At long last, the “burning” question of Who is Benjamin Stove? (see my notes on this previously) has been answered. And yes, it’s another viral marketing campaign.

I’ve not seen anybody quite owning up to it yet, because it looks like it’s still in the early stages of breaking. But I just spotted this ad banner on BoingBoing:

The ad points to a page on GM.com with the title “A Response to ‘Symbol in the Crop’“. The page itself references another website, Symbolinthecrop.com:

Dear Mr. Stove and Colleagues,

In response to your manifesto presented on SymbolintheCrop.com, we want to thank you for your deep personal interest in ethanol. At GM we also feel that ethanol, or E85, is a fuel solution that is both practical and possible.

After a quick review of your website, we have deduced that you are some type of researcher. We invite you to continue your research by visiting our new website, www.livegreengoyellow.com, where you can explore the virtues of this alternative to the petroleum-based products that currently fuel the vast majority of vehicles in America.

Seems like they’re starting to pull away the viral marketing mask and guess what’s underneath: something totally and utterly boring. Blatant ad-speak. Check this out:

In your manifesto, you speak of a dual mind: “a mind that simultaneously looks toward the future and works in the present to bring that bright future about.” The future is exactly what GM is all about, and the future may begin now. That is why GM now offers the E85 FlexFuel engine in nine of our vehicles from cars to trucks to SUVs. The FlexFuel engine is a reflection of your dual mind philosophy. A FlexFuel vehicle can run on standard fuel and - with no mechanical alteration - on E85 ethanol. Like your dual mind, FlexFuel engines operate in the present while being ready for the future. It puts the future in your hands and lets you decide which fuel will take you there.

Man, I’m really glad a company is “putting the future in my hands” by letting me decide which new line of fuel products and huge corporate industries to support. [Speaking of which, this makes me wonder if maybe Peak Oil isn’t a far more elaborate viral marketing technique to do essentially the same thing?] Anyway, going back to that Symbolinthecrop.com website, the conspiracy theory style “manifesto” itself ends with a pretty clear call to action to support GM.

The world must have a better way. Humanity must go forward, not trudge on its doomed hamster wheel. I present to the world the Truth. We are being watched. This is our test. Is there anyone who understands that this is the ONLY way for our species to survive? In my estimation, only General Motors seems to be truly leading the charge against this crisis with their Live Green, Go Yellow campaign and their FlexFuel engines. My question is, When are the rest of you going to figure this out?

Before that, they talk about The Nine - 9 symbols (crop circles in the shape of the ethanol molecule) which appeared simultaneously across the earth in 9 locations (themselves forming again the molecule when plotted on a map). The whole thing actually is eerily reminscent of a real conspiracy theory - which I’m guessing they probably didn’t know about:

The timing of the Nine is no coincidence. The message directly correlates with our accelerated use of fossil fuels in the early 20th century. Someone was already showing us a better way. Choose to ignore this communication at your own peril.

“The Nine” of course reminds me of the Nine as channelled by Andrija Puharich’s strange group. (See also the Council of Nine for more info) They were nine supposedly Egyptian gods who were returning from space or something with a message for humanity to reform it’s ways. So did GM intentionally pull in this reference? Is it an accident? Does it indicate deep collusion between them and Puharich’s clear and obvious military-intelligence ties? Does it mean that GM is the incarnation of an ancient Egyptian god and they’re going to eventually slaughted us and harvest our bones to power infernal machines? Who the hell knows.

What I do know is that these viral marketing campaigns are irritating. Clever, certainly. But irritating. They play on our natural inclinations to want to figure things out, to create understanding out of chaos and mystery. They reward inquisitiveness by revealing progressively more morsels of information and make you feel “smart” by figuring it out and putting all the pieces together. Even if you think to yourself “Oh, I knew that was viral marketing all along,” you still end up getting zapped by it when your neurons finally mesh together and reveal the insidiously boring design that lays beneath it. I only wish that when all the masks were unveiled that once and a while we’d find honest-to-God genuine mystery, beauty, or simple humanity underneath instead of yet another marketing statement designed to worm its way into our subconscious before we even know what hit us.