After widespread backlash, Pepsi has decided to pull its new ad featuring Kendall Jenner.
Pepsi is pulling their latest controversial ad featuring Kendall Jenner, reports Wall Street Journal pic.twitter.com/dUqojMfccO
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) April 5, 2017
Some people complained the generic protest ad trivialized the Black Lives Matter movement, and the civil rights movement in general, by having Jenner — a white woman — pacify the police facing the demonstrators by handing a cop a can of Pepsi at the end of the ad.
This morning I wrote about how terrible the ad was, which spurred a lot of backlash because I wasn’t mad at the right aspect of it, according to angry people on the Internet. I argued that this ad encapsulates everything that’s wrong with millennials because we clearly have Selma envy but can’t find anything to protest legitimately, and Pepsi is trying to tap into that via their ad.
This was apparently THE WRONG THING TO THINK and I was accused of being a racist for cropping a screen grab of the video too closely in my writeup. For real!
But enough about me. Let’s spend a few minutes walking through the freakout surrounding this ad.
- Millennials engage in protests on campuses across the country, demanding that students of color get separate buildings or getting worked up over cultural appropriation in the cafeteria.
- Pepsi sees this trend, and decides to make an ad of a vaguely purposed protest featuring Kendall Jenner to target individuals in this age group, because what other age group has the disposable income plus brain shortage to inject a corn syrup drip into their bodies.
- People completely lose their minds because Pepsi’s attempt to be woke and represent their values is JUST NOT WOKE ENOUGH.
- Pepsi yanks the ad, humbly apologizes to target audience for hoping to redirect their insatiability into something less harmful than rioting.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
