"I think that in the future, clocks won't say three o'clock anymore. They'll just get right to the point and rename three o'clock 'Pepsi.'"
About this Quote
Coupland’s joke lands because it’s only half a joke. The leap from “three o’clock” to “Pepsi” is absurd on its face, but it’s also just a few logical steps past what advertising already does: buy attention, colonize language, turn neutral space into branded space. Time is the last supposedly “public” metric left in everyday speech, a shared coordinate system no one owns. Renaming it is the punchline and the warning.
The line’s real target isn’t soda; it’s the quiet deal we keep making with consumer culture: you can have your individuality, your identity, even your sense of self - as long as it comes with a logo. Coupland, the chronicler of late-20th-century slack, tech, and spiritual boredom, understood how branding doesn’t merely sell products; it sells vocabulary for experience. If “three o’clock” becomes “Pepsi,” then the most ordinary human rhythms - meeting a friend, picking up a kid, feeling the mid-afternoon slump - get narrativized by corporate speech.
The “get right to the point” phrasing is the slyest twist. Efficiency is the mask: why say a clunky number when you can say a crisp brand? That’s how the takeover works in real life, not with jackboots but with convenience. Coupland is sketching a future where language is optimized for commerce, and the cost is that we lose a little of the unbranded world where meaning can be negotiated without a sponsor.
The line’s real target isn’t soda; it’s the quiet deal we keep making with consumer culture: you can have your individuality, your identity, even your sense of self - as long as it comes with a logo. Coupland, the chronicler of late-20th-century slack, tech, and spiritual boredom, understood how branding doesn’t merely sell products; it sells vocabulary for experience. If “three o’clock” becomes “Pepsi,” then the most ordinary human rhythms - meeting a friend, picking up a kid, feeling the mid-afternoon slump - get narrativized by corporate speech.
The “get right to the point” phrasing is the slyest twist. Efficiency is the mask: why say a clunky number when you can say a crisp brand? That’s how the takeover works in real life, not with jackboots but with convenience. Coupland is sketching a future where language is optimized for commerce, and the cost is that we lose a little of the unbranded world where meaning can be negotiated without a sponsor.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|
More Quotes by Doug
Add to List
