MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > People are so brainwashed. Case in point...

People are so brainwashed. Case in point: popular/hyped up soda and drink brands

posted 5 years ago by [deleted]
21 replies | jump to latest

Something that boggles my mind is how people will swear by a food item that has degraded in quality over time or tastes like crap, based on marketing, hype or familiarity alone.

For example, Mountain Dew and Pepsi. PepsiCo dramatically changed the formula for both a few years ago to the point where they're much worse than the cheap dollar store knockoffs. They literally taste like soap and/or other chemicals: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/food/pepsico.html?page=4#sort=recent&filter=none. Yet there are all these people on YouTube and other sites chugging both products crazy because of all of this flashy marketing and corny product lines like "Code Red."

Or what about the cookies and cream Twix? There are people raving that it's the best thing they've ever had and tastes just like the original that came out decades ago, but it doesn't taste anything like it. Not only that, it tastes like and has the consistency of flavored wax because of low quality ingredients. But people are swearing by it.

And then there's hipster crap like kombucha and Jones Soda. Jones Soda literally tastes like those experiments I used to do as a kid when I tried making my own soda by mixing juice powder and seltzer water. Kombucha tastes just as cheap, just seltzer with a little God-knows-what mixed in. But people are like, "Ohhh, this stuff is amazing!"

Are people this taken with marketing and branding that they can't even taste how poor quality an item is or has become over time?

[–] Videon (24) 5 years ago

I don't swear by any particular brand. I eat/drink what I feel like in that moment. I don't really get into the hype around stuff. I have always been late to the party that way. Now that I'm older I'm thankful for it.

[–] [email protected] (5918) 5 years ago

I don't drink soda. I gave it up years ago. It really is so bad for you, even the diet stuff. I will have a ginger ale when it's very hot and I am thirsty.

No soda can compare with the soda of my youth. I remember having a Coke at my aunt's house. Her two vices were a Coke and a smoke after dinner. She always had a case of Coke in her basement. It was back when soda came in glass bottles. I swear that Coke had a better flavor then. Maybe it's just nostalgia. But I think the glass bottles had something to do with the flavor.

As for so many other food items, many people obviously buy into the hype of idiotic commercials on TV. Why else would so much absolute JUNK food be sold?

I find it ironically funny that there are endless commercials for high fat, high sugar garbage followed by drug company ads for pills to work on your high cholesterol, diabetes, irritable bowel, high blood pressure,etc.
Stop putting so much crap in your body and you won't need pills to fix it . Sometimes I think junk and fast food companies and Big Pharma are working together.

[–] Videon (24) 5 years ago

I don't drink much soda these days. It's all just so sweet. I know they get a lot of crap, but I've been more into bubbly water (La Croix, Schweppes, Bubly) lately.

And it would not surprise me if Big Pharma and fast food companies were working together. The sheer amount of ads on t.v. for fast food and medications to fight weight gain, high blood pressure, etc. are just ridiculous.