A Matter of Life or Death

     In the late 1970's people were divided in consumer choices between Pepsi and Coke, so much so that the better of the two led to many heated debates over the years. Pepsi decided settle their product over Cokes in an ingenious way, a taste test. Now this may seem normal to you but it was the climax which really evened the competition between both of these brands. Like other companies they set up a blind taste test in random street corners. Like other competitions they poured each drink into an unmarked cup. And like other participants the members were asked to see which they liked better. But, you see, though all of it is completely within the rules, the competition, because of the nature of these two brands, was rigged.
     The important thing about the competition is the quantity it was measured in, one sip. If you drink a can of Pepsi you'll find that it tastes sweet, the sugar is very apparent in it. Think of it as a "short term" drink. Coke on the other hand is at first sip a bit dry "bite" that gradually sets in that you slowly end up liking more and more. Because of this one test Pepsi was voted better over 50% of the time skyrocketing their sales while Coke was scrambling to turn a profit and created a new version of coke which was critically abused which led to them rebranding the original as Coke classic which is the Coke that we know and love today.
     The problem with this is that without giving the full facts the situation isn't correctly assessed. Yes their is only 200 people protesting for transgender rights in front of the White House but that doesn't include the people in all the malls and streets helping out too. Yes there are 100,000 members of Isis but that is just out of the 350 million Arabs in the world. Assault does occur in every 5 out of 1000 people but that doesn't pay the fact that it is declining from past years. The point is without proper context whatever facts you are giving by an organization are only to help them push their agenda.
     Something other countries absolutely love mentioning about America is that they are the land where you can sue if you get hot coffee spilled on you in McDonald's and get millions. Well the real fact is that the McDonald's was very frivolous as they were repeatedly warned that their coffee was dangerously hot yet they ignored all the food companies in order to create more profit. The plaintiff was hurt badly almost to the point of third degree burns when she parked her car and simply tried to open the coffee to add cream. It started out as her only requesting 20,000 but it was raised to over half a million. Mind you, not because anyone believed that the woman deserved that compensation but to deplete their resources for the horror they had created. So it was not to help out the plaintiff but the punish the defendant.
     Words can be twisted, statistics can be tampered, actions can be misinterpreted. They have been and are meant to and will until the media decides to fall off the path they are on now. But in such a disarrayed world it is up to the consumer to make the decision of what to believe, because sometimes, and quite literally it can be a matter of life or death.