• Gen Zers have started calling Diet Coke a "fridge cigarette" thanks to a viral TikTok.
• Coca-Cola's CEO appeared unimpressed when asked about the nickname in an interview this week.
• "The most important thing to us is that we don't position Diet Coke in that way," he said.

If you've ever cracked open a bubbly, icy-cold "fridge cigarette," Coca-Cola's CEO would like a word.

The beverage giant's CEO, Henrique Braun, was asked about the phrase — a popular slang term for a can of Diet Coke — in a Tuesday interview with Yahoo Finance, and appeared unimpressed.

He first answered by promoting the company's growth, before being pressed for his thoughts on the nickname.

"The consumers call it the way they want to call it," Braun said. "The most important thing to us is that we don't position Diet Coke in that way."

"It's a great-tasting product, which connects with the consumer in a very unique way."

Coca-Cola did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Merriam-Webster defines "fridge cigarette" as "a cold, refreshing, and addictive soft drink," noting that it's especially used to refer to Diet Coke.

The phrase first gained traction with Gen Z through a viral TikTok video in 2025, which has nearly 4 million views. It showed a woman opening a can of the soda, with the text: "Overheard someone call a Diet Coke a 'fridge cigarette' and nothing's been more true to me since."

It makes sense that Braun would rather avoid any comparisons to cigarettes, especially given some previous bad media for Diet Coke.

Aspartame, an artificial sweetener used in the soda, made headlines in 2023 after the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified it as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

However, this classification only means there is limited evidence in humans and less-than-sufficient evidence in animals. Health bodies and regulators globally have maintained their acceptable daily intake levels of aspartame. An adult weighing 150 lbs would have to drink at least 17 cans of Diet Coke a day to exceed the safe amount.

Diet Coke contains more caffeine, the use of which can lead to dependence, than regular Coca-Cola.

To most people, "fridge cigarette" instead evokes the relief from drinking a soda. An excuse to step away from work for a moment and indulge with a gratifying treat.

Rachel Reno, who posted the viral TikTok, told The New York Times in 2025, "I feel like it's one of those things that doesn't need a lot of explanation."

She added that people who understand it know that "the crack of the can is like the spark of a lighter," and then after the first sip, "all the worries and cares in the world go away."

Braun's interview came the same day as Coca-Cola's quarterly earnings, which narrowly beat estimates with $13.4 billion of revenue.

The CEO told investors on an earnings call that Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Zero grew by double digits. Coca-Cola's share price is up 33% since the start of the year.

• Alphabet shed around $500 billion in market value on Thursday after its stock tanked 13%.
• If the losses persist, it will be the second-largest one-day drop in market cap for any company.
• Shares of Google's parent company fell after its earnings disappointed investors.

Alphabet is on track to suffer its biggest-ever one-day market-cap wipeout, and the second-largest value drop in stock-market history.

Shares of Google's parent company slumped by as much as 13.5% in early trading on Thursday, slashing Alphabet's market capitalization by over $500 billion, from around $3.9 trillion to $3.4 trillion.

If the losses persist until the close, it would be the second-largest one-day loss of market capitalization ever. Only AI chipmaker Nvidia has lost more value in a single day, when it shed close to $600 billion on January 27, 2025, on fears that China's DeepSeek would steal its lunch.

Alphabet's shares slumped after its earnings report on Wednesday showed about $9.1 billion in negative free cash flow as it spent heavily on AI infrastructure, and profits that fell short of Wall Street's forecasts.

Google's AI search revenue also lagged expectations, despite CEO Sundar Pichai saying on the earnings call that AI helped search queries grow at the fastest year-over-year pace in five years.

Search revenue of $63 billion came in below analysts' estimates and was virtually flat compared to the previous quarter.

That came as a shock because search revenue had beaten Wall Street's estimates in each of its four previous quarterly earnings reports.

"It's worth noting that the strong growth in AI Mode queries had an impact because of the lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode," Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, said on the call.

He also announced that Google is introducing ads in AI Mode to more users, including in international markets for the first time.

The rise of generative AI has shaken up Google's core business as chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude give people an alternative way to search. While Google has its own chatbot, Gemini, and has integrated it into its search engine with AI Mode, revenue is lagging behind its popularity.

"Just like our shift to mobile over a decade ago, we are focused on building the best Search user experience, followed by monetization," Pichai said.

As well as one of the market's biggest-ever single-day value losses, if Alphabet stock closes more than 9.77% lower on Thursday, it would be the company's worst post-earnings percentage drop since going public in 2004.

"In the AI trade you need a clean story to pique investor interest. But it only matters if numbers track in the right direction," Mark Shmulik, a senior analyst at Bernstein, wrote in a note.

"Is Google an AI winner? Probably, but not today."