In April 2017 the corporate overlords at PepsiCo rolled out a nearly three-minute video clip projecting a vague idea of solidarity toward nothing in particular. Featuring a diverse cast of telegenic young people and starring none other than superstar Kendall Jenner, the segment foregrounds a gathering vaguely encoded as a protest march thanks to a few raised fists and a handful of signs showcasing a series of not exactly firebrand demands such as “Join the Conversation.”

At video’s end, the glamorous Jenner glides gracefully toward a phalanx of uniformed police to share a cold can of Pepsi with an officer, to general approval from everyone involved. As the camera fades to the tune of Skip Marley’s “Lions,” the Pepsi logo appears and viewers are invited to Live For Now®.

Virtually everything about the ad, from premise to staging to sheer existence, is absurd from start to finish. As corporate self-parody, it was nothing short of an Olympic-level performance that the finest satirists at Clickhole or The Onion couldn’t have matched if they tried. Tone-deaf and painful to watch even by the cavernously low standards of social justice–themed corporate cringe, and rather shamelessly appropriating imagery from Black Lives Matter, it elicited a fierce enough backlash to be taken down in record time but continues to live on in the popular memory as a kind of gold standard for capitalist wokeness gone awry.