When we graduate from high school, a lot of things change. We have to take on more adult responsibilities - and in exchange get some greater rights, some greater measure of personal freedom. We get to be adults, and have to leave (no doubt with some regrets) the pleasures of childhood as well as (no doubt with some relief) the torments of adolescence. Except that one very important thing does not change as we move from the adolescent world to the adult world: We still want to be cool. It is this fact - the Peter Pan longing not to grow up - that helped to make Budweiser's "Whassup" ad campaign so popular.
The ad campaign used a sort of reverse psychology, presenting a quartet of men who weren't obviously popular or drop-dead gorgeous - but who exuded the kind of camaraderie and coolness that most of us longed for in high school and that probably is still a factor in most nursing homes. The ads used a term that was emblematic of black American culture and mainstreamed it - in much the same way that similar idioms like "You go, girl!" have been either borrowed, appropriated or co-opted, depending upon one's point of view - and in precisely the same way that the black musical form of jazz was adopted by white audiences (Watts and Orbe, 2000).
The four characters in the ads were not in fact the young African-American males that hip-hop culture (whence the phrase gained its popularity) centers on but clearly middle-class thirtysomethings who had clearly managed to maintain the kinds of strong friendships that for many people exist only when they are young.
This combination of friendship as well as coolness led the commercial to be rated USA Today's Admeter as the Superbowl's most popular when it appeared in 2000 (http://www.tvacres.com/admascots_whassup_guys.htm) cleverly suggested that continued friendship is dependent not only on shared beliefs but also on shared symbols - and of course a shared taste in beer. The phrase was a "v...