The NY Times once published an article called "I Was Powerless Over Diet Coke," and screenshots of it began to blow up all over alt-Instagram. Do that many people drink diet soda? This magic "spicy water" has 0 calories and 0 sugar. It's sorcery. It's the kind of thing you give to a medieval peasant boy, and he turns around and asks, "Did you bring regular Coke?" It's truly mindblowing and we're not quite sure how it works, but we've built a whole lifestyle around drinking it nonetheless.

Sure, it might be full of mystery chemicals and artificial sweeteners that we don't exactly trust, but there's nothing wrong with that (not for a few decades, at least, right?). For now, we're going to celebrate our love of diet soda with some quality memes that get where your love of these drinks is coming from. To all our diet soda enjoyers, don't be ashamed of anything. Instead, bond over these 12 memes about your favorite beverage.