The Awesome Coffee Club

Because I wrote a chapter of The Anthropocene Reviewed about the history of Diet Dr Pepper, the Dr Pepper Snapple Company reached out to me one day to inquire a brand relationship.

I am not one to turn my nose up at Big Soda money, so I agreed to meet with them. Two nice people showed up on zoom and they said what kind of relationship with Dr Pepper would interest you, and I said:

"I would like for Dr Pepper to be the official sponsor of humanity's relationship with the moon." My idea was that Dr Pepper and I would share stories from history about how humanity has understood and imagined the moon, and then at the end there would be a little tag line that was like, "Dr Pepper: Sponsoring Humanity's Relationship with the Moon Since 2023."

I still think this is a great idea. Who needs an Official Soda more than humanity's relationship with the moon???

Then they asked me if I would, like, make tiktoks about how much I liked Diet Dr Pepper, and I said of course not that would be extremely boring.

Anyway, they never got back to me.

In the same year that I wrote a book featuring an entire essay about the many-splendors of Diet Dr Pepper?

You’re welcome, Dr Pepper!

(About a year ago, marketing people at Dr Pepper requested a meeting with me because they were like, “We love your book so much, and we’re such big fans of you and we’d love to get your ideas,” and so I took the meeting, which I shouldn’t have but I really do love Dr Pepper.

And they were like, “What are your ideas?”

And I said, “First off, Dr Pepper should sponsor humanity’s relationship with the moon. Not the moon itself, but humanity’s understanding of it. And there should be podcast ads that are like, ‘The moon cannot create light but still finds ways to reflect it, which is a beautiful thought. Dr Pepper: Official sponsor of humanity’s relationship with the moon.’”

And they were like, “Uh, next?”

And I was like, “Also, Dr Pepper should acknowledge and celebrate its radical artificiality--the fact that it doesn’t attempt to taste like a real-world flavor as citrus sodas or colas do, but instead is a chemist’s attempt to create something explicitly and gloriously artificial.”

And they were like, “Uh, aren’t you going to ask us about becoming a paid spokesperson for Diet Dr Pepper?”

And I pretended to be interested but of course I was not, because who wants to shill for sugar water? Especially when I’m already happily employed as an unpaid beverage spokesperson.)