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Kaito's Word of the Day: Gum
How it feels to chew 5 gum...
All I could think of when I saw spearmint 5gum wrappers
you don’t suppose pepsico decided to start distancing itself from gamer culture because of well, to put it lightly the last few years of major gamer streamer misconduct? By which I mean the pedophilia and nazi shit that made it to mainstream news.
Gamers have never had an upstanding reputation. IDK what's going on in the world of streaming, but back in the 2000s "gamer" called to mind 12 year olds virtually shooting eachother while shouting out every expletive known to man. So I don't think streamers are the reason.
That's the short answer, but people seem to like hearing my thoughts on consumer aesthetics on here, so I'll rant a bit more on the subject.
Regardless of how ethical gamers were viewed as in the 2000s-2010s, products like axe, 5 gum, and mountain dew exploded when targeting them as a demographic. It served as kind of a dark, edgy inversion of the sterile white apple aesthetic that dominated the mainstream, and we got some genuinely cool branding out of it.
Up until recently this had naturally evolved into a sort of loud, maximalism, trading its subdued, serious edge for something more colorful and ironic. It's practically a parody of edge, but it's so fun and zany it's hard to dislike this direction.
I really thought that THIS style would embody the 2020s, that this paired with things like Fortnite and blindbox toys would kind of characterize the era for its distracting, vapid, disposable, post-postmodern irony. This has all felt like a logical reaction to the sterility of 2010s design.
However, now it seems we're taking an abrupt U turn into a sort of conservative, retro 70s throwback era of design. It seems like corporations are trying to appeal more to boomers and hipsters in an attempt to broaden their appeal. These rebrands strike me as decisions made out of fear, corporations retreating into their shells.
I don't know if this is WORSE than the sterile minimalism of the 2010s but I DEFINITELY hate it.
So, this devolution is likely not due to controversies with gamers specifically, but more like an attempt to reject modernity and revert back to what's "safe" during uncertain times. I think corporations now are generally trying to seem more "evergreen" and "timeless" within an increasingly unstable corporate landscape and hypercritical social culture. This comes at the sacrifice of their edge and ambition to evolve.
Remember those old 5 Gum commercials? Yeah, same. So… now this cursed thing exists.~
The 2007 5 Gum ads were so cool, all memes aside. The CGI was epic and still give a unique vibe, even today.
Watches finale of TADC: “What a finale! Didn’t go how I thought it would, but I like the message it sends… I wonder what the internet thinks?”
The ever dissatisfied internet embodying what the episode said not to do: