America Doesn't Even Know Why It's Aping Shepard Fairey Anymore

Stop. Just stop it. 

Thanks, Shepard Fairey. Because of your political Make-a-Face template, Adobe just announced it is renaming its Photoshop Cutout Filter to the Photoshop Hope Filter. Filter>Artistic>Hope>Me>Dummy.

ARG. What is this? An ad for Jason and the ARG-onauts? Quit using the CS5 ARG Filter, you no-idea-having lemmings. 

OK, I'm done.

No I'm not. I have a question for Mr. Maher. What are you trying to say with this? Are you making fun of it or embracing it or drawing comparisons between you and politicians? You're probably thinking: yeah, a little bit of all of those. But really the answer is none of those because you don't know what you're saying. At all.

Remember when Skittles commercials started being really bizarre and short? Milestone. That was the Silent High Five Heard Around The World for ad agencies because they knew that now they could all start making commercials that don't make any sense. Easy Street 'til the wheels come off. That's what's hot, like it or not. And right now, it's the hack designers everywhere who are slowly reaching across the cubicle divides and going palm-to-palm, teeth a'glinting because they know that for at least another quarter some guy in marketing will be requesting things to look all HOPE-y and shit. 

Shep, I know you've got a good thing going here, but I'm urging you on this. If you're truly about Manufacturing Quality Dissent, make your next big thing a 40% Gaussian Blur. And the big blue word should be like, CLARITY or something. Adobe will shit itself trying to come up with something that means the opposite of a filter and people will sell big patriotic smudge T-shirts in Union Square and Bill Maher will have to start using his real photograph in his print ads again:

I don't have TV but I hear Real Time is pretty funny. True?