Trolls abuse Coca-Cola web campaign

The Coca-Cola Company opened itself up to parody Sunday when it debuted a scheme to save the Internet from itself by transforming negative tweets and posts into smiling, saccharine drawings.

The campaign, which the sugary drinks company launched with a Superbowl ad, sets out the quixotic goal of tackling the negativity that pervades the Internet.

Users of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are being asked to add the hashtag #MakeItHappy to posts they deem negative.

Coca Cola has been using an algorithm to turn the depressing words into fun, anthropomorphic representations of food, instruments and more, made of ASCII letters and punctuation marks.

But internet users, as they are wont to do, took advantage of that naivete, and had Coca-Coal turn some of the grimmest, most offensive messages possible into cartoons.

“You sound like a Jew in a gas chamber,” one user tweeted to the company. That remark was turned into a smiling guitar with an amplifier, before it was hastily deleted.

https://twitter.com/mrmxy/status/562114837720072193

I love satan,” wrote another, in a message that would soon be turned into an image of a shirt hugging itself (although some would say it looked more like a large intestine. ASCII art is not know for its precision).

https://twitter.com/CocaCola/status/562122662101929984

“The holocaust #makeithappy,” someone dared the the multi-national corporation.

https://twitter.com/CocaCola/status/562036866153996288

Another troll pushed the boundaries of taste and decency with some grim photos of cannibalism among polar bears, which are mascots of the soda company.

https://twitter.com/Anon_Senpai/status/562112626243559426

Some of the messages passed through the company’s algorithm only to be taken down later, like the “Jew in a gas chamber” one, while others, including the gruesome polar bear Tweets, simply got changed to the generic, “Here Internet, negativity turned happy.”

While some social media users praised the company for attempting to clean up the bullying atmosphere of the Internet, many have been using the hashtag to condemn Coca-Cola for its environmental and health record.

The company, it seems, is hoping the old adage is true and “there’s no such thing as bad press.”