The Atlantic reminds us all to rise above controversy

            Ian Bogost writes in The Atlantic that “Pepsi’s New Ad is a Complete Success.” By all conventional standards he would be wrong. The ad was likely not cheap to produce and could only be aired for all of a day before getting attacked so thoroughly that they could not get value out of it before getting pulled. He is also more right than anyone else who has weighed in on this controversy.

            Pepsi has created something not meant to actually be an advertisement but a stunt. Bogost does an excellent job of breaking down how this is more an act of capitalism than politics. How we are treated by corporations reveals their ideological bent, consumerism first everything else second.

            The article politely brings you the realization that whether outraged or not, you are playing in to the trap that Pepsi has set for you. It does not lay out the trope of not thinking of a purple elephant, though it could easily be excused if it did. Bogost even calls himself out for being part of the machine that has eaten the controversy and allowed it to live out its lifecycle.

            Universalized, the message is much more profound. We live in a time of great outrage. There are things happening within our political and social spheres that are worthy of outrage. We are inundated by all sorts of things that could make us angry. Everyone knows that the superlative emotions get the clicks. Which is why no one does anything that you will think is generally kind of neat, they do things that will totally blow you away. We live with our whole lives on max outrage. Which is why we can be at full breath screaming that the president of Syria is gassing his own citizens, but what wins the news cycle is a cola ad. Why? Well Middle East politics are a tricky mine field of terrible choices and less than ideal allies. Going full blast at a cola company is something we can change today. (Also, land mines are still totally a thing, which we might be rid of by 2025 but I wouldn’t count on it.)

            The lesson here though is we need to focus on the decisions and the policy behind things. Pepsi wanted you to be mad, or to be mad at the people who were mad, so we would all be talking about them. Did it work? Sure. Did we spend our time well? Depends how you define it. Yes we managed to take down a tone deaf ad. But we still didn’t fix the issues that the protests the ad was parodying were about to begin with. So in a week when we should have been teaching ourselves about infrastructure, and whether or not it’s racist (hint: kinda), we something something omg Kendall Jenner.

            So please stop being outraged, calm down enough to decide what matters, and choose to care about it. And even if you do get taken in by something from the outrage machine, at least be honest with yourself that you are being frivolous. If we admit it, then later we can go back to what really matters.