Drink Brand Poppi Is Getting Canceled for the Heinous Act of Sending Vending Machines to Influencers

I've been around the internet block a time or two at this point and I've seen people try to "cancel" individuals and brands for all sorts of nonsensical stuff. But I must say this might be the dumbest one yet.

Poppi, a growing soda brand primarily for Kamala voters, sent 25 vending machines to different social media influencers. Those influencers then posted videos using the machines and in a sane world, that would have been that. The best-case scenario is maybe that makes some more people go buy Poppi and worst-case is you paid for an ad campaign that didn't work. Instead, this seemingly innocuous stunt has thousands of people litigating whether it is acceptable for Poppi to spend its own marketing budget how it chooses and complaining that the campaign is "out of touch" with consumers.

I genuinely don't understand why this seems to be a bridge too far for the people that are upset. Are they boycotting every single company that spent $8 million on a Super Bowl commercial? Is that somehow less out of touch than spending 10 percent of that to send some vending machines to people with a following on the internet? Not to mention the fact that this campaign has now produced probably almost as many views and more conversation than any Super Bowl commercial this year. If anything, Poppi was being economical.

And did that woman in the second video advocate for sending these to random people's doorsteps instead of the influencers Poppi selected? I'm sure nobody would have been upset to come home from a long day at work to find a fucking vending machine sitting at their front door. I can't believe some of these people are serious.

Finally, I would argue that if you have time to be worrying about a company sending strangers vending machines for a few days, you're about as out of touch as anyone, but maybe that's just me.

I just can't fathom what is controversial about this. Those same influencers have been hawking dozens of products they've been sent for free and I'm sure many of the people freaking out about this were eating it up. But throw some soda cans in a vending machine and suddenly we're having a debate about late stage capitalism.

Go outside.