A short video recently circulating on social media shows Adolf Hitler drinking from a can of Fanta while angrily proclaiming, “I hate juice.” Though millions mistook it for an authentic commercial, sparking fierce online debate, it is actually an AI-generated meme.
Its artificial nature is fairly obvious, given that the colour, fonts and logo on the can look nothing like actual Fanta packaging. So why did so many people fall for it? The answer lies in our current media topography, where “shockvertising” has been methodically normalised.
The term ‘shockvertising’ emerged in the early 1990s, though the practice dates back to public health campaigns in the late 1960s, and describes a marketing strategy that deliberately violates social, moral or aesthetic boundaries to startle, offend or disturb an audience. Unlike traditional advertisements that highlight product benefits, shockvertising relies on instinctive reactions like fear, disgust, horror or outrage to cut through commercial noise.
This is done to drive high brand recall and generate free publicity. Due to the fact that real brands have pushed boundaries in the recent past, a concept as absurd as a Hitler-themed Fanta advertisement suddenly felt plausible to an over-stimulated public.
In an online world where algorithms reward anger over accuracy, outrage has become one of the most valuable forms of currency in the digital age
The earliest examples of shockvertising emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s through Western government funded anti-smoking campaigns, which featured graphic images of diseased lungs. While these visuals shocked audiences, the public largely accepted them because they served the purpose of raising awareness about smoking-related illnesses. Eventually, governments made it a legal requirement for tobacco companies to print these graphic images directly on cigarette packets.
Seeing how receptive people were to shocking imagery when tied to a meaningful cause, and recognising its power to ignite widespread public debate, several consumer brands decided to adopt similar tactics to shatter the clutter of traditional advertising.
In the late 1980s, Italian clothing brand United Colours of Benetton transformed shockvertising into a corporate strategy. Instead of displaying clothes, Benetton ran controversial photographs of a dying AIDS activist, a priest kissing a nun and blood-soaked war uniforms, linking the brand directly to concentrated social debates. Luxury brands such as Gucci and Tom Ford later introduced hyper-sexualised, taboo imagery to build an ‘edgy’, exclusive identity, often actively courting media bans to secure free publicity.
Modern shock tactics have since migrated online, leaning heavily into ‘rage-baiting’ and controversial social stances engineered specifically to drive viral outrage, heated debate and clicks across digital platforms.
Shockvertising is an offshoot of what is often referred to as the “outrage economy.” American media theorists Tim Wu and Shoshana Zuboff describe the outrage economy as a digital marketplace where human attention is monetised through heightened conflict and anger. Rather than promoting a brand on its merits or presenting a topic through objective analysis, the outrage economy banks on manufactured outrage to bypass critical thinking, instantly capturing attention and high digital traffic through viral sharing and continuous debate.
Social media ‘influencers’ and vloggers frequently resort to making absurd claims and spreading outright falsehoods, purely to inflate their views and comment sections. Far from discouraging this behaviour, social media platforms reward it. Their underlying algorithms are engineered to prioritise high engagement above truth, effectively monetising outrageous content and turning controversy into a business model.
Pakistani comedian Tabish Hashmi recently sparked widespread online debate by announcing his departure from a Geo TV show that he hosts. Disappointed fans quickly flooded social media platforms, but their dismay rapidly morphed into outrage after a rumour surfaced claiming Hashmi had been fired over controversial remarks regarding political unrest in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). Remarkably, those expressing outrage rarely paused to verify the nature, or even the existence, of the supposed comments. In reality, no such statements were ever made.
The entire episode was a staged publicity stunt. Hashmi was never asked to leave and Geo TV had merely paused production briefly to redesign the show’s set. For days, however, the host and the programme dominated digital discourse. The manufactured controversy allowed observers to project their own political narratives on to the event, with some reading complex state conspiracies into the hiatus and others extending outrage over perceived censorship.
The situation raises certain questions about this strategy. Did Geo need to engineer a hoax to boost lagging ratings? But more amusing was the swiftness with which Geo and Hashmi ultimately dismissed the incident as a harmless “prank”.
This may suggest a sudden loss of nerve once the audience transformed a routine promotional stunt into a tense conversation about free speech and anti-establishment rhetoric. After the hoax was revealed, many felt disappointed, and even embarrassed, at having been so easily duped. Yet, this vulnerability to manipulation is no longer an anomaly.
In an era dominated by swift digital communication and heightened emotional engagement, such impressionability has ceased to be an exception. It has become the standard condition of the modern audience. The media in general and brands are aware of this. It has become easy for manufactured outrage to profit from growing gullibility.
When digital platforms actively reward sensationalism over accuracy, critical thinking takes a back seat to knee-jerk reactions. As a result, audiences have grown increasingly susceptible to manufactured narratives, routinely accepting outrage at face value before taking the time to verify basic facts.
Politicians, corporate brands, influencers, vloggers, mainstream media outlets and even everyday users all feed this cycle. It is no wonder, then, that the concept of online “trending topics” has so seamlessly replaced genuine public discourse, turning meaningful dialogue into an algorithmic spectacle.
To paraphrase the American media theorist Neil Postman, the spectacle is designed for consumption rather than comprehension.
Published in Dawn, EOS, August 9th, 2026
