One minute it seems like our society is growing more accustomed to the ideas of open mindedness, free thought and free expression…and the general idea of being entertained, even if it means mother might not be the most approving at what your laughter is directed. Then the next second, it feels like the whole country’s turned into a giant Bible Belt staring at us, the open-minded free thinkers, who are suddenly adorned in black cloaks with “satanist” scribed on our foreheads in blood.

This society really confuses me sometimes, as with this latest fuss over a banned Sprite ad.

From all the articles and news reports I’ve read on the situation, what I’ve been able to gather for myself on what happened is that once this explicit ad was released, those who first saw it, freaked out and blamed, well, who else, but Coca-Cola, a company that obviously paid to sponsor the creation of this extremely adult ad because it featured a bottle of Sprite, logo in full spotlight.

Put television aside…do you believe everything you see on the Internet? I mean, honestly? Of course not. It not only shocked me, but disappointed me to find out how much attention this has received. People honestly believed Coca-Cola really put this thing out there. I mean, it had to, right? The ad definitely has a bottle of Sprite in it, so that automatically means that Coca-Cola is responsible…of course!

It’s just sad and embarrassing.

Nasty letters, e-mails, messages…a plethora of a variety of negative feedback was received over this. (Actually, several explicit Sprite ads were designed and released on the Internet. The one I’m specifically talking in reference of is simply the most explicit.)

And then it was discovered — and what a shock! — that the videos were not endorsed, created or otherwise supported in any way by the Coca-Cola Company.

So if it wasn’t Coke — as it’s been proven beyond the cast shadow of the Sprite bottle in the ad of a doubt that there is no association with sprite of coke — who was it?

The culprit in the blatantly risque and sexually explicit Sprite ads is none other than New York City-based director Max Isaacson.

Satisfied? I wasn’t either. I don’t really care who’s responsible. The ad’s funny. That’s it. That’s all it was meant to be, at least that was my first impression after watching it myself.

Here’s what Isaacson had to say about the whole thing:

“My name is Max Isaacson, I directed and produced the fake Sprite ads that have been making the rounds over the past five days. There have been quite a lot of false statements made regarding these and I would like to make a few things very clear about these spots. First, there was no involvement from either The Coca-Cola Company or Greencard Pictures. Second, this was not supposed to be taken seriously by anybody. They were made completely on spec, which was clearly stated on the YouTube pages on which the ads were primarily seen. I paid for, produced and directed both spots independently. I am frankly quite surprised that spots of this nature were so quickly and easily believed to be legitimate. I hope that all parties involved will understand that this was a simple mistake that went much too far too fast, and that it is now made clear that these were not real commercials, nor were they ever produced with intention of being taken as such.”

So, to Isaacson, it was just a big fat joke. As I said before, I personally found the material to be humorous, and certainly wouldn’t have believed Coca-Cola to have released something like that itself. Think of all the lawsuits. Well, duh!

I guess what we really should be doing is applauding Mr. Isaacson on how well he put together this video, because obviously it looked so professional that thousands, maybe millions of people were duped silly into believing in its gilded authenticity.

Oh yes, and let me not forget about this little gem, which I think sums up my opinion on the whole thing, and in Isaacson’s words, again, “I am well aware that this “ad” was over-the-top, offensive, misogynistic and, in my opinion, funny. The point was to get a reaction, and in that regard I far exceeded my expectations.”