90% Crud

Bill Gates will stop at nothing to make people use his products.

Holy crap, now I've got to buy that issue of Maxim!

Is that Orrin Hatch with the gun?

I think it's actually anti-copyleft, or rather, perhaps, pointing out the seeming irony of a copyleft t-shirt..

Read the text in the blackbox

"America's symbols of suburban consumption make prime targets."

Of course, the target is the kid wearing this symbol on his shirt, which he most likely purchased/consumed somewhere, at some point.

Also, mentioning suburban and having this be the symbol makes the case that copyleft is a uniquely middle-to-upper class phenomenon. Kids in the ghetto, most likely, don't care about this issue as much as kids in the burbs, with their file-sharing communities, and t-shirt purchases appear to.

Also, by pointing out the nature of the phenomenon(mid/upper class), they are pointing out the class "struggles" that lurks below the surface, both with regards to the "terrorists" and copyleft.

They may also be making a point on co-option by corporate power of the symbols of the underground. Would a kid in a copyleft shirt really be walking around in a mall? If he is, does he actually really care about copyleft, or is it just a cool trend for him?

Or maybe someone just thought it looked nice and threw it in...

That is cool. Maybe I'll buy that issue "for my boyfriend"! As for motivations, my guess would lean towards one of two scenarios. A: the graphic designer was being subversive and wanted to spread the good word, or B: the graphic designer wishes he worked in Redmond and hates the damn copyleft commies. Probably, in either case, the caption has nothing to do with the fact that the t-shirt has a creative commies logo on it. I really don't buy the creative commies t-shirts = subrurban consumption theory and if that was their intent they would have explained the symbol since outside the open-source leaning blogosphere that icon is very little kown.

My guess is they just wanted to put a logo of some sort on his shirt, but they couldn't use a trademarked logo in the picture without shelling out.. & then.. "let's see what logo could we possibly use for free.. AHA!"

<3

Wow, Dave, I totally agree. The caption, not just the copyleft logo, steals the show. Maxim is deep!

Deconstructing something like this reminds me of when I heard that the "Target Market" commercials were populated by smoking actors. As soon as the cameras clicked off, the actors would go for a smoke break.

It's like an infinite onion. So many layers...