Lost Zombies at SXSW

March 28, 2009

Welcome to SXSW, land of the computer, Lego, alcohol and panel zombies. Great stuff! Great scott! Great brain-sucking intensity!

If you didn't know already, SXSW stands for "South By Southwest", and it happens to be a little conference in the middle of downtown Austin, Texas.

Of course, by little, I mean big, and by the middle of downtown, I mean all of downtown. Now that those pieces of data have been established, it must be pointed out that some of the conferences attendees actually dressed as zombies and preyed on the conference attendees.

The Zombies were actually part of a user-contributed movie site called "Lost Zombies", and they had a massive road sign that explained the latest Zombie information as part of their booth at the Interactive expo. Lost Zombies aim to “document the zombie apocalypse.” And they did a good job of capturing our attention - the project took the SXSW Web Awards for People’s Choice and Best Community.

Want to learn more about this crazy and successful publicity stunt? Check out the Lost Zombies SXSW Web Finalist's Page for more information.

Real Zombies

Okay, I'll admit it. I wrote the beginning of those post as a reason to talk about actual zombie attacks. The Zombies at SXSW were really friendly, but real zombies probably won't be quite as charming. In fact, as the zombie meme increases in intensity, we'll probably be less prepared for an actual Zombie attack.

Portland has an annual Zombie walk where hundreds of people, young and old, dress up as Zombies and gallivant around town. Were the real zombie to know about this, he'd have a competitive advantage in his ability to catch prey. In fact, they could easily eat the brains of all those poseur zombies out there. And would any of us innocent passeryby notice or try to help out those fake zombies as they were eaten by real ones? No. We'd all think it was a publicity stunt. The usual photographers would be out with their cameras, taking pictures of the 'very nicely constructed' carnage.

And besides, we've seen death a thousand times on film. We don't even know what real death looks like anymore. If we were to see an actual zombie attack, the blood and guts would seem totally fake. In fact, the more gruesome the attack, the less likely we'd really be able to understand what was going on.

In conclusion, I posit that the Zombie trend is very dangerous for our future selves. Allowing representations of Zombies to run wild through our streets and conferences exposes us to the very possible danger of an actual Zombie attack. Perhaps we should also stage zombie battles in case this ever happens, or ban the Zombie meme itself from ever occurring. At the very least, we might transfter the meme into a less-dangerous state. Hoardes of people dressed as unicorns might be a much safer way to stage a publicity stunt. Besides, the apocaylpse never said anything about unicorns, right?

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Photo Credz: Photo of Heather being attacked by a Zombie by Nonojoe. Zombie and me photo courtesy of Kris Krug.