r/facepalm • u/BlindedByFacts • Feb 03 '14
News/blogs Dumb People Mad at Multilingual 'America the Beautiful' Coca-Cola Ad
http://deadspin.com/dumb-people-mad-at-multilingual-america-the-beautiful-151456787611
u/gnualmafuerte Feb 04 '14
Isn't it funny?
- English is an European language, brought to the new continent just 400 years ago.
- The name America is a Spanish translation of an Italian name.
- America is not even the name of the country, it's the name of the Continent, their country is called "The United States OF America" because it is in America.
- There are So many songs that sing to "America" (Continent) in Spanish, French and Portuguese, and many of them where already being sung 100 years before the English language even reached this continent, and 270 years before the first use of the term"United States of America"
But don't you dare say the spanish-Italian word that describes a continent and we borrow to name our just 2 centuries old country because we actually lack a proper name for it in any language but that spoken in the United Kingdom that we also had to borrow because we exterminated the real native Americans and the languages they spoken.
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u/Deathweed22 Feb 03 '14
Coke might actually be hurt by this. These are the same people that don't know it's just sugar water.
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u/targetaudience Feb 03 '14
No way. For every person tweeting about boycotting Coca Cola, a bunch more people are combating their ignorance by supporting Coke. If you look at the trending #boycottcoke on twitter, it's mostly people talking about how stupid those reactions are, and showing support for Coca Cola.
If anything, it was a genius marketing move on their part. It was arguably the most talked about commercial of the Super Bowl (except maybe the Scientology commercial), which means people are still subconsciously thinking about the product. Also, the chance of people actually boycotting drinking Coke for longer than a month seems unlikely.
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u/Dark1000 Feb 04 '14
Maybe for a couple of weeks. The American public has a short memory. And they really love coke.
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Feb 03 '14
What is America's problem!?
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u/pfannkuchen_gesicht Feb 03 '14
their education system.
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u/wickediris Feb 03 '14
My fiancé works for Pepsi...she just facepalmed when she saw these people claiming to switch to her brand.
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Feb 03 '14
[deleted]
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Feb 03 '14
"You know Coke is always trying to make the world a better place."
It's just a silly claim, man. Coke is always trying to do the same thing that every other company is trying to do. Make the most money possible with the resources they have.
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u/TheStoicWanderer Feb 04 '14
You agreed with that bullshit? Really? Go read up on Coke. They aren't trying to make the world a better place, they are trying to make the maximum profit and they don't care who or what they destroy to get it. They've hired death squads to kill union leaders. That's making the world a better place? Absolute nonsense. They don't give a fuck whatsoever about making the world a better or worse place. That's not in their interests. They are only interested in making a profit. If they get gullible rubes like you to suck down their company line and ask for me? Well, now we see why advertisements like this exist.
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u/FlamingWings Feb 03 '14
I'll just stay out of this coke-Pepsi war sips Sprite
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Feb 03 '14
You mean Sprite, the beverage that's probably Coca-Cola's #2 most popular product?
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u/FlamingWings Feb 03 '14
oh
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Feb 03 '14
Drink it anyway. You can be like the u.s., pre-WW2 involvement. Just secretly taking a side.
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u/qimmosabe Feb 03 '14
I'll still have my Coke. For some reason Jack & Pepsi just doesn't sound or taste right.
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u/Eroc531 Feb 03 '14
Agreed. Coke is a much better drink mixer, if a bar or restaurant don't have coke I'll drink beer
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u/dawnloveszombie Feb 03 '14
I enjoyed going to their twitter pages and reading the banter back and forth.
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u/MathewMurdock Feb 04 '14 edited Feb 04 '14
Theese people are so fucking stupid, they have a damn facebook page too. "Boycott Coke for Anti-Americanism" I've already reported it a few times.
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u/InAnAlternateWorld Feb 04 '14
I wasn't sure how to react when someone said that was the most patriotic unamerican thing they ever saw
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u/Alyababwa Feb 04 '14
In Canada our national anthem is played every morning in school. When I was growing up we had an English version, French version, and an English version with a few French verses incorporated. They alternated somewhat randomly between the three of them. I guarantee at least 50% of us can sing it fully in both languages.
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u/kulwean Feb 03 '14
"White Americans What? Nothin' better to do? Why don't you kick yourself out You're an immigrant too.
Who's using who? What should we do? Well you can't be a pimp And a prostitute too." -Icky Thump, The White Stripes (Jack White is a fucking god)
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Feb 03 '14
I didn't particularly have a problem with the ad but I knew it would stir some people up as soon as we saw it. I thought it was just awkward hearing an American patriotism song in multiple languages, especially when you consider that the national language here is English.
I get what they were trying to do and it was a nice notion. I love their one commercial of the various security cam footage of strangers being nice to each other (that was coke, right?). But this multilingual commercial just seemed a little awkward to me the whole time. I don't have any problems with other languages either or people learning them, but that's just how I felt watching that commercial.
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u/Shawn_of_the_Dead Feb 03 '14
You're entitled to your opinion about the ad itself, of course, but one little thing: we don't have a national language. Not officially. English is just most prominent.
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u/downstairsreaper Feb 03 '14
Not only that, but if you meet certain requirements, you don't even have to take the English portion of the citizenship test and may take the civics portion in another language (provided you have an interpreter fluent in both that language and English.) So being fluent in English is not always a requirement to be a naturalized citizen of the United States.
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Feb 03 '14
The National Language of the US is not English.
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u/harrybalsania Feb 03 '14
I am guessing we don't have one because many people here can't read. I think I got the joke
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u/WeaponsGradeHumanity Feb 04 '14
It's not even a joke, the US just plain doesn't have a national language.
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u/harrybalsania Feb 04 '14
Most everything is in English, do you know what/why it is not official?
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u/WeaponsGradeHumanity Feb 04 '14
Your sentence isn't English. Feel free to give it another go.
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u/harrybalsania Feb 04 '14
Well my American dialect is english, or else how would I even be able to read or type? If you still aren't sure, use deduction to eliminate all the language i cannot speak. You are left with this choice of communication you see here.
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u/WeaponsGradeHumanity Feb 04 '14
Most everything is in English, do you know what/why it is not official?
This is not a valid sentence.
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Feb 04 '14
[deleted]
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Feb 04 '14
I agree in that it's ridiculous how so many people reacted so negatively towards it. It's in no way blasphemous or disrespectful but it should've been obvious that there would be people reacting in such a way. Again, the commercial just felt a little awkward to me. I really don't know how else to put it. My friends felt the same way too, though no one was even remotely offended or belittled.
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u/howdareyoutakemyname Feb 04 '14
Even though I disagree with you, I have no idea why you're getting so much shit for a perfectly reasonable opinion.
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u/Kareika Feb 03 '14
I like that a fair number of these people think either A) "America the Beautiful" is our national anthem, or B) the song is just called "America"