In a controversial Pepsi commercial released a few years ago, a sort of march is shown forming while Kendall Jenner is getting ready for what most likely is a modeling shoot. The commercial shows a very diverse group of people that are all joining the march and Jenner is seen being beckoned and finally takes off her wig and joins them, grabbing a Pepsi. She walks with the group of people and finally walks up to the officers that are blocking the marches and hands the Pepsi to one of them. This became a very controversial commercial, and one for which Jenner eventually apologized for, because no one could really figure out the point of the commercial. Many thought that Pepsi was trying to imply that by drinking Pepsi together, major conflicts that cause marches and protests could be solved, which when you think about it, isn’t logical. Although the full commercial was taken down for TV immediately, it can still be found on youtube accompanied by a very interesting comments section.

When I decided to do a controversial commercial, I figured that the comments may turn very nasty especially against each other, but in many cases, the comments remained pretty rational. For example, one person commented that they didn’t understand what was so bad about the advertisement which is kind of a reasonable question in this circumstance. I think that the person probably knew that the commercial wasn’t Pepsi’s best, but it’s definitely difficult to identify all of the things at play in the commercial that make it so controversial. People responded to this comment with “if someone tried to do this in America, they’d probably get shot.” Which is yes, far-fetched, but not completely out of the question considering all of the police brutality issues that had recently been on the rise. So as you can see, people are raising important questions and responses, but the comments do not reach a very radical point at least in the first section. Looking at this comments thread from Gastil’s point of view, I think that it could be considered deliberation to an extent. The only issue is that when people see something controversial, an opinion is usually formed quickly and people don’t like to listen to opposing viewpoints especially when it’s controversial, but this comments thread is still a pretty good example.

Staying on this same comment that someone posted asking what was so bad about the commercial,  once people started responding, the person didn’t comment back which people will usually do if they disagree. Also, the person posted the question to a public forum, showing they were open to hearing other opinions and considerations which is one of the criteria of deliberation: being open to other thoughts.

One of the biggest aspects of the commercial that people pointed out was that Kendall took off her wig and handed it to an African-American person. In the thread someone comments that as an African-American, they saw no harm done and pointed out that a lot of people working as a hairstylist in the entertainment industry are black. This fosters understanding in the discussion especially because it’s coming from a black person. While there were a lot of black people that were upset by this commercial, posting this comment showed a different perspective from the same side leading others to a better understanding that handing her wig to that person maybe shouldn’t be considered controversial.

As I said before, not many of the comments became too radical. Sure there was name-calling but nothing became too out of hand. Many of the comments were people just explaining their opinion in a very rational and logical way. Because there was limited shaming/verbal abuse/illogical name-calling this shows some degree of respect for others when commenting which is another key factor in organizing deliberation.

 

For my first idea, I wanted to explore the very broad topic of climate change which would fit into the environment category. I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer but I never knew what kind of law I wanted to pursue until around my senior year of high school. I took an AP Environmental class and I loved it and thought that environmental law would be great for me but I’ve changed my mind since then. Although this is not the type of law I’d want to practice in the future, I do have a very big interest in large-scale environmental problems like climate change and I’d love to explore other things such as the huge overfishing problem, the effects of poverty with climate change, and renewable energy sources. Within these subtopics, I’d love to get a little more specific in my posts, exploring overfishing specifically on the northern east coast of the US, looking into the effects that poverty in India has on their climate (especially in their cities), and specifically tidal power when it comes to alternative energy sources. Within climate change, I don’t have that strong of an opinion other than I agree that it’s certainly happening. I think this is a great position for me to be in because there are a lot of people mad at the world about climate change which would significantly bias any posts they wrote but this is not the case for me fortunately. Overall, there’s a whole lot going on with the environment and especially with climate change which would give me a lot of content to talk about in my posts.

For my alternative idea, I was thinking about doing a blog based on what’s happening with affirmative action under the race category. Last semester I did my English final project on affirmative action and I really enjoyed researching each “scandal” going on at different schools across the country. Similar to the environment, I don’t have a particularly strong opinion when it comes to affirmative action. I think that diversity is great, especially in learning environments, but sometimes forcing diversity has its consequences. One interesting point I came across when researching this topic was the consequences of affirmative action where kids who were admitted based on affirmative action policies were actually failing out of their colleges because they had not been admitted based on their academic merits but rather solely on their race so they were ill-prepared when it came to handling heavy course-work. I’m not sure how true this information is but I’d love to explore this more because if this isn’t actually the case, affirmative action could potentially be doing a lot more good than bad. I’d also like to explore more cases of affirmative action issues at specific schools that were not necessarily on the news. University of Texas and Harvard receive lots of attention when it comes to this topic but lots of smaller, lesser-known schools also have issues with these policies. Within this topic I wouldn’t be attempting to prove whether affirmative action is good or bad but rather I’d simply be exploring the facts and opinions surrounding specific school and student cases.