Re: <nettime> The Toywar Platform as a Monument to World Culture

[Felix Stalder <stalder@fis.utoronto.ca>]

> the most expensive
>performance of art history.
<...>
> The declared and achieved aim of the etoy campaign to bring
>eToys's stock value down to zero - during the campaign they
>lost half of their market cap and, a drab since then, touched
>the $ 1 share prize last week


Wouldn't it be time to give Toywar its well-deserved rest?

Yes, it was a good campaign, yes, it was effective in fighting off one
instance of "reserve domain name hijacking", yes, the toysolders were cute
and the media loved it. While the campaign went on, I understood, and to
some degree supported, the relentless hype that was unfolded around it. It
made for good politics (a.k.a. winning), though I'm not sure if it made
for good art, if you care to separate.  But now, please, I would like to
see some real analysis of what went on, not the repetition of the same old
clichees over and over. Even heroes can overstay their welcome. The war is
over and so should be the propaganda if we are to learn anything from it.

Did the Toywar really push EToys on the slippery slope of stock market
decline, which, of course, has hit almost all pure Internet retailers the
same, if not harder? I kind of doubt that. As anyone who ever took a
statistics course remembers, correlation is not equal to causation. But
perhaps there is more evidence to support the Toywar claim?

Is there any real difference between online and offline consumer boycotts?
Possibly there is since it's so much easier to switch to a competitor that
sells the same (your good consciousness is only one click away) and
(virtual) sit-ins are relatively easily orchestrated by a small number of
people.

However, given what happened in domain name politics over the last year,
the huge impact of Toywar beyond etoy is difficult to see.

best. Felix


--------------------++-----
Les faits sont faits.
http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/~stalder




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