> By the end of all the carnage, five people die and dozens more are wounded. All because of a marketing promotion went wrong. Not to rag on the article becaus

> By the end of all the carnage, five people die and dozens more are wounded. All because of a marketing promotion went wrong. Not to rag on the article because the author talks about other factors at the top, but this is a fascinating story that can't really be summed up by a technical goof-em-up, though that's obviously an important part. On the one hand, especially from my western perspective, you have the utter frivolousness of soft drinks and the seeming triviality of the technical error. On the other hand, the subsistence wages of the people rioting and the meaning of a $40,000 promise really stabs at the soul. This was a grotesque fuckup. I truly cannot imagine how it would feel to finally face the prospect of escaping the unfair, crushing cycle of poverty and all its attendant ailments, fears, and anxieties only to have some fucking soda company say "whoopsie here's $18". I'd have burned a truck, too. Or worse, frankly, who knows! I've never lived their life. But it's more than just a goof-up, the offer itself seems depraved to me. Pepsi appeared to have leveraged their own poverty to get them to spend money. Yes, yes, I know, many companies do giveaways here in the states, it's a difference of degree and context. Pepsi's opening move was to exploit a profound and powerful human desire to care for your family in the midst of uncertainty. That in the end it went wrong, due to a technical error or a communication error, seems like a natural consequence, like blowing your hand off while playing with fireworks. You shouldn't have played with them to begin with. Re the riots themselves, I think we in the states have lost a concept of collective human behavior unless it's wrapped in technocratic psychobabble. An organization made a promise that could have changed people's lives, they fucked it up, tried to hide behind a technical error, people were justifiably angry, and people do all kinds of things with justifiable anger.