User Comment Rodeo: The Saga Continues

Sometimes a habit becomes a tradition, and then everyone venerates or denigrates it as they see fit. Once this happens the only rational thing for a human being to do is to abandon whatever the fuss is being made about. Just concentrate on increasing the distance between yourself and that thing. You don't talk about it, you don't think about it, and most importantly, if you do it, you don't make a big deal about it.

Carbonated beverages are probably the third dumbest consumer beverage, coming in after bottled water and slightly behind energy drinks. When it comes to poisoning yourself I tend to think like the Greeks: hemlock or bust. Why stretch the suffering out over years and why pretend it doesn't harm you? What's wrong with alcoholism? Why do some people avoid the bottle but fall for the Full Throttle?

Fortunately I'm not here to answer those questions. Shit I barely even understand them, or the complex consumer economics research that goes into creating them. However we all know that the people who invented bottled water became incredibly rich shortly after the year 2000, and the people who mass marketed energy drinks became rich shortly thereafter. (These data for North American markets only). The grandfather product that all these imitators were imitating was the venerable Coca Cola, brand extraordinaire!

While cigarettes and booze were repeatedly demonized throughout the 1900s, Coca Cola took some mild flak for involving cocaine in their recipe. Profit flowed as freely as the drink flowed out of the iconic bottle's neck. Times were great. An hundred years later and things are still fantastic. Coke managed to survive the 80s, managed to survive all competition, and even managed to survive moralism and nutrito-facism. There is no stopping Coke, or any soft drink, and I think that's wrong.

All they do is sell you poison. Sugar liquor, by any other name, with ingredients you wouldn't throw on your worst enemy. Pepsi, Coke, independent manufacturers. When sugar was demonized in the 80s they all switched to carcinogenic sweeteners that people still drink and that have not been banned. You know when drinking gets serious? It gets serious when you mix white rum and Diet Coke, because all you have to do is add a tylenol to nuke your liver for good. When you recover, just blame the alcohol.