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From: Reinhold Grether <Reinhold.Grether@uni-konstanz.de> Save Address Block Sender
Reply-To: fournos-culture@fournos-culture.gr
To: fournos-culture@fournos-culture.gr Save Address
Subject: Fournos-C: How the Etoy Campaign Was Won
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 15:59:19 +0100

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    ---------------------------------------
    How the Etoy Campaign Was Won
    An Agent's Report
    By agent.nasdaq aka Reinhold Grether
    Reinhold.Grether@uni-konstanz.de
    ---------------------------------------

    Toywar I is over. After 81 days of heavy fighting etoy.com
    http://www.etoy.com/ is back with a great victory parade.
    The german version of this article was published by Telepolis
    http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/te/5768/1.html
    on  February 9th, 2000. You should find the english Web
    version soon on http://www.heise.de/tp/english/default.html
    Thanks to David Hudson dwh@berlin.snafu.de for translating
    this. The first part of the article deals with the art of etoy,
    the second with campaign tactics.

    ----------------------------------------

    Part I: Thank you for flying etoy....

    Anyone who logged into the net.art platform Toywar
    http://www.toywar.com/ in early February 2000 was met
    with two watery graves in the Indian Ocean in which 286
    of 1,639 Toywar agents were buried in Lego-like coffins.
    Victims of their own lack of participation, the warriors had
    succumbed to a sheer undersupply of energy. A net.art
    project only exists as long as the nodes of the Net fill it
    with life. And now, they waste away in their coffins, having
    to make do with their burials as mere artistic artifacts. They
    won't even end up on the art market.

    They deserve our veneration not because they're dead,
    but for what they've done. How often I've observed a
    magazine article placed at the top of a Web page while
    the bubbling of ideas goes on in the bowels of online
    forums below. There, the email addresses of eToys'
    employees and sit-in scripts were passed around, people
    met and got to know each other, then built a protest site
    together, and a collective brainstorming session poured
    forth a cornucopia of proposals, more than any professional
    campaign organization could process. Despite all the
    naysaying, the Net is offering individuals new opportunities
    to take action and giving ideas a better shot at taking hold.
    It allows and even encourages cooperation in virtual groups,
    and in the best of situations, a self-organizing countermatrix
    as well that can make short work of a highly organized and
    powerful corporation.

    Both etoy and eToys exist only on the Web but on different
    levels of virtuality. eToys runs www.etoys.com
    <http://www.etoys.com/>,  making hundreds of thousands
    of playthings available to millions of children. The Web site
    is a turntable spinning real objects into the world. If it was
    still possible in the 1980s for Toys'R'Us to present the
    universe of toys through a network of giant brick-and-mortar
    stores, by the late '90s, this universe was being represented
    by eToys on a network of computer terminals as a purely
    virtual system of signs. Different means of distribution for
    the same real objects. Etoy, the artistic third, upped the
    level of abstraction to that of a purely virtual existence on
    the Net. Etoy's toys are completely encoded as data sets
    and the group's only art product for sale is stock,
    etoy.SHARES, first circulated in galleries and later via the
    Toywar platform. Whoever obtains these shares, either by
    buying them, doing some recruiting or performing some
    other service, becomes part of an art universe that exists
    only on the Net.

    Art is capital, as Joseph Beuys knew, and in his
    Schaffhauser installation "Das Kapital"
    http://www.modern-art.ch/english/home.html he placed
    apparatuses and artifacts of media communication together
    that force the observer into perceive them in action, to see
    his or her own productivity as capital and himself or herself
    as an artist. This model of one's own participation in art
    gains the dimension of "social sculpture" only in so far as
    the imaginative interrogation of the relics of anthropological
    media communication infers the history of the interaction
    encapsulated within them, thereby opening up spaces for
    opportunities for participation in the future. Following Beuys,
    who, it should be noted, used all the media available in his
    day for the creation of social sculptures, etoy, with its
    shares concept and the Toywar platform, develops new
    formats for participation in art which, making full use of the
    networking potential of the Internet, enliven a virtual space
    for information, communication and transaction, an ensemble
    of tools for action for "interventions in the symbolic
    reproduction process of society" (Frank Hartmann)
    <http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/Frank.Hartmann/index.htm>
    and an institutionalizing self-articulation organ for virtuality.
    So etoy's efforts seem aimed at carrying the concept
    of the social sculpture over to a digital format.

    For artistic reasons, etoy could not accept the takeover
    offer from eToys, which after all, amounted to a million
    German marks at the time. The story would have worked,
    of course, since "unfriendly takeovers" are now a common
    part of doing business. For the first time, net.art would have
    brought a newsworthy price and nomadic artists obtain
    their domains from various contemporary subversion zones
    anyway. But without the claim on etoy.com, the project of
    the social sculpture would have been out of reach. It
    borders on insult and suggests a bad memory when etoy
    is now accused of "selling out." They already passed up
    their considerable chance to do so.

    And so, two representations on the Web stood opposed
    to one another. eToys, the parasite-like one, organizing the
    circulation of already existing real objects, and etoy, the
    autochtonous one, using Web-based tools to pressure
    virtual as well as real social processes to reveal and
    change themselves. Two models of participation were
    also opposed, one noting the changing valuations of stocks,
    and the other honoring participation with shares in the project.
    In the same way, it was a conflict between two lifestyles,
    one consumerist, giving absolute priority to acquisition, in
    this case, a domain, and the other artistic, declaring the
    exhibition of complex social practices, rather than art
    objects, the object of art. And not least of all, of course,
    the future of the Web was also at stake. Should it be reduced
    to a transaction platform for ecommerce -- or should the
    possibilities inherent in it for spontaneous networking,
    "social information processing" (MichaelGiesecke)
    <http://www.ifgb.uni-hannover.de/extern/kommunikationslehre/giesecke/index.htm>,
    culture jamming, interweaving and penetration and
    personal globalization be further developed?

    Therein lies the art of etoy, to have expounded upon these
    polarities in complete clarity and to have forced the Net
    population to make a decision. And although Toywar didn't
    go up on the Net until a month after the first court order,
    Netizens understood the question and answered it in their
    own unique way. John Perry Barlow is right when he says
    http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,33159,00.html
    we should all be grateful to etoy. But it's not only
    the posing of these questions and the development of
    Toywar that needs to be recognized, but also the finessing,
    invisible to the public, of the juridical problems. What had
    to be borne out and built upon in terms of pressures and
    counterattacks, threats and intentionally misleading moves
    is known only to those who were immediately involved.
    The legal result, at any rate, is as excellent as the exposition
    of the decision-making problem.

    Is everything, then, not art after all? Art is a term of
    attribution that's constantly changing its rules. The
    Renaissance, Romanticism and Modernism all developed
    countless concepts throwing off aesthetic sparks from the
    overlapping of life and art. Etoy stands firmly in this tradition.
    Has Duchamp already done it all? Duchamp's readymades
    retain the character of objects for the most part; etoy forces
    the character of readymades onto social processes, in
    particular, the making and marketing of virtuality. What
    eToys http://www.etoys.com/ and Network Solutions
    http://www.networksolutions.com/ do -- these are the
    readymades of the '00s. Didn't Beuys completely and
    utterly exhaust the theme of the social sculpture? Wrong --
    Beuys developed social sculptures in the medium of
    anthropological psychism; only the first explorations are now
    being conducted in the medium of transanthropic virtualism,
    e.g., Luther Blissett http://www.lutherblissett.net/ and
    Toywar <http://www.toywar.com>.

    Warhol drove the recontextualization of everyday icons with
    great style, Koons exposed the pornography of surfaces
    and the Business Art of the '80s recast corporate identity
    to the hilt, so what's left for etoy? Etoy's perversion lies in
    upping, measure by measure, the development of the value of a
    single icon, their own name, virtually cast as www.etoy.com
    <http://www.etoy.com/>, in the spiraling attention of the
    economic, political, social and artistic, thus reflecting the
    process of the creation of value in the financial markets in
    the excess of self-exaggeration. So it's not enough to merely
    simulate an airline, as Ingold Airlines
    http://finger-news.com/4issue/fouringold.html does; you
    have to chase the take-off and landing slots away from
    Lauda Air http://www.laudaair.com/ with the
    "fucking plugins" from agent.jeff.

    Part II: Bringing IT to YOU.

    When, back in November 1999, eToys management
    unveiled its coup and Judge Shook pored over the files
    and etoy developed the concept for the Toywar platform,
    I had just completed my several-month-long study of the
    evolution of stock prices on the "Neue Markt"
    <http://www.neuer-markt.de/INTERNET/NM/nm3.nsf/HTMLSeitenD/UNTERNEHMEN+-+alphabetisch?openDocument>,
    Germany's vague equivalent of the US technology index
    NASDAQ. The bulk of these stocks for the most part rose
    dramatically after their initial public offering and then more
    or less zigged and zagged along a plateau before plunging
    downwards, opening out onto a bland wallowing around
    the initial offering price. As they say, these valuations are
    rather drab. Since these new companies are just now
    creating the markets within which they move, the valuations
    excuse the most miserable data as long as the story allows
    expectations for greater future valuations.

    The actual dynamic lies in the story, the fantasy of the market
    <http://www.archiv.zeit.de/daten/pages/199948.kunst_boerse_.html>,
    which, like Switzerland's warm wind, keeps things stirring
    as long as there's enough hot air feeding it. If, over time, the
    story loses some of its plausibility, the smart investor grabs
    his profits, borrowing the same paper for a limited time,
    selling high, and if the stock falls, buys it back and gives it
    back. Those who anticipate a change in the market profit
    whether it goes up or down. The sovereign speculator is
    the one with his hand on the course of the story.

    As the story turns, so turns the market. The stock falls
    because a majority of investors believe they'll earn more
    if it falls than if it rises. Rather nasty for those who banking
    on high valuations. Long-term investors wait for the next
    upward trend, others take their losses and validate the
    downward trend, while the truly sorry ones are those
    forbidden to deal by the rules of the exchange. These
    are the founding investors and the company management
    for the duration of the six months following the initial public
    offering. Looking at the toys market, the general trend on
    the exchange and overall economic development, literary
    critics and economists would not be alone in risking
    argumentatively sound statements on the future of the
    story and the stock exchange.

    If two entities are fighting over the same thing, e.g., the
    domain www.etoy.com, the one who wins will be the one
    who can convince the other that the object of desire is not
    as desirable as it appears. The etoy domain was an object
    of desire, for EToys, because they were losing 20,000 of
    300,000 hits a day to etoy.com, for etoy, because the
    domain name was the point of reference of their artistic
    existence. And the fight was particular heated because the
    opponents followed different sets of logic; the economic,
    on the one hand, which has to do with numbers and payments,
    and the artistic on the other, where it has to do with anything
    but. The art group was in possession of a double advantage:
    for one, the domain was theirs, and for another, far more
    important one, the exhibition of the bizarre practices of the
    financial world was nothing less than their artistic project.
    While etoy could always put both sets of logic into play,
    eToys was never able to put the logic of economics to use
    against its opponent by, for example, burying the opponent
    in an avalanche of legal fees, nor could it use a third logic,
    for example, the criminal prosecution of Net activists. No
    one could hold it against eToys that they couldn't follow
    the logic of art.

    When I developed, without knowing any of the participants,
    the core of what became the RTMark campaign
    http://www.rtmark.com/fundetoy.html with my "a new toy
    for you" (all of which is documented at To:list@rhizome.org
    <http://www.hygrid.de/etoyrhiz.html>), the point was to set
    up an undeniable mirror which would make the moves by
    etoy.arts and etoy.politics appear as losses in the market value
    of eToys. This mirror was the NASDAQ notation of eToys
    <http://quotes.nasdaq-amex.com/Quote.dll?page=full&mode=basics&symbol=ETYS'&selected=ETYS>,
    from which I was able to determine that the company had
    exhausted the hot air puffing up their story and that the
    market was looming on the verge of introducing a
    downward trend. The idea of focusing the campaign on
    the destruction of eToys's market valuation was an act of
    speculating on speculation, a metastory, telling once again
    the parallel story already autonomously programmed for a
    fall. As etoy.arts used the similarity of the domains as a value
    effect, so did etoy.politics use the fall in the stock price as a
    battle effect. "To hype out the hype," as Ricardo Dominguez
    and I coined the tactic in The Thing's BBS chat.

    It wasn't a betting game. It was a thought through calculation:
    The stock was introduced on May 20, and starting on
    November 20, the insiders flooded the market. The valuation
    reflected the anticipation of expectations for the Christmas
    shopping season and was already moving downward. All
    etailers found themselves under pressure because the
    traditional companies had found their electronic footing.
    And the campaign would arouse so much brouhaha that
    the majority of new investors would be betting on the slide.

    Conceptually and legally, etoy.arts was set up brilliantly.
    Etoy.politics followed a few days afterwards. The judge's
    ink was barely dry when the first attacks hit the eToys Web
    site. The spontaneous self-activation of hundreds and the sheer
    speed of the flow of information were the trump cards. A
    respectable batch of unmoderated mailing lists such as Rhizome
    <http://www.rhizome.org/fresh/>, where my "urgently needed"
    <http://www.hygrid.de/etoyrhiz.html>, sent 36 minutes after
    I received the news to Nettime and four minutes later to
    Rhizome - had long since met with a wave of positive
    resonance, when Nettime moderator Ted Byfield (who, by
    the way, did a great job in the background) let me know
    that "we don't send out stuff like this." Even though the point
    was to attack eToys immediately, to hit them senseless with
    attacks just when they were already overworked with their
    monumental Christmas business. The media and net.art scene
    http://www.eviltoy.com/endorsements.html subscribed to
    Rhizome understood immediately, and shortly after "a new toy,"
    I found myself hijacked by the art group RTMark
    http://www.rtmark.com/etoy.html to the working group
    furiously toiling away.

    When the forms on the Web site, and then the mailboxes of the
    management were plastered with protests with the help of Richard
    Zach's http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~zach/ estimable Feedbackpage
    <http://dmoz.org/Society/Activism/Media_Activism/Culture_Jamming/etoy/>,
    eToys was pulled into a press frenzy, and they must have
    realized in no uncertain terms that they were facing a powerful
    opponent with a talent for grand politics. Etoy made this clear
    on a legal level, RTMark on the political, the NASDAQ valuation
    on the financial and the virtual sit-in on the infrastructural level.

    A virtual sit-in is little more than a collective, simultaneous
    requesting of a Web site. If one requests a Web site faster
    than it can be transferred and built up on the end user's
    screen, the server receives, on the one hand, a message
    telling it that the first request is no longer valid, and on the
    other hand, the new request. Scripts running on one's own
    computer or on go-between servers automate this process,
    and after a certain number of requests, the server under
    attack begins to suffer under the strain. One has to
    differentiate very specifically between knocking out a server
    for private motives and a political action openly disrupting a
    Web site for clearly formulated reasons and for a limited
    time. That's when it becomes comparable to a warning
    strike during wage negotiations, a means of civil disobedience
    http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wray/ecd.html signaling that
    one side has the willingness and courage to fight. A virtual
    sit-in risks bringing symbolic forms of action to bear in a
    medium of virtuality.

    In the case of eToys, great pains were taken to attack
    the server for short spans of time only (six fifteen-minute
    periods on ten Christmas shopping days) and to avoid
    completely bringing it down at all costs. There was a
    "killer bullet script" which was capable of doing just that,
    but its use was unanimously opposed. One participant wrote:
    "I'm not ready to trade the distributed, swarming community
    of activists model for a single tactical nuke." The point was
    to get across just how widespread
    http://www.duke.edu/~arg2/solidarity_list.html the
    protest was; it was not about a terrorist attack.

    This much can be said of the effect: There were seven or
    eight rotating mirrors around the world running five
    different scripts. Added to this were several tools circulating
    around on the Net which can be installed on personal
    computers. The combination made it possible to keep
    eToys's server busy performing routine tasks. The cleverest
    script was probably "killertoy.html", a non-linear script that
    fills cookies-based shopping carts to the brim without actually
    making a purchase. For every new item, the server would
    have to refigure the complete list all over again, a process
    that would take longer and longer as the cart filled, and
    some of the mirrors could generate a hundred thousand
    or more requests a day. eToys's server was able to process
    the simple request for pages on the first day without a hitch,
    but the more complex scripts introduced on the second day
    gave it a run for its money. Requests for particular IP
    addresses were completely blocked, meaning that eToys
    was taking itself out of these networks. It was the
    "super_plus_version" of the shopping scripts, then, that led
    to the shut-down of one of The Thing's Web sites by
    backbone provider Verio. Here, too, the "hype out the hype"
    strategy was at work, further virtualizing eToys's virtual
    shopping carts with virtual purchases.

    Just as important was the constant presence in all the
    investors' forums http://www.rtmark.com/etoysinvest.html
    that had to do with eToys where breath-taking, whiplash-like
    discussions were taking place. At first, the tone was set
    primarily by the financial world gloating over those mourning
    for the lost domain. But the vocabulary of investors can be
    picked up pretty quickly, and soon, the speculators counting
    on an upward trend were confronted with all sorts of
    negative financial data. When the market made its irreversible
    dip, the catcalls from investors betting on the slump out yelled
    even those from the activists.

    The financial press was as surely in eToys's hands as the
    cultural press was in etoy's. But the telling difference lay in the
    fact that one side publicized the story for all it was worth,
    while the other side avoided every instance of publicity. So
    the financial press, which could hardly ignore the dramatic
    fall in the stock price, kept the impact of the "Internet
    renegades" as invisible as possible. Up to the point of
    eToys's first concession when Bloomberg.com ran the
    complete press statement from RTMark. "It's hysterical,"
    one of the founders emailed.

    No personal meeting, no telephone contact. Email and
    Web sites, nothing else. Mad email traffic early in the
    evening, and when necessary, early in the morning. Then,
    time to think it all over. Shortly after noon, mails to Rhizome
    so that the early risers on the east coast were immediately
    brought up to speed. Flow, when ten to twenty people were
    communicating at once and sending information around the
    world. Anyone can do it. You, too.

    An email finish with electronic slingshots! Hundreds of
    Toywar agents place the eToys management under Toywar
    fire! Unconditional surrender!!!

    Days later, we were confronted with 683 fresh coffins. The
    coffins of those who didn't follow the first Toywar.Order,
    didn't write the warning email as instructed. The false deaths
    of Toywar, now revived.

    I'd like to know what Mr. Weibel thinks now. At the Center for Art
    and Media Technology (ZKM), he opened the exhibition net_condition
    http://on1.zkm.de/netCondition.root/netcondition/start/language/default_e
    and didn't even invite etoy, winner of the .net category of Prix
    Ars Electronica in 1996. Perhaps the clever man suspected
    that the standard-setting exhibition of the net-condition would
    be outfitted by etoy on the Net anyway.

    ========Fournos-culture: net -diffusion of
    art -proposals and discourses after the nets.
    For: information; subscribe and unsubscribe
    post a msg to: Majordomo@fournos-culture.gr
    and in the e-mail body : info fournos-culture

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