“Families sleepin’ in their cars in the Southwest / No home, no job. No peace. No rest.”
― 2012 SxSW keynote speaker Bruce Springsteen, “The Ghost of Tom Joad”
Another late March, and yet another South by Southwest is on the books. No more badges; no more lines. And definitely, no more breakfast tacos.
Yes, like any fest worth its sponsors, #SxSW has been losing its soul for years now. That’s just how the game gets played. But this year, with so many corporations barely trying to cover up their
stench, things smelled extra rotten in the state of Texas.
And for once, it really is fine to hate the players.
Insofar as Street Sense is concerned, the stickiest and most smarmy of them all had to be Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s Labs―the two-if-by-sea skunks who brought us the infamous marketing scheme that will go down as Homeless Hotspots.
By now, you know the shame by heart: 12 homeless men – clad in dehumanizing “I’m a 4G hotspot” tees – were used as living, breathing WiFi tethers all for the benefit of faster tweets, quicker check-ins and better-staged Instagrams. It was cheap; it was easy. And it certainly was a pathetic #SxSW ploy.
Moreover, to this day, BBH Labs has yet to proffer a proper apology. This comes as no great surprise. Really. Again, that’s simply how ad men play their game nowadays.
To be fair, the city of Austin, itself, isn’t exactly to blame. Given the recent outpouring for the late Leslie Cochran―a doting, albeit eccentric, advocate for the rights of the homeless―it’s clear how much the good people of Austin care about those on the streets. (Remembering Leslie as only Austin could, heck, he’s even got an iPhone tribute app now!)
But corporations aren’t people. They never have been. The fact alone that something as crude as Homeless Hotspots ever got past a severely offcolor joke in the boardroom further proves they never will.
Suggesting that BBH Labs’ initiative was even remotely related to the empowering and truly redemptive experience that this very paper provides so many―week after week, year upon year―is not only reckless, it’s just plain absurd.
Need proof? Find a vendor anywhere in the District and ask him/her.
Ultimately, Homeless Hotspots proved to be nothing more than demographic callousness dressed up in technocratic cool. Those who devised it, those who instituted it, as well as those that might’ve just looked the other way on Sixth Street, should all be ashamed.
Homeless Hotspots will remain a blight on future South by Southwest gatherings for years to come. And it should. Our nation’s homeless deserve at least that much.
Keep Austin wired? Sure thing,
#SxSW. But first and foremost, let us also remember to keep her kind…in the right measure.
