Kinja reply list

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Fighter-of-the-NightmanSam Biddle
2/09/15 1:40pm
So, the "Gawker" Brand isn't my friend? Huh?
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  Max ReadFighter-of-the-Nightman
  2/09/15 1:54pm
  Absolutely not, no.
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  Fighter-of-the-NightmanMax Read
  2/09/15 1:57pm
  Lifehacker?
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HiMyNameIsJayAgainSam Biddle
2/09/15 1:44pm
Coca-Cola's effort to clean up negativity on social media becomes the victim of a Gawker hate crime.

Oh, for fuck's sake, people.
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  Deadly the EternalHiMyNameIsJayAgain
  2/09/15 2:02pm
  Of course it is! Corporations are people, after all. Black people, apparently...
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  basementshowHiMyNameIsJayAgain
  2/09/15 2:06pm
  "The term 'hate crime' is really being thrown around with reckless abandon these days."
  
  Sincerely,
  
  Rape and Slavery
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Richard DeCredicoSam Biddle
2/09/15 1:52pm
Institutionalized minds will always side with an institution.

Thought that prank was actually one of the few redeeming things Gawker has done recently and was a fine form of Culture Jamming, which is what this site used to do a lot more of way back in the dark ages of the internet five to seven years ago ....
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  AssFault on the Highway to HellRichard DeCredico
  2/09/15 3:12pm
  Amen to that!
  
  And I still fail to see what their problem was, if Gawker was essentially playing right into the function of their entire plan, making it do exactly what it was meant to do! It's almost like Coke should be *thanking* Gawker for getting the point and taking it to a whole n'other level, but instead they went with the wave of acting all offended.
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  SecretAgentOrange5Richard DeCredico
  2/09/15 3:35pm
  I read the book on Culture Jamming. It's a fascinating liberal moral justification for all sorts of acts of criminality and generally shitting on everyone else's day. And they're carried out by chronically unfulfilled white kids who assume that since they didn't earn their privileged status, no one else can either. They assume that society is filled with sheep only because they themselves were raised as one.
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Myrna MinkoffSam Biddle
2/09/15 3:01pm
...a disconcerting group of actual flesh-and-blood humans felt bad for a corporation, in public. Real people poured the kind of empathy and anguish that's historically been reserved for other real people upon a multinational conglomerate worth billions ...

Not really. Most of us just thought it was a stupid, childish, pointless prank on Gawker's part. I doubt anyone experienced "anguish" over it or on Coke's behalf.

But it is the great tradition of Gawker Media to take criticism as proof of its own correctness, so this response doesn't surprise me at all.
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  twinsmommyMyrna Minkoff
  2/09/15 3:16pm
  it was a stupid, childish, pointless prank
  
  Indeed. I had to read the original article twice because I thought there would be some point where I'd be all "WOW COKE IS EVIL" but nope, just a stupid prank. Don't feel bad for Coke, just wondering why this was a thing. Literally nothing happened. Tweets.
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  chattygaltwinsmommy
  2/09/15 3:22pm
  It really was as stupid as your average YouTube prank and as lame as that dillweed who tells his 'followers' to send dumb shit to their parents or significant others and post the 'hilarious' replies.
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DennyCraneSam Biddle
2/09/15 1:46pm
One of my favorite parts of Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" comes from when he talks about McDonald's ad strategy:

A corporate memo introducing the campaign explained: "The essence McDonald's is embracing is 'Trusted Friend' ... 'Trusted Friend' captures all the goodwill and the unique emotional connection customers have with the McDonald's experience ... [Our goal is to make] customers believe McDonald's is their 'Trusted Friend. Note: this should be done without using the words 'Trusted Friend' ... Every commercial [should be] honest ... Every message will be in good taste and feel like it comes from a trusted friend.

Keep in mind that the book came out in 2001; neither Twitter nor Facebook even existed at the time.
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  burnerburneredburnerestDennyCrane
  2/09/15 2:21pm
  So…. I get it, McDonald's is really a frenemy who wants me to eat Filet O' Fish, or two, so I can stay obese.
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  Michael Zaiteburnerburneredburnerest
  2/09/15 2:26pm
  Oh they don't give a shit if you eat it, they just want you to buy it.
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AFSSam Biddle
2/09/15 1:47pm
Ahem, I beg to differ:

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  AFSAFS
  2/09/15 2:05pm
  If I don't get any new followers (@Maxread) from this I'll kill myself
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  IngridableAFS
  2/09/15 2:11pm
  I asked Max to be friend 2 seconds ago and he hasn't responded yet, so I'm already dead. I'm a ghost.
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addoucheSam Biddle
2/09/15 3:01pm
I work at a large ad agency. Here are actual things I've been told with the utmost gravity in the past few months by very important people in the ad industry: "Make brands matter." "Think about the brand you work on first thing when you wake up." "Make brands the center of your life." A coworker willingly stays until 4 am every night and brags that his child started crying when she told him he hadn't been home for dinner once in three months.

After the Nationwide and Coke fallouts, people here were so INCENSED and OUTRAGED because people in the advertising industry are conditioned to think of the Brand as a literal God. You're not attacking a brand, you're attacking the very reason I fucking breathe. You're attacking something I love more than my own shitty, non-famous child. If you point out how stupid and terrible my idea was for this ad campaign, then you're pointing out that my entire existence is worthless. Any attack on advertising causes panic and hatred, because deep down we all know how much of a worthless sham our careers are. We're millions of emperors in new clothes, always panicked today's the day our nakedness is revealed.

I idly said to my boss last week, "Did you hear about the Gawker/Coke Hitler thing?", intending to be all, "Isn't this hilarious?" Instead, she snarled, "It's fucking childish. Why doesn't Gawker focus on legitimate fucking journalism instead of trying to make the world worse?" This, from a coworker who frequently tells me how much she hates the industry and wants out. The only way to move up in this business is to truly believe that Brands are better than your children, and to know with absolute conviction that your idea for the next Tide detergent campaign can actually, truly, completely solve racism or whatever.

In short: I kind of hope this comment gets me fired.
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  Hamilton Nolanaddouche
  2/09/15 3:06pm
  Fingers crossed my man.
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  DMaheuaddouche
  2/09/15 3:45pm
  Do you work in marketing or advertising? Kill yourself, no really, kill yourself. -Bill Hicks
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lampost451Sam Biddle
2/09/15 1:48pm
I felt bad for Coke after Kampfghazi for about .2 seconds until I remembered they peddle corrosive sugar water that probably costs America (and the world) billions or trillions in related health care costs in various increases of morbidity, but simmers the boil low enough to not worry the frog that is being cooked alive.

They have Coke machines in schools. Fuck Coke.
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  SuperHappyFunTimelampost451
  2/09/15 1:59pm
  How dare you speak such truth about my favourite soda.
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  Tanzarianlampost451
  2/09/15 2:09pm
  Think about all the money they have spent trying to defeat soft drink taxes measures around the country, as well.
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HiMyNameIsJayAgainSam Biddle
2/09/15 1:37pm
When was the last time Coca-Cola did anything nice for you?

May 15th, 2002.
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  cosmicspeedHiMyNameIsJayAgain
  2/09/15 1:46pm
  September 15th, 2014
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  HiMyNameIsJayAgaincosmicspeed
  2/09/15 1:48pm
  True. Totally forgot about that. But Amazon has fucked that up by making it an Amazon Pantry-only item.
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Capt Figpuckr Crimea Rivr SongSam Biddle
2/09/15 3:12pm
tl;dr Individual corporations have as much wealth as 1st world nations and they have spent billions on psy-ops research to discover the most effective ways to manipulate consumers into buying things. Try to observe that most corporations don't call us humans or people or Americans, they call us consumers. Corporations cannot serve jail time, cannot run for office or enlist into the military, and, if they exist, they don't have souls because they aren't living beings, they are mental constructs that society has tacitly agreed to. Corporations do not deserve the same level of rights as a human being, period.

Full on rant mode if you so wish:

We do not make it easy for corporations to succeed into getting people to like brands on FB. Actually, corporations have spent literally literally (I read the other day, since dullards are making literally mean figuratively through their stupidity the best way to now say literally is literally literally.) billions researching customer psychology and how to manipulate people without them knowing. For instance, they know that placing one gallon jugs of milk on the bottom shelf will increase their sales as opposed to if they are placed anywhere else on the shelves. Another is the abomination that is Muzak, which is also scientifically designed to turn off your higher thinking skills to maximize our stupid lizard brains so the "That's mine and I'm getting it however I have to," demands to be satiated. They also know they can promote sales that really aren't sales because people don't have the time to track all the pricing trends of hundreds of thousand of items at Gall Mart so stores can and do up their prices, say 15%, and then offer 10% off the item when you buy it on "sale". I do agree caveat emptor is everybody's responsibility, but that's a Herculean task when you have corporations, with wealth and power that is in the same league as first world nations, spending money on tricking you into buying things, arranging things so you're more likely to buy things, and the corporations themselves offer either feel good word salad or outright disingenuous manipulation to fool people into thinking better of them.

Uber is a perfect example of this. Their PR, obfuscation, dog whistle blowing and chanting disruption creates the future have hidden how the whole corporation is a house of cards that will benefit nobody but the inner circle's inner circle or, if they do survive, they will have to do so by de facto enslavement of their drivers through legal techniques. If you've had some concerns or questions about Uber this article is a perfect primer of how insane people are to buy anything they are saying given their continual dissembling and distortions. There's also the whole plenty of other corporations could set up a similar system since the coordination is mostly automated via tech and some indeed have like sidecar and, doh, can't recall the other although it was literally in my head five seconds ago as I was mentally constructing this sentence.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/underst…

They've also done an equal amount of research and experimentation into how to arrange things in their stores so that you have to spend more time in their store such as putting eggs and milk on opposite sides so you have to pass a a dozen or two aisles and hundreds of products that might catch your eye and get you to impulse buy them to give the person the trains the brands associate with themselves. Need confidence? Buy the right anti-antiperspirant. Need a younger look buy this anti-aging Crḗmḝ du Rėstorætivę from Nővḁ Richḝ Facial Aspirations (tm) family of products, eating crap food everyday make your stomach feel bad? Buy some Tumz so you can don't have to alter your diet and make things easier on your body. Lighting, music, scents (they have systems to pump in pleasant scents like baking cookies or juicy steaks on the grill), color palettes, etc. are all employed to subconsciously prime shoppers to purchase certain items if they come across them as they are shopping. "Oh, Lemon Party's All Natural Lemon Bars with Raspberries, well they weren't on my list, buuuuut, I deserve them."

Yes, there are plenty of stupid shoppers. But even if you aren't and actually research the people you are buying from; ask butchers (If your grocery stores doesn't have a butcher do not buy meat from it.) where their animals are sourced from and how they are treated as sentient beings, how they are fed, and if they are over medicating them with antibiotics or growth hormones; and a massive lobby that is endlessly funded and trying to reverse any laws that help protect consumers but might reduce the corporations massive revenue streams and a small group of billionaires paying a bit more in taxes is apparently far more offensive to some cretins than actually protecting consumers from predatory and lying business, which those same cretins will declare as hand outs being taken from lazy moochers. Unlike those billionaires who took those government hand outs because they're corporations and if their boat is rising on a sea of profits it also lifts up all others. They took that extra money, that could've have been used to save lives, and then turn around like they are being abused by the President ('s words) when the truth is is that they have thin skins when it comes to criticism of having so much wealth and how they use it. Most billionaires don't want their wikipedia page to say they're vile, earth raping, worker killing, tax cheats who don't care about America or democracy but that's exactly what most are. One billion dollars could pay 20,000 government employees $50,000 a year and a few years ago the top twenty hedge fund managers had "earned" bonuses that came up to almost two billion dollars all for more some electronic money about so that while it is moving it snatches little bits of money on the way to its destination.

Damn, rant mode off. Feel free to castigate me for not proofing this a second time (I'm always proofing as I write.) to make sure things don't get to clunky and make sense.
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  TinyLemonsCapt Figpuckr Crimea Rivr Song
  2/09/15 3:40pm
  You deserve more stars for this fantastically epic rant! Bravo
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  MerleCapt Figpuckr Crimea Rivr Song
  2/09/15 5:32pm
  This is great! A tldr response to a thing that was tldr, as America goes to hell in a Handcart TM
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