What with bird-counting, we almost missed the dumb hoax–not to say the hoax was dumb but that the hoax about dumb was almost lost on us.  And not only because we do not always scan the “news” far and wide enough to catch such scintillating plums. Also because we might not have seen the art in this concept; only the discontent, the humor, the clever. Is it art? Protest? Both?  The post below on the New Yorker’s website, as often happens, sheds the light we need to “get” what might otherwise have been lost:

Last weekend, a pop-up shop called Dumb Starbucks appeared in Los Feliz, Los Angeles, five miles east of the Hollywood Hills. It seemed like any other Starbucks store, but it gave away “dumb” versions of items sold by the Seattle-based coffee giant: Dumb Iced Vanilla Latte and Dumb Blonde Roast. For full effect, there were compact discs with names like “Dumb Jazz Standards,” “Dumb Taste of Cuba,” and “Dumb Nora (sic) Jones” by the registers. Californians waited in line for hours for the “horrible coffee,” while Starbucks grew flustered at the use of its “protected trademark.” Before the caffeine buzz could wear off, the loud voices of the social-media sphere started wondering: Who put up Dumb Starbucks? And was it a legitimate political statement about consumerism—perhaps an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street—or a well-executed viral marketing stunt? Continue reading →