it\’s hp 2 be sqr

so today i made my way to the soda machine for my afternoon soda treat, as i am wont to do. i like to mix it up a little bit from time to time to keep some excitement in my life; fizzy water some days, diet dr. pepper other days. on days that seem to crawl, like today, i punch myself up a can of diet mountain dew. (or, as a co-worker once called it, \”nectar of the tards.\”)

i fetch my change and my can of caffeinated goodness and notice that the label on the can has changed. from this:

to this:

(it\’s apparently so new that i couldn\’t find an image of the diet brand online, even on the mountain dew corporate site.)

um… rlly? i couldn\’t figure out if it\’s because the kids these days are abbreviating words to be cool or if pepsi is doing its own form of cost containment by knocking the cost of five letters per can out of its branding budget. after some hard-core, grad-school level research, it looks like it may be more of the former. quoth pepsi chief marketing officer [SIC, with the concept at least] dave burwick:

If we don’t change quickly, we run the risk of being a footnote to history

huh. while i must admit that i like the retro look of the new pepsi and diet pepsi brands, i\’m not sure about the new dew. as a fan of language, i don\’t necessarily think we should be encouraging this whole, um, \”culture of abbreviation.\” i like prince, but i don\’t think we should be communicating in the same manner of many of his song titles. however, this may just be another example of me getting old while pop culture begins to pass me by. i wld <3 2 know what u r thinking.