, silk-screened, sculpted or sketched (in other words, commoditized) on nearly every surface imaginable.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Heather & Potter argue that there no longer exists a counterculture. Both counterculture and our current real culture still exist within the same system and lead to the same end: more consumerism. Heath and Potter claim that its actually ironic people feel rebellious as they but the non-mainstream brand when in reality they are subject to the \u201canti-establishment\u201d marketing scheme. Heath & Andrew bring up the point that many who rebel against capitalism and the establishment are rebelling against conformity when in reality capitalism thrives on non-conformity. This is because Capitalism is able to give you the special sauce and anyone else\u2019s special sauce that there is a demand for.<\/p>\n

As I study this book, and the original concept, I could not stop thinking of the movie Fight Club. A movie that was released just a few years after my transformative nWo experience, but a movie that I did not see until I was an adult. Nowadays I say that people can\u2019t fully understand my generation, the Millennials, until they\u2019ve seen the movie Fight Club. Fight Club is the anti-consumerism movie that crucifies front-runner brands like IKEA and Starbucks. The protagonist (who is never given a name throughout the entire movie, and is listed as \u201cNarrator\u201d in the credits) wonders as he flips through an IKEA magazine \u201cwhat kind of dining set defines me as a person?\u201d. Of course ironically, with him being nameless throughout the movie, he has no identity, precisely because of the mass marketed furniture and lifestyle he has bought into. All the while there is a Starbucks cup in literally every frame of the entire movie. Seriously. All of this searching of the Narrator\u2019s identity climaxes with the revelation of Tyler Durden and the literal explosion of giant corporations.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s ironic, is that I have loved this movie Fight Club for years but only now realize that the message of anti-establishment and rebellion being promoted to me is being sent through the medium of a big budget mainstream movie with some of the most popular actors on the planet. The Rebel Sell worked on me again.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What\u2019s my big takeaway? Well, my maximizer brain actually applauds this method and instead of problem-solving what to do with this quirk in our system, I simply want to to take note of this curious human behavior to be attracted to the rebels and see how can I use it for my own means.<\/p>\n

Heath and Potter are right. The message, \u201cdon\u2019t be a drone like those other guys\u2026 buy this product\u201d works. Am I part of the evil corporation now that I want to use this for my own promotional means?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Side note<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps you\u2019ve heard this church slogan across many churches in America. \u201cA church for people who don\u2019t like church.\u201d The problem is, people have been saying that for decades! But more churches keep being planted under the brand \u201cwe\u2019re not like those others guys.\u201d And I think it\u2019s effective. I like it. (Hollow as it may be.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/p>\n

“Guerrillero Heroico.” Wikipedia. February 18, 2018. Accessed February 23, 2018. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Guerrillero_Heroico.<\/p>\n

Heath, Joseph, and Andrew Potter.\u00a0Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture<\/em>. HarperBusiness, 2009.<\/p>\n

“New World Order (professional Wrestling).” Wikipedia. February 22, 2018. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_World_Order_(professional_wrestling).<\/p>\n

WWEFanNation. “Legends of the Fall No. 1: Hulk Hogan & NWO.” YouTube. September 10, 2011. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3hILCw66sLU.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> “New World Order (professional Wrestling),” Wikipedia, February 22, 2018, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_World_Order_(professional_wrestling).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> “Guerrillero Heroico,” Wikipedia, February 18, 2018, accessed February 23, 2018, https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Guerrillero_Heroico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though I was just a 10-year-old boy, I still remember the moment Hulk Hogan, pulled out the black and white nWo (New World Order) shirt and turned his back on the WCW and betrayed his partner with a leg drop. Hogan was the good guy! He was the Real American! Fight for the rights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[114,1017,1165,610],"class_list":["post-16704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-heath","tag-lgp8","tag-nation-of-rebels","tag-rebel-sell","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16704"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16710,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16704\/revisions\/16710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}