When beverage brands adopt a business strategy of constantly launching new products to maintain long-term vitality, who gets the most excited? You might think it's the health-conscious sweet drink lovers, the frantic retailers restocking shelves, or the executives watching sales figures rise... But I'd argue that's not nearly enough.
Currently, there is a group of people who look forward to beverage companies launching new products even more than others: netizens who photoshop abstract figures' heads onto beverage bottles.
Because there aren't many beverages left for the internet.
The image above is from a few years ago. Although not long ago, it feels increasingly distant. It's definitely incomplete, not just because I blurred out some sensitive figures, but also because so many more characters have been assigned beverage identities in the intervening years.
Take a recent example: an "Auntie Goose Leg" vendor was exposed for selling duck legs disguised as goose legs to students at a prestigious university. Before this, however, she had won over many students with her perceived simplicity, kindness, and diligence. She was frequently featured in media reports, enjoying immense popularity.
As the incident was exposed and the backlash hit, she successfully received the beverage title bestowed by netizens,直观ly showcasing her work experience of using vegetable juice to create green, healthy "goose legs."
Looking further back, there's Zhang Xuefeng, the famous college application consultant known across various circles. Since he has passed away and can no longer voice his opinions, and given that many of his past online statements have come back to haunt him, netizens have increasingly mocked him with comments like "social Darwinist" and "every word pulled me into civil engineering," which provide ample entertainment value.
This ultimately earned him the dual martial souls of Sprite and Choco Pie, along with two exclusive songs, "Ode to Master Zhang" and "Remembrance of Master Zhang," for accelerated mourning. On the track of strictly remembering the deceased, he rivals the original pioneer, Kobe.
It's clear that these two abstract figures, posthumously enshrined as beverages, share a common trajectory: first, they are hyped to god-like status, silencing dissenting voices; then, a major incident occurs—either a scandal or, in some cases, a literal collapse—turning the dynamic into a tug-of-war between supporters and skeptics. Finally, amidst various exposures, undeniable evidence, and plot twists, a complete backlash ensues, spawning countless jokes and memes.
In fact, we have seen this trend countless times before. The most iconic event, and the origin of all beverage memes, traces back to Lao Da (Kobe).
In 2020, Kobe Bryant died in a tragic accident. Countless fans mourned and commemorated him in various ways. However, extremes breed reversal. Some fans' fervent tributes elevated Kobe too high, allowing quieter negative stories to spread further, notably the "Eagle County incident" and "elbowing." Coupled with the widespread popularity of "hell jokes" and the rediscovery of memes from "Lolo's Adventure," public opinion shifted from blind deification to a mixed reputation, eventually losing all seriousness and becoming a popular internet meme for entertainment.
Once seriousness is lost, random associations can flourish. When netizens noticed that Kobe Bryant's jersey colors were remarkably similar to those of Ice Tea, a wave of photoshopped images combining "Lao Da" (Kobe) and Ice Tea emerged. Since then, memeing abstract figures has inevitably involved photoshopping them onto beverages—making beverages the most viral medium for abstract memes.
Of course, at this stage, most beverage figures still possess the trait of using public figures' negative news to dissolve their authority and seriousness, thereby allowing everyone to join this deconstruction carnival without psychological burden and with confidence.
But turning to the present, you'll find that an era of stat inflation has arrived. Originally, only public figures with negative news or abstract, funny behaviors could be posthumously titled as beverages. Over time, even those who aren't particularly abstract can become beverages—this scope has expanded to include any public figure. It doesn't matter what you did before; as long as the colors match, anyone can be chosen.
If a reason must be found, it isn't "deification and destruction," but rather whether it's funny. Those clad in beverage armor may not represent the most skilled or the worst gameplay, but they certainly generate the most chat spam.
For example, Claude, the co-founder of Ubisoft, who unfortunately died in a plane crash a few days ago. His cause of death makes it hard not to interpret it as a tribute to Lao Da. Since many people have played Ubisoft games, some have made hell jokes like "no haystack on the ground during the Leap of Faith," "glitched into the ground," or "body turned into countless question marks on the map."
Thus, netizens looking for fun in the comments section wanted to posthumously assign him the title of Sprite—because both Ubisoft and Sprite share the character "Bi" (碧) in Chinese. Unfortunately, Sprite had already been claimed by someone else. Even assigning him the less mainstream Alien Electrolyte Water proved difficult, as netizens had already found a real-life counterpart for that beverage, making the ID unregistrable.
As the saying goes, all low-hanging fruit has already been picked by predecessors. The most well-known beverage types have been occupied by many famous abstract figures. To gain a foothold, one must pursue further specialization in flavors: if it's mixed vegetables and fruits, it goes to the Auntie Goose Leg vendor who sold duck legs; if it's mixed fruits, it goes to the music star Oliver Tree, who died in a plane crash—although only the colors are similar, his death by crash makes it reasonable for him to don beverage armor.
Originally, any controversial public figure could be photoshopped onto any beverage bottle, as long as it was funny. Now, it's any public figure—as long as it's funny. The familiar path of deification, reversal, destruction, and memeing no longer needs to follow a strict order. Or rather, the intermediate processes are just a historical construct; just photoshop the person onto a beverage first. Eventually, black marks will be dug up, fitting them into this process and providing a rationale for lowering the bottom line (Note: "Mi Xian" sounds like "bottom line" and originates from a certain hell joke).
Of course, I have no intention of discussing why the bottom line is so low. In this development process, the bottom line has become irrelevant. Here, beverages have become pure symbols of mockery. Their original aggressiveness has been quietly diluted. Perhaps those memeing have no bottom line, or perhaps the context of memeing allows for a temporary suspension of the bottom line... But regardless, the mark of growing from an infant to an adult is not stopping defecation, but knowing where to defecate. Completely banning these hell jokes is impossible.
Therefore, a more worthwhile point of discussion might be "why everyone specifically uses beverages for antics." I believe the key point is that beverages are widely recognized as mass consumer goods.
In China, there's a well-known communication concept called "Super Symbol." Its essence is somewhat rogue: find a suitable carrier that has already left a deep impression on people's minds, and then aggressively parasitize it. For example, Mixue Bingcheng's promotional song, "You love me, I love you, Mixue Bingcheng is sweet," uses the familiar tune of "Oh, Susanna." After being rewritten, rearranged, and spread virally, it causes meme pollution, making you think of Mixue Bingcheng's lyrics even when listening to the original "Oh, Susanna."
Looking back at Ice Tea, the situation is similar. After you've finished memeing "Kobe = Ice Tea" online and used countless Lao Da emojis, seeing Ice Tea offline makes it hard not to think of Kobe. In fact, after memeing Kobe so much, you start associating anything with purple and gold colors with him. That's true love.
Extending from Ice Tea to beverages in general, equating abstract figures with beverages has evolved from deconstructing specific public figures into a standalone, consumption-driven internet meme. This has allowed beverage armor to gradually detach from the path of deification and destruction—as long as there's a connection, it's fun to play with on its own.
Image source: Internet, actually AI-generated
More importantly, as long as beverages remain in production, these public figures will continue to parasitize them; as long as hell jokes remain entertaining, the act of photoshopping public figures onto beverages will continue to spread on the internet.
Years later, when archaeologists see the 21st-century internet filled with public figures clad in beverage armor, what will they think?
Perhaps they will feel that the 21st century is an era of rampant hell jokes and thorough deconstruction, lacking any bottom line, just as criticized online; or perhaps they will believe these beverages truly commemorate legends, just as we now believe eating zongzi commemorates Qu Yuan.
But regardless of which interpretation holds, these people clad in beverage armor have successfully achieved cyber immortality.
