Dr Pepper vs the creationists

You might remember the quiet unassuming soda Dr. Pepper from its recent foray into potentially-parody toxic masculinity with its Dr Pepper Ten campaign. It appears the company has discovered that controversy is really good for its business, so its marketers came up with a new brilliant plan: make an ad that references evolution.

“What? But that’s not controversial at all! Tons of products have obliquely mentioned evolution in a mild and tangential sort of way!” you say. And you might be right, if the intended market wasn’t heavily populated by antiscience creationists on a hair trigger.

The ad in question:

Do you remember how many creationists lined up for hours to get a chicken sandwich at Chick-Fil-A, ostensibly in defense of “freedom of speech”? What do you want to bet that there’s a heavy overlap between those folks, defending a company’s religiously-motivated bigotry against gays, and the creationists now apparently boycotting this ad?

Granted, the news of this “boycott” comes entirely from the Facebook thread linked in the first paragraph, and has yet to manifest itself in an actual boycott that anyone notices. I’d wait until any such movement picks up any steam before we start calling evolution-denying anti-gay bigots hypocrites. For now, they’re mostly all just tired old tropes like “This Advertisement is wrong. If man would have evolved from a ape there would be no apes.”

(But only on that point. You’re still free to call out their hypocrisies in deciding that humans are specially created by an infallible being and somehow that infallible being created gays that way and totally hates them.)

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Dr Pepper vs the creationists
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30 thoughts on “Dr Pepper vs the creationists

  1. 9

    Don’t drink Dr. Pepper, even though Diet Dr. Pepper used to be my drink of choice. Quit after the he-man woman-haters ads. After Now, the kids in my family will tell anyone that will listen not to drink it. 6-year-old boy: “If you drink Dr. Pepper, you think boys are better than girls, and that’s not true.” 10-year-old girl: “I’m watching you. You’d better not be drinking Dr. Pepper.”

  2. 11

    Aaaargh! Not the evolutionary “progress” meme! Please no! Kill it dead! It has saturated our culture to the point where even my professors talk about “more evolved” organisms/taxa. *gnaws own leg off*

  3. 12

    Dr. Pepper isn’t my pop of choice, but I think it’s delicious. So screw all you haters! The Dr. is made of Win!

    (If you want nasty, I dare you to try Tahiti Treat. Jesus fuck that is one hideous drink.)

  4. 13

    silomowbray says:

    Dr. Pepper isn’t my pop of choice, but I think it’s delicious. So screw all you haters! The Dr. is made of Win!

    (If you want nasty, I dare you to try Tahiti Treat. Jesus fuck that is one hideous drink.)

    I love that you call it “pop”.
    I live in the southeast United States, and they call everything ‘Coke’ or ‘Pepsi’. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s so damned aggravating. If I want Coke, I say Coke. If I want a Mello Yello, that’s what I ask for. If I’m trying to talk about carbonated, flavored beverages, I say soda. It’s more inclusive. So is pop (isn’t that more a northern US thing?).

    I wonder what soda pop Jesus would consume…Mr. Pibb? Crush? Grapico?

  5. 15

    I love that you call it “pop”.
    I live in the southeast United States, and they call everything ‘Coke’ or ‘Pepsi’. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s so damned aggravating. If I want Coke, I say Coke. If I want a Mello Yello, that’s what I ask for. If I’m trying to talk about carbonated, flavored beverages, I say soda. It’s more inclusive. So is pop (isn’t that more a northern US thing?).

    I wonder what soda pop Jesus would consume…Mr. Pibb? Crush? Grapico?

    I always thought “pop” for “soft drinks” (how widespread is *that* term for “carbonated beverage without alcohol”, btw?) was mainly a Canadian thing, at least within North America; “soda” I’ve hard it from folks from some of the northern states, and always makes me think they’re talking about “club soda” or “soda water”… “Soda pop”? How delightfully quaint! 😉

    I do agree that the whole “call everything Coke or Pepsi” is ridiculous 😛

    I always thought Dr. Pepper was supposed to be a root beer, but apparently not. That may be why I too think it’s gross, though… I always expect a root beer flavour and am disappointed every time 🙁 (And “Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper”? WTH? Ewwwwww…)

    To answer your question: Jesus would drink Coke.

  6. 16

    The message of the ad would seem to be that Dr. Pepper cures kyphosis, so I’m not sure they shouldn’t be sued for false advertising :-p

    Not only is that graphic meme horribly overused, the intermediate stages would never have been viable: the real intermediates must actually have used two distinct gaits, one quadrupedal, the other bipedal and more or less fully upright.

  7. 17

    silomowbray #12

    (If you want nasty, I dare you to try Tahiti Treat. Jesus fuck that is one hideous drink.)

    There are other nasty sodas besides Dr. Pepper. I have had exactly one sip of Moxie and didn’t swallow it.

  8. 19

    Tony and ibbica might enjoy this:

    Pop vs. Soda Map of the U.S. (and a chunk of Canada).

    I’m a Western Canadian, and we call it “pop.” I, too, don’t get calling it “Coke.” I’d be very confused in the South.

    Our host and my fellow countryman Jason is, I believe, in Eastern Canada, so instead of “pop” he probably uses a French epithet.

    *flees*

  9. 21

    Years ago I was in Oklahoma. At a diner I ordered Coke and the waitress asked what kind of coke I wanted. After a minute or two of talking past each other, we determined that what I called soda she called coke. I ended up with Pepsi because they didn’t have Coke.

  10. 22

    I’ve had a similar conversation but with generic terms. “What kind of drink would you like?” “Cola.” “Is Pepsi okay?”

    I’m always very very sorely tempted to answer “Is Pepsi cola-flavored?” But I usually just say “yes, that’s fine.”

  11. 25

    According to your impostercide, I am not Erin despite using the name for decades. I had to do a password recovery to make sure no one registered my email while I wasn’t looking. Perhaps I should change my name to ErinTM.

    And for the record: I’ve always referred to sugary carbonated beverages as pop and I’m also from Eastern Canada (but Jason already knew that).

  12. 29

    Funny thing: Way back before the turn of the century, in the halcyon days of Usenet, one of the regulars on the talk.origins newsgroup use the handle “Dr Pepper”. His trademark was that he ended every post with the statement, “Now please state the theory of creationism”.

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