Look, in case you haven’t figured it out, Coca-cola is the devil’s egg-nog. The other day I was reading an article about the famous “Coke changes its formula” scandal of 1985. For those of you who don’t remember, Coke was losing taste tests to Pepsi, so they changed their formula to “New Coke” which was a sweeter version of the old favorite. Coke had done all these stupid taste tests and pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo and had come up with the new perfect soft drink. Well, lo and behold, as soon as they released it and took “Old Coke” off the market, the American people had a shit fit. It seems that even though they did prefer the taste of “New Coke” (as the tests indicated) they had been so brainwashed by advertising over the course of the last billion years, that they actually thought that “Old Coke” was a necessity to their way of life.

I’m not making this up.

This is a story that is usually brandished about in marketing classes as a kind of funny anecdote. Why doesn’t it scare the hell out of anybody apart from me? I mean, aren’t American citizens intelligent? Don’t we have brains? Can marketing really be so powerful that people would demand a soft drink that scientific testing has proven they like less than another just because MARKETING tells them they should prefer it?

In many ways, Coca-Cola is a great symbol of what America is. That damn Coke logo can be found everywhere from New York City to a dusty old shack next to the infrequently used stone highway between Puno and Bolivia (I know, I saw one there). After America has dried up and been forgotten, there will probably be nothing but old Coke bottles in strange places to let future (and hopefully more advanced) civilizations learn about us.

Let’s examine just what Coke is for a moment shall we? Brown sugar water. Nothing more. I once heard that it takes 5 cents to make a can of Coke and 4 of that goes into the manufacture of the can. So here we have a product that is basically completely useless, does nothing but rot your teeth, and which is sold at a 1000% mark-up because clever marketing lets the manufacturers get away with it?

I bet you’d be hard pressed to find one American (other than myself) who wouldn’t do flip-flops and summersaults in order to whistle praises over the legend of Coca-Cola. For some reason, just the fact that Coke generates bazillions of dollars in revenue makes it “admirable.”

But answer me this, just what contribution to humanity is made by brown sugar water that rots your teeth? HUH? Why is that something to be proud of?

Coke seems to me to be a worthless money factory that relies on the categorical brain-washing of human beings in order to make money. Isn’t there something unethical about that? Why should I have to be subject to this fucking non-stop stream of propaganda demanding that I accept Coke as my constitutional right? It’s a damn product! It makes some asshole in a suit rich! There is NOTHING SPECIAL about it.

Somebody should have taken note when Coke accidentally killed their own momentum by sending out the contradictory message that the “old” flavor wasn’t any good. The masses were confused, their fearless leader was sending them crossed signals.

Mighty Coke Company (to the masses for a period of a thousand years): You must drink Coke. Coke is the best. Coke is good. You like Coke. Coke is perfect.

Masses: Yeeeesssss Maaaaaaassssstttteeerrrrr.

Then one day:

Mighty Coke Company (thinking that they were all powerful and that they can do whatever they want): Old Coke sucks, we are replacing it with New Coke.

Masses are confused. How do they listen to their fearless leader when their fearless leader starts giving them crossed signals?

Actually, now that I think about it, this whole ordeal confuses the fuck out of me. It’s not like the masses call foul when other super power forces contradict themselves. They don’t get all mad when Catholic Priests rape children, or when the church systematically oppresses the rights of women. They don’t get mad when our president rigs an election, or when we embark on an illegal war in order to make some oil barons richer. So why the hell do the masses scream bloody murder when a sugar water manufacturer tries to take what it probably felt was its deserved poke at our collective ass?

The only answer I can come to is that the masses only give a shit when the larger forces in the world start messing with trivial bullshit. Watch out world, don’t mess with the bumbling morons, don’t try to switch their fire water on them or they’ll flip out.

This whole thing is so vomitous it makes me rancorous. I’m going to have a rum and RC.

The End