2/7/13

Re-watched Hot Coffee. Amazing documentary about how seemingly intelligent people are so easily fooled by Corporate PR - to their own severe detriment.

Corporate PR: woman spills coffee on herself while driving and sues McDonalds for millions! Court system broken!
What really happened: McDonalds had been warned 700 times that their coffee was too hot and their cups too shit - keeping coffee hot increases its shelf life and cheap cups also increase profits. An old lady (who wasn't driving) had the cheap cup disintegrate in her lap from the heat of the coffee and spill on her lap. Here's the picture of her burns: http://imgur.com/IQh5Cyu. She only won medical bills + $400,000.

The documentary carries on with example after example, and then shows that because so many people (read: asshole idiots) were so easily fooled by Corporate PR that now Civil Lawsuits are no longer a way to force Corporations to refrain from their general asshattery or can be used as a victim to seek justice.