Does the new website of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) remind you of dubious start-ups?
Does the US secret service want to release techno records now?
And who is behind a strange new logo anyway?
Is there even a link to the porn portal Pornhub?
These questions have been joked and argued on the net since the US secret service revised its website CIA.gov at the beginning of the year.
The site, which looked very different just a few days ago, is now mainly promoting a career with the CIA.
It is partly presented in a black and white look.
The well-known logo has also lost its normally dark blue color and is now black and white.
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CIA logo in black and white: Otherwise it is dark blue
Photo: CIA
Much more sensational than this adaptation, however, is another, completely new CIA logo, which can also be found on the official secret service website (it appears in the desktop view when you click on the three lines in the top right corner).
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Alternative CIA logo: A template for many Internet gags
Photo: CIA
The CIA in the "Boiler Room"
“When did the new minimal techno sampler ahahah drop” and “Can't wait for the CIA's› Boiler Room ‹set,” comment social media users on this second logo, or: “The new CIA logo looks like as if they were sending me an email to tell me that they love my tracks on Soundcloud and that they would like to publish them exclusively digitally - for their 147 followers. «
Some internet users have already remixed the new, hip logo.
For example, the group takes a picture that supposedly shows new CIA merchandising.
Apart from the allusions to the techno scene, the logo combined with the new website also arouses associations with pop-up shops, advertising agencies and start-ups, resulting in posts like this: »The whole aesthetic screams› Silicon Valley start-up with 10 Millions of dollars in funding and $ 0 in sales, with a touch of EDM music festival invented by Billy McFarland. ”(Billy McFarland had become famous for being jailed for fraud as the organizer of the“ Fyre Festival ”.)
The new CIA website is even compared with the traditionally extremely critical of the secret service "The Intercept".
And then came Ryder Ripps
The online debate about the CIA rebranding has taken on even more absurd traits since New York artist Ryder Ripps added the new secret service logos to his Instagram portfolio on Tuesday.
He and his design studio OKFocus have already worked for musicians like Kanye West and Grimes, but also for companies like Pornhub, as various Twitter users point out.
For an exhibition in 2018, Ripps actually presented ideas for what the porn portal could look like in 2069 "as a country".
For the »Pornhub Nation« he invented with the motto »Sex is good«, the artist even used a logo that was similar to that of the NSA, that is, that of another US secret service.
But can it really be that the CIA of all people has hired this artist?
From Kanye West to Intelligence, Pornhub and the CIA on the same résumé - wouldn't that be pretty much 2021?
Many social media users apparently answered this question with "yes": On Ripp's Instagram page there were numerous critical comments on Wednesday such as "Next, please redesign the Taliban logo" and "Will you be a prison next." shape?".
A good template for a game of confusion
In fact, Ryder Ripps' Instagram post is a publicity stunt.
The new CIA logo in techno look actually belongs to the CIA and the optically unusual website is real and has been put on the Internet by the US authorities.
Ryder Ripps was not involved in this project, as it is now called.
"This person had absolutely nothing to do with the redesign of our website," the music magazine "Exclaim!" Quotes someone who should know: Nicole de Haay, a spokeswoman for the CIA.
Artist Ripps saw the general surprise about the redesign as a good template for a game of confusion that ultimately brought him, but certainly also the CIA, a lot of social media excitement - including hateful comments.
Ripps wrote to a Twitter user on Tuesday evening that it could be that he had "trolled the Internet on a large scale with around two minutes of work."
Other recent postings by the artist also confirm that this is a clever deception.
He replied to an Instagram user that it was "a joke to get free coverage and attention": "I don't work for the CIA." In Ripps' Instagram portfolio, however, the logos still appear as if he had designed them.
It is not known whether all the fuss actually led to more applications to the CIA.
From Ryder Ripps, who was partly violently insulted for his alleged collaboration with the secret service, it was said in a now deleted Twitter post: “Do you know who helps the CIA the most?
All the people who tweet about her. "
Icon: The mirror
