Energy drinks are XXXXXX-TREME!

Energy Drinks

How It's Marketed:

Staying conscious is hard. There's awareness and cognition and all sorts of other shit that just wants to harsh your mellow. You need a little pick me up every once in a while to help keep you focussed, and jabbering away like Quentin Tarantino. But if cocaine is too hard to come by, maybe you need an energy drink.They're like cocaine, only they taste like fruit that someone sat on.

The ads make us think that all energy drinks are marketed to the functionally retarded. The basic line is that you do shit poorly, drink this stuff and you will do it like Jesus if he were a pimp and jumping a skateboard off the top of Fuck You Mountain.

It even makes fat guys start cars. Sweet, that'll definitely help college kids do homework to the X-Treme!!
X-TREME!!!

What it Really Is:
Let's take a drink like Amp, which contains caffeine, taurine and guarana. Those are the big three ingredients, along with sugar, in pretty much every single energy drink out there. You should know by now sugar gives you a quick burst of energy followed by a big downer, and if we need to explain the effect of caffeine then we'd first like to welcome you to the 19th century. Please, hang up your tweed pantaloons as we explain this thing called electricity.
Sixteen ounces of Amp contains about 143 milligrams of caffeine. This seems like a lot, probably. On the other hand, an eight ounce cup of coffee is going to contain up to 175 milligrams. But Amp also has that guarana and taurine. Of course, guarana is just a plant that is full of caffeine and pretty much nothing else of note. That's where your 143 milligrams came from, but at least it contributes to what Amp does, unlike taurine. Taurine, so far as anyone can tell, doesn't do a goddamned thing.

So you could spend a few bucks on a big can of mildly fruity douche water to get a slight buzz, or just brew a cup of coffee and add some sugar and get the exact same effect. X-TREME!!!
This is the first Google image search result for "douchewater."


Gatorade

How It's Marketed:

Gatorade contains 22nd century nanotechnolgy and is responsible for Michael Jordan knowing how to play basketball and for Tiger Woods making anyone at all give a shit about golf.

Holy shit is right, kids. Gatorade has laboratories and fucking face masks and dudes in white coats and all of them work together to make sports happen properly. None of that "may the best man win" bullshit . May the dude drinking Gatorade win. Fuck you every team in every sport from Cleveland!
Eat a dick, Chief Wahoo.

What it Really Is:
If you're anxious to become the next lacrosse sensation or, in this case, the first and only lacrosse sensation, but because you play lacrosse are too broke to afford Gatorade, you can make your own. How's that, you wonder? Cracked got its hands on the secret those Gatorade lab coat guys have been using for decades to make Michael Jordan a superstar.

First, you take some Koolaid. Then put on a lead apron (we have to assume this stuff isn't safe in its raw form) and add some salt. Now stand back. You just made Gatorade!
Yes, the space-age electrolyte balancing formula in Gatorade is pretty much the same thing deer have been using for centuries to stay moist: salt. The rest is pretty much just flavored water.
Now dump that shit on someone.