Culture jamming "sticks where rational discourse slides off. It is, simply, the viral introduction of radical ideas. It is viral in that it uses the enemy's own resources to replicate itself—corporate logos, marketing psychology, clean typography, 'adspeak.' It is radical because—ideally—the message, once deciphered, causes damage to blind belief."[cit]

Detournement and recuperation ("radical" ideas and images being commodified and incorporated within mainstream society[cit]) are terms from Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (1967).

Guy Debord was a founding member of the Situationist International, a liberatarian group that formed in response to the May 1968 a protests in Paris. "The way out of the Situationists was not to wait for a distant revolution but to reinvent everyday life here and now. To transform the perception of the world and to change the structure of society is the same thing. By liberating oneself, one changed power relations and therefore transformed society."[cit]