This week the stock market crashed, the US government shut down for the second time in three weeks, and Trump continued his valiant efforts to slash Medicaid and purge America of its poor. But by far most important story of the week was Lady Doritos: a tragicomedy in four parts.

Part one: Indra Nooyi the CEO of PepsiCo, Doritos parent company, did an interview with Freakonomics in which she mentioned that the company would be launching a range of female-centric snacks which were cleaner and quieter than traditional Doritos. The rationale for this being research which showed women don’t like to crunch loudly in public or “lick their fingers generously.”



Part two: The internet discovered this interview and had a collective conniption fit.

Part three: Having spent 24 hours locked in a boardroom staring at Twitter and sobbing, Doritos executives sent out a carefully-worded tweet basically denying all knowledge of Lady Doritos.

Part four: Doritos executives suddenly realize that everyone is talking about their brand and what they thought was a disaster is actually a marketing coup. They go from pretending they had no idea about Lady Doritos to explaining that they were the ones responsible for this genius guerilla PR idea and the whole debacle was actually a highly strategic exercise in outrage economics.



Admittedly, part four is purely my own speculation but the data would seem to bear it out. I asked YouGov to (quietly) crunch some numbers and look at people’s attitudes to Doritos – YouGov has an online community of four million people who they poll daily about their attitude to different brands.



Unsurprisingly, women are talking about Doritos a lot more than they used to; on the 7 February 27% of women polled were talking about Doritos while the previous week only 18% of women were. Meanwhile both women and men seem to have a favorable impression of Doritos. I guess all publicity is good publicity!

While Doritos consumed an inordinately large chunk of this week’s online indignation, the internet still found time to get upset about other things. I’ve helpfully summed these up for you so you can make sure you’re not squandering any opportunities for outrage this weekend.

Red-lipped sirens are ruining our workplaces

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jordan Peterson Photograph: Rene Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images

I always thought lipstick was innocuous but, in an interview with Vice this week, Jordan Peterson explained that, actually, lipstick is a tool of the devil and wearing it basically forces men to sexually harass you.



“Why do you make your lips red?” Peterson asked the Vice interviewer rhetorically. “Because they turn red during sexual arousal.” He went on to state that he is not sure that men and women should ever share a workplace but if we do continue to have mixed-sex offices we ought to ban make-up.

Lest you dismiss Peterson as a nut-job with limited influence I should probably explain that he’s a psychology professor and bestselling author. Indeed, Camille Paglia called Peterson “the most important and influential Canadian thinker since Marshall McLuhan.”

A storm in a Twitter tea-cup

One of the dominant features of late capitalism is the spectacle of brands getting into sassy spats with random people on Twitter in the hope it’ll get them free PR. The latest example of this is brought to you via Yorkshire tea whose amusing, all-caps, exchange with a Brexit-loving Brit called Terry Robinson went viral earlier this week.



It began when Robinson got into an argument with someone on Twitter about whether Yorkshire tea was actually grown in Yorkshire. Seeking to set the record straight, Robinson went straight to the source and asked Yorkshire Tea: “WHERE IS YOUR TEA GROWN?” They replied: ‘AFRICA AND INDIA. HERE’S A THING YOU CAN READ”.



Robinson was not pleased to hear this and tweeted: “DISGUSTED AT APPALLED. IVE BEEN DRINKING YORKSHIRE TEA ALL THESE YEARS THINKING IT WAS GROWN IN BRITAIN, AND THEN I FIND OUT THIS. EVERYONE NEEDS TO BOYCOTT.



The, perhaps predictable, twist to this tale, is that it seems highly unlikely that Terry Robinson is a real person. His Twitter account seems to be an obvious parody of a racist Brexiteer; which makes this story the very definition of manufactured outrage. Nevertheless, Robinson’s fictional fury made global headlines. To sum up then: Yorkshire Tea isn’t from Yorkshire; Terry from Twitter isn’t real; everything in life is a lie.



The Outrage Olympics are underway

This year the US has sent its most diverse squad ever to the Winter Olympics and conservative snowflakes are having a meltdown over it. On Thursday John Moody, a Fox News editor, published what can only be described as a ‘deranged rant’ about how political-correctness-gone-mad is killing sports and hastening the apocalypse.



“[T]he motto of the Olympics, since 1894, has been ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger,’” Moody wrote. “It appears the U.S. Olympic Committee would like to change that to “Darker, Gayer, Different.’” Moody was being snarky, but I reckon ‘Darker, Gayer, Different’ is actually an excellent motto.



If the US Olympic Committee don’t want it then perhaps PepsiCo should use it as a tagline for a new range of Diversity Dorito’s.

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