Astral Codex Ten

Coca-Cola

7 min read

Coca-Cola

Article

Coca-Cola is a recurring brand in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between February 24, 2021 and March 19, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “These are people who drink Coca-Cola (and feel good about themselves for doing so)”; “like how Coca-Cola used to have cocaine in it”; “drink Coca-Cola, The Drink For Individual Unique People”. It most often appears alongside America, California, United States.

Metadata

  • Category: Brands
  • Mention count: 6
  • Issue count: 6
  • First seen: February 24, 2021
  • Last seen: March 19, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: Fussell On Class
February 24, 2021 · Original source
Proles do wage labor. High proles are skilled craftspeople like plumbers. Medium and low proles are more typical factory workers. They have a certain kind of freedom, in that they don't have status anxiety and do what they want. But they're also kind of sheep. They really like mass culture - the more branded, the better. These are people who drink Coca-Cola (and feel good about themselves for doing so), visit Disneyland (and accept its mystique at face value), and go on Royal Caribbean cruises. When they hear an ad say a product is good, they think of it as a strong point in favor of buying the product. They feel completely comfortable expressing their opinions, but their opinions tend to be things like "Jesus is Lord!", "USA is number one!", "McDonalds is so great!", and "Go $LOCAL_SPORTS_TEAM!". They are weirdly obsessed with cowboys (Fussell says cowboys represent the idea that poorer people are freer and more authentic than rich office-worker types, plus the West is the prole capital of the USA) and with unicorns (Fussell: "I've spent six months trying to find out exactly why, and I'm finally stumped"). When they have unique quirks, they tend to be things like "collecting lots of Disney memorabilia" or "going powerboating slightly more often than the other proles do". There's also a sort of desperate prole desire to be noticed and individuated, which takes the form of lots of "Personalized X" or "Y with your name on it", and also with making a lot of noise (see: powerboating). Fussell describes the most perfectly prole piece of decor as "a blue flameproof hearthrug with your family name in Gothic letters beneath seven spaced gold stars and above a golden eagle in Federal style".
Open Thread 176
June 13, 2021 · Original source
4: Comments of the week were on Drug Users Use A Lot Of Drugs, where many people pointed out that cocaine works this way too. Coca tea is an over-the-counter stimulant in Peru, which Zach describes as "so smooth, so much less 'buzzy' than with caffeine, that it seems criminal it's not legal in the US", and Harry Deuchar calculates that the average coca tea drinker in Peru might get about 4 mg of cocaine, whereas the average addict gets about 900 mg a day. This helps put a lot of things in perspective for me, like how Coca-Cola used to have cocaine in it - probably this was completely reasonable and a fine choice! (this last sentence is so not medical advice)
Inline links: Zach describes, Harry Deuchar
Book Review: Sadly, Porn
February 16, 2022 · Original source
This is in Hungarian because there was some brouhaha in Hungary that got it to the top of the search engines, and I’m lazy. In one kind of surreal passage, Teach discusses the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams. Dreams contain content that the mind wants to repress, but then - why dream it? Why go to a psychoanalyst specializing in dream interpretation? When the CIA wants to keep something classified, they don’t cloak it in a riddle and email it to the KGB’s Riddle Decoding Division.
As for you, you’re probably even more contemptible than these Athenians. Teach thinks the modern psyche is downstream of decisions by advertising agencies. At some point their usual trick of selling products through implied peer pressure and hot women stopped paying as many dividends. The companies did some kind of judo move where they told us “well, darn, you’re just too individual and unique a person to fall for a mass advertising campaign - and incidentally the surest way to make everyone understand that is to drink Coca-Cola, The Drink For Individual Unique People”. And everyone lapped it up. This isn’t even subtle, the highest market value company in the world uses the motto “Think Different”. Or Burger King: “Have It Your Way”. Literal actual Coke printed the 150 most popular names onto their bottles in the hopes you would see your name and think you had a special relationship with them.
Inline links: the modern psyche
Teach seems to think something like this can also happen en masse, eg how wokeness originated as a call to destroy the system and ended up as a Coke marketing gimmick.
Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America
June 07, 2023 · Original source
On one side is the good America that Wang admires. This is the America that grew from a bunch of tiny colonies under attack by Indians and Redcoats into a technological and economic superpower. It won World War II and the Cold War, and outlasted Maoism in China. It built the Panama Canal, the interstate highways, and the Space Shuttle, but also globally respected corporations like Microsoft and Coca-Cola. Its people are effortlessly patriotic, self-assured, and committed to their Constitution and ideals. Its government runs on meritocracy and everyone respects talent regardless of its social class.
Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke"
May 07, 2024 · Original source
Take a thing that you don’t want people to be allowed to talk about. For example, maybe Coca-Cola doesn’t want people to talk about how soda makes you fat.
Find some schizos saying a much stronger, extremely offensive thing. For example, “the Jews are adding obesity-promoting chemicals to Coca-Cola in order to destroy the white race”.
Now nobody can talk about how Coca-Cola makes you fat, because people will say “That’s the discredited racist Great Enfattening conspiracy theory, shame on you for platforming that kind of stuff.”
Being John Rawls
March 19, 2026 · Original source
“I’ll have, uh, the fried chicken, and a Coca-Cola,” he said. The waitress beamed at him. “Great choice. And your guest says he’ll be just a little late.” “My guest?” asked John Rawls Alcoholic. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” said the waitress, and went back into the kitchen.
The waitress brought him his fried chicken and a Coke. “Anything for you, sweetie?” she asked John Rawls Brahma. “Coke for me too,” he said, and she retreated back to the kitchen.
John Rawls Alcoholic took another sip of his Coke. “I always thought morality was pointless,” he said, “just another trick the rich play on everyone else. If it can actually make me better off, maybe there’s a reason to do it. And if there’s a reason to do it, I can go back to the Rawls Foundation and pass their screening test and live like a king!”