Oh, come on…admit it. There was a few weeks there that I was on a roll. Every third bottle or so got me a FREE one. My ratio was incredible and the gratification was instant.

So, I bought one today. The butterflies were like sea gulls in my stomach. I twisted and flipped the cap and…What the hell was this? "C6BS9YYBYM"? I thought it was a lot code or something. I read the outside of the bottle and saw that I needed to go to Pepsi’s website, enter the code and WIN free "PepsiStuff."

But, but, but. Where’s my instant gratification? Where’s my bargain? PepsiStuff.com? Is that the best they could come up with? So, I thought to myself, not every cap could be a winner. Not every cap would have a code that yielded a new car. Maybe there’s something there for me after all.

Off I went into cyberspace.

Every word ended in "stuff". It was eeerie. Apparently, pepsistuff.com had taken over where simple prize claiming ended. Their plain blue webpage commands the user to "GET STUFF!" So, I did. I clicked on the hyperlink, thinking, "okay, not a real big deal." Man, I’m a sucker. "Yes, you can get a prize, but you gotta sign up here, here, and here." "What’s your name? Age? Area code? Birthday? Pet’s name?" (no joke) This is all done in an effort to better serve you, tag you, track you and make the Pepsi conglomerate richer. "Please visit often." It said in a big brotherly fashion.

Bastards. That which was so enticing was behind this online registration, and I wanted to see what it was, so I decided to test the site’s ethics.

I created three logins: a twelve year old, a fifteen year old, and a 60-year old, whose birthday was on the day that he signed up. Upon attempting to login, the twelve-year old was responsibly instructed (by the site) to get a parent to link their ID to his. This is important because no online organization is allow to collect data on children under the age of 13 without express concent of a parent. Unfortunately, as a 12 year old, all I had to do was hit the "back button", change my birthdate, and wa-la, with no other verification, and as a recently turned fifteen-year-old, I was allowed to enter without notice.

Once in, you realize that everything’s based on a point system. Each set of ten coded characters is worth 100 pts. That’s what they start you with. It’s like that carnival game where the cheapest prize is a plastic spider ring and the behemoth stuffed dog costs a thousand spider rings. Here, every bottle, which costs $1.20/ea now, gives you a cap worth 100 points. 100 points=lame wallpaper that you can get for free on every other website in the world. 200 points=same lame wallpaper in a bigger size. I was amazed.

So, now companies like Pepsi are farming our children for lifestyle information on the Internet. Could they possibly be selling this information to other interested parties...
Hmmmmm, what do you think? I think this sucks, and I just thought you’d like to know.

My suggestion? Hide your children, and hide them now.