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In the Fascist States of America, a McDonald’s techbro named BigBallz voice will serve you a burger with no beef, charge you double, and call it freedom.
You ask, where’s my Mcplayground? Well, it is outsourced, replaced with a sad bench on which a crying Ronald McDonald sits, holding a sign about liability.
Even the architecture of their fast food joints is fascist.
What do y’all expect from an industry based on torture and murder, destroying the planet, wrecking your health, and supporting genocide? Fun for the kids?
Jesus Christ you lot need to get out more. You lot are seriously over analysing changes in marketing, and using it to stroke your ego’s.
The shit looks depressing. How does that stroke one’s ego?
Dystopia is when boring burger.
I’m kind of fine with not overmarketing fast food to children.
Yes, but the right trajectory wasn’t to make the building dull, it was the make better food for kids.
I don’t think McDonald’s can make food that is fine for kids to get hooked on, without completely changing their whole deal
It’s OK, we can abandon mccdonalds as a concept. No loss there.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Now we have shit buildings, and shit food, what part of this is good
The food at other restaurants
The fact that kids aren’t begging parents to go to McDonald’s any more? Did you read the same thread I did?
These lil coco melon rats won’t shut up about wanting McDonald’s nuggets
That’s a fact?
If the food is shit, don’t go there. Most people here are just reacting to nostalgia. McD has always been shit food. You just were imprinted from an early age to associate it with going out with friends, getting toys and playing in the play pen. But the food was always garbage.
Yes, the food was always garbage. How is that nostalgia? No-one said it used to be good, they said the building used to be cool looking.
So they make the building look worse and the food stays the same… Now it’s all shit.
So what are you adding here?
Are you applying to be the middle manager of Lemmy or something?
How is that relevant? Nothing here is good.
It would be so much better if they went back to aggressively marketing towards children, right?
Yes. If they had healthy food and aggressively marketed at kids that would be fantastic…
I don’t know what part of this you and the other dipshits are not following:
- Currently we have a shit building and shit food.
- We want a happy building and healthy food.
Get off your fucking high horse for a second and learn to read. No-one said we want the shit they are serving now. I’m saying that instead of changing their marketing, they should have changed the food.
Clearly reading comprehension wasn’t just an issue on Reddit.but the kids dont want to eat healthy food, and yummy healthy food is expensive.
This is misleading. The top picture is bright and sunny and the lower one is gray and dreary. Notice the tree in the background on the left without any leaves?
That is because the top picture was taken in the summer and the lower one in the winter when it is cold and the animals have been moved indoors to keep them warm. They will be back in the spring.
smh
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie 😄
The gorilla was shot and killed though.
But don’t pull your dick out in a McDonald’s.
Trust me.
Dicks out for Harambe
The first part, but unironically. Imagine how creepy the plaster animals look like in the evening. Or rain. Truly dystopian.
TBF, the latter is a much better reflection of how lifeless and awful their food is.
i was really hungover and had taken some painkillers with codeine and i had a single mcdonalds cheeseburg and it was dynamite
I would wager it was the codeine painkillers that were dynamite and the burger was mostly a side effect
Well no. McDonald’s is pretty tasty it’s just horrific for you and the planet.
it’s just horrific
for you and the planet.That’s the same sentence just far dumber and less descriptive.
McDonald’s is pretty tasty
Your opinion is factually incorrect.
Opinions aren’t generally hinged on factuality bud especially ones that depend on taste but you clearly don’t get social norms like don’t be twat so I’ll forgive the misstep and tell you outright… Don’t be a twat.
I’d say most food tastes amazing when drunk /hungover, let alone on a codeine high
granted. at the end of the day though, the reliability/consistency of a mcdonalds cheeseburger is a stable constant in a mecurial world. they dont make crumbs. they’re essentially astronaut food
The last time I ate McDonald’s, I arrived in Pasewalk, a tiny town in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, on a much delayed train at 2 in the morning. They where the only place that was open, and I hadn’t eaten since noon.
That burger was kinda OK, but it might have been the circumstance. They stopped selling vegan burgers anyway, so whatever.
Hunger is the best cook 🤷♀️
It reminds me of the Griswold’s neighbors in the Christmas Vacation movie, Elaine and Ponytail
Todd and Margot
The mistreatment of the yuppies is my favorite part of that movie. When she opens the door and gets attacked by the squirrel and then the dog, or when the icicle destroys their stereo I crack up every time.
Really depends on the country. Technically the menu is almost the same everywhere but the ingredients and quality absolutely isn’t.
I know it’s not a perfect example but I’m sick of modern design trends. Muted colours and uniform shapes, nothing ever interesting or emotion inducing. I’m probably pretty biased but still I’d love to see something that had some life to it.
That’s the point that I thought was obvious. Everyone else seems to be focusing on other factors…
I feel you. They aren’t necessarily wrong to concentrate on the other stuff, but the world did feel a bit happier when things had a bit of life to them, at least to me.
It looks like they’re marketing now to an older demographic instead of just children. They’re going for the “millennial gray” look which may encourage people to go to it as a restaurant instead of children activity.
Hey, I live near that McDonalds!
It’s right across from the Dallas Zoo, so you can imagine that there was a not insubstantial traffic of kids leaving the zoo and getting a McNasty with Cheese with their parents.
Everyone around here hated that they turned something fun and unique into another corpo hell hole of blandness, so there’s that at least.
They wanted to shift from marketing to children to marketing to adults so they could raise the prices.
If I recall correctly, they were forced. There’s an obesity pandemic going on in children, mostly driven by excessive use of sugars and overconsumption of fast food and sodas. So, there were certain regulations limiting how directed at children the marketing could be. They can still charge exorbitant prices to children, their parents are the ones paying anyways.
Exactly. Nobody in this thread remembers Super Size Me?
Morgan Spurlock seriously manipulated the experiment to get the results he wanted, like completely stopping his regular exercise regimen while drinking massive amounts of alcohol. A cursory look at the numbers shows that he couldn’t possibly have gained 25 pounds on the diet he claimed he ate. I despise McDonald’s and they deserve all the negative attention, but Spurlock was a grifter and charlatan.
Ah, I was more referring to how the documentary was very critical of marketing to children, and how people campaigned against that in the years surrounding that.
I didn’t know about his alcoholism, thanks for bringing that to my attention. That said, eating waaay too much fast food and not exercising was pretty much the whole point - he wanted to show how bad that lifestyle was. IMO the only problem there is that he failed to disclose that he was also heavily drinking.
Fully agreed on the marketing to children. And I think the established and emerging research around the effects of junk food really show the ill effects of our industrialized food supply. See: “The Dorito Effect” by Mark Schatzker; “Sugar” and “Hacking of the American Mind” by Robert Lustig; Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. Basically, if it wasn’t raw when you bought it, that food is most likely bad for you.
Spurlock didn’t “fail to disclose” his food lists; he steadfastly refused to disclose what he consumed because it would show him, most generously speaking, to be Captain Obvious and at worst to be full of shit.
FWIW, that downvote wasn’t me.
I’m an adult who also enjoys fun. 😢
Me too but they won’t let me in the play place anymore :(
My local one changed the play place into a conference room. That’s where adults have fun… right?
Enjoy fun?? Pftt grow up
/s
Yup, they tried to be cool and semi restaurant.
It’s the subtler version of hostile architecture. You know how they designed benches to be impossible for homeless people to sleep on? They do not want a customer to stay at the building after they have made a purchase. It is more efficient if the children do not come inside and a new customer can take their place. The building is not made for humans, it is made for money.
This is more like brutalism. https://www.architecture.com/explore-architecture/brutalism
I remember getting to play Nintendo 64 at our McDonalds. You could play things like smash, and usually could get in a full match before it did its mandatory reboot things.
Grocery stores would often have childcare areas up until the 90s I think.
So many of those little casual extras/“customer service” has gone out the window. It’s about stripping out everything that doesn’t immediately gain you profit.
Like, back in the day - retail worker was supposed to know their shit. It was a full time job. You could go to Dillard’s and some older guy could give you advice on what to match with what. You could go to a Radio Shack and say you were having trouble with a project, and there’d be a good chance that you’d end up getting some help.
But businesses would rather pay someone $9/hour for a part time job that’ll fuck with their hours every week. Why have someone who’s paid a living wage who can help sell you a really nice coat for a few hundred bucks, when you can pay some shit for some teenager to hawk polyester shit that wouldn’t even be worth paying a commission on?
It goes into this rejection of aesthetics - that all of these retail businesses are things which exist to funnel money. Aesthetics has cost - and might not even be agreeable to everyone! Why risk it when you could have Brutalist McDonalds.
Your Radio Shack example is legit. I had an uncle who worked at Radio Shack as some sort of, idk, tech or something? I was a kid and it was in the 80’s, all I knew was that he worked there and made good money doing it.
Then one day he gets recruited by a multinational tech corporation and moves to Berlin to work in a lab. He could’ve taken my aunt with him, but she cheated on him as soon as he left for the 2 probationary weeks he spent in Germany before the company in question committed to hiring him.
He eventually became a millionaire with dual citizenship and my aunt married some abusive dipshit who immediately went broke. Now she works in a pickle factory. Ain’t life interesting?
Just chasing pickle again and again
Well fuckin said and spot on!
Also thanks for reminding me how great Radio Shack used to be. It used to be a place to get actual electronics components. And the people there knew their shit. And there was enough intelligent folks around to keep a place like that in business! God I miss those days…
another for the list of things with downvotes for no apparent reason
Urgh this sucks so much how capitalism is just making everything more « efficient » aka maximizing profits.
I usually hate the removal of fun from public spaces, however not having a horrifically unhealthy place designed to attract children is probably a good thing.
The advertising model has changed, but the food is still slop and the goal is still to draw in big families who can’t afford to make dinner. What’s changed over the last forty years has been the means by which people are incentivized to enter the building. You’re no longer trying to bait children from the side of the road with a big van that says “Free Candy”. Instead, you’re focusing on bombarding kids with advertisements on YouTube streams and targeting parents with gamified repeat customer incentives. But they’ve also focused more on getting customers out the door than in, improving the speed and reducing the front-facing staff, such that customers are encouraged to get their food and leave rather than linger in kid-friendly private sector daycares.
still to draw in big families who can’t afford to make dinner.
What
How would making food at home be more expensive than McDonald’s ? Is this some sort of an American thing I’m too European to understand?
How would making food at home be more expensive than McDonald’s ?
Time is money and if you can’t afford the time to cook and clean, you’re stuck brown-bagging it at a fast food restaurant.
Is this some sort of an American thing I’m too European to understand?
It’s a consequence of American suburban life. Transit time costs are enormous. If you’re throwing an hour+ into your commute, you often don’t have time to cook. Fast food lets you grab a meal and eat in the car on the way home.
Okay that’s an explanation with some logic in it, but like unless they have your order ready when you drive into the parking lot, there’s several dishes I could cook as fast as it takes for you to go pick up a brown bag.
Granted time is a luxury I find myself having too much of often so maybe I’m like one of those super rich guys who doesn’t understand the cost of a milk carton.
But nah, I don’t think I am here to be honest.
If you said “doesn’t have the energy to cook” I’d get it but time/energy, eh pretty interchangeable.
It isn’t faster but what it is, is more convenient and that I can see.
I gave up fast food a few months ago after relying on it when my weeks got super busy. Now I meal prep and plan ahead, and I’ll be honest, while I’m much healthier and more full of energy, fast food absolutely saves time. If you know what you want you just walk in, say what you want, sit for 5 minutes while you work or decompress, get your food and leave. It’s like a 30 minute process including eating and cleaning. There is no meal I can make, eat, and clean in that amount of time. If you can, I think you’re exceptionally efficient and I would like some pointers lol
Pasta water on the boil and the kettle on (because the combined effect is a large boiling pot of water a few min sooner), take pasta sauce out of freezer, pop it in the microwave. Take out your cutting board make something green like a few tomato’s and cucumbers and a piece of lettuce. Drop some dressing/vinegrette/mayo idk your preference on. Takes literally less time than the kettle takes to boil. Spaghetti in, stir (I have a really good round pasta pot which makes spaghetti swirl really well by itself when it’s on a roiling boil).
Sit for five min.
Go back to the kitchen (also remember to defrost somewhat mild), put salad on plate, cutting board away, strain pasta, bit of salt&pepper, drop of oil. Plate it next to the salad, put sauce on it (and I’m talking more like ragu than marinara), and put the freezer box in the freezer. Pots away (I never wash my pasta pot as its boiling water and when poured empty the rest evaporates or maybe a bit of oil which is fine imo). Strainer away.
Eat. Put plate in washer.
Done.
I never order in anymore. Can’t trust the “gluten free” stuff and I’m also avoiding dairy so been cooking a fair bunch.
If you don’t want a frozen sauce, a basic marinara takes five min to make. A tuna thing I like is a can of chili tuna in oil on a skillet (whatever flat frying thing you want to call it), a large red onion I just take the outer layer off, make one or two large slices but not so it breaks the stem, then I mandoline (if you ever get one use the finger guard/veggie holder or lose the tip of a finger) it to the pan. You can do other veggies as well, I often add jalapeños. Bell peppers aren’t that good imo because they take longer to cook, but that’s prolly because I rarely chop them finely. A few min to get a nice browning in the chili oil for the onions. Garlic. Then cream of some sort (I use plant based creams now), maybe a bit of tomato paste for umami, flavour as you go. Takes less than 10 min to make and if you don’t make too much and serve it all at once the pan is just a rinse and a paper towel and it’s clean. For carbs I like going rice noodles, they’re really fast. Or if you like healthy, you could cook rice and freeze/refrigerate it. There’s some sort of crystallization that goes on when you cool rice that much and it improves the hypoglycemic index, so keeps blood sugar more stable longer. Good for diabetics and in general.
Anyway warm one of those and serve the sauces over that.
Dishes in washer, done.
But yeah, those are if you’ve prepped at least one part… Just microwaving is imo kinda meh often, but carbs or sauce reheated isn’t bad.
I also eat kinda fast maybe because I was in the army as a kid and it kinda stuck. I’ve grown out of it a bit now that I do have time.
Meal prep is what really takes a long time. For instance mirepoix/soffritto style long cooked veggies are a base for lots of doses but takes ages to cook. So I freeze boxes of those as well, so then making even a bit more complex food like a nice ragu (made one with reindeer a few weeks ago, delissshious), you can just quickly flash the meat, add the veggies, tomato base, some red wine. Boil pasta at the same time.
Not exactly a 30min thing but not hours long.
But yeah I don’t commute so I just really didn’t understand. I wasn’t making fun. Just trying to widen my empathy.
Although I have to mention my kitchen often isn’t the cleanest, I’m not too fussy about that.
Idk what sorts do you like making? Some things keep longer some not. Basically having just like boxes you put into microwave like a risotto or something would a few min in the micro and use one plate and the box that could even be disposable.
Idk.
I’m not trying to tell people what to do just felt interesting to me. I used to live further from the city as a kid in another town and yeah if I’d pick up a bag of Hesburger (shameless plug for the Finnish competitor for McD. Even international to some extent. From my city, I was once at the owners grandkids house, it was in the middle of the factories. Had a pool inside lol. Spoiled brat. They make great mayos though.) then I could just eat it on the drive back home and then I needn’t bother at home.
And one can’t really cook while driving, so…
Also I used to drive a taxi for years. So yeah, I think I’m starting to get it.
I had just forgotten.
“Fast food & eating in your car?”
(I haven’t even had a car in years)
unless they have your order ready when you drive into the parking lot, there’s several dishes I could cook as fast as it takes for you to go pick up a brown bag.
Sure. When you’ve got a stocked fridge and a clean kitchen and a working knowledge of home economics, its can work.
If you said “doesn’t have the energy to cook” I’d get it but time/energy, eh pretty interchangeable.
There’s also the simple addictive quality of high salt, high sugar, high fat foods made to order.
Yeah.
Well, “well-stocked” is kinda subjective, but yes, it’s a valid point. I’m sort of talking about boiling pasta / making rice and you van either have some simple protein like tuna or fishsticks or meatballs with it, or you can take 20 minutes (and you need 10 anyway for the pasta to cook) to make some basic dish to go with it.
Mince, onions, garlic, stock/sauce of your choice. Doesn’t need to be fancy.
Add a few cucumbers/tomatoes to the plate and you’ve made a decently healthy meal in 10/20min.
But like yeah sure I understand the points I’m just, uh, accustomed to different things. Different isn’t wrong, it’s just different. (IDIC)
Doesn’t going to McD cost quite a lot compared to the amount of nutrition you get? Although they still make it up on calories with so much fat and sugar. And doesn’t it also take a bit of time? Or are the drive throughs really that fast and you save time by eating in the car on the way back home? Your traffic and commute times are sort of hard to grasp. I understand, but… don’t really feel it.
Ugh, I just made myself kebab and fries and haven’t had McD for ages because I can’t really anymore (celiac). I’d love a double QP with cheese and a large strawberry (or pear if available) milkshake.
The longest part of making this was waiting 15 min for the fries to cook in the airfryer.
Fries in the airfryer, kebab from the freezer, toss it on a pan with some onions and jalapenos. That, fries, tomatoes and a buttload of cucumber mayo and garlic mayo. (But also a bit of this sort of aioli I make, olive oil, habanero loads of garlic cloves and one fresh jalapeno and blend with a machine. To me It’s to kebab what wasabi is to sushi)
Doesn’t going to McD cost quite a lot compared to the amount of nutrition you get?
Heavy in calories, light in fiber and vitamins and the like. Also, the heavy sugar/salt content dehydrates you, leading to further food cravings. Its trash. Very bad for you for a whole host of reasons. But its a full meal that can go straight into the trash when you’re done. No cooking, no cleaning. You don’t even have to leave your car.
Ugh, I just made myself kebab and fries and haven’t had McD for ages
Hey, far be it for me to criticize the kebab shop. Definitely preferable to the crap McDs turns out, and arguably cheaper/faster to get your hands on while somehow being healthier to boot. I don’t think its a coincidence that kebab shops are all over the Houston downtown and underground, while the last McDs pulled out years ago.
Good street food is a blessing. But its also contingent on a dense walkable neighborhood. Far easier to find some good gyros in NYC, LA, or downtown Houston than out in the white boy 'burbs and exurbs.
Average american parent works (2) 40 hour jobs. So a 2 parent household is working 160 hours a week, and still cannot even afford their 4 car payments on top of the $349 espn sports package.
Anyway, no one has time to cook! Or even knows how to! Now hang on, I just pulled into chic fil a we’re going to be in line for about 30 minutes before i can get my order in.
This was a McDonald’s next to the Dallas Zoo…
McDonald’s is now trying to appeal to adults and the building reflects that. They did away with Ronald and all the characters long ago. No more indoor playgrounds. No more cartoon movie toys. I think they still have happy meals but we’re better known for their dollar menu now called a McValue menu
The McDonalds near me recently clobbered their tiny playplace and turned it into a … conference room/center?
About the only time I went there was when I need a place for my kiddos to spend some energy on a rainy day at like 8am, before other things opened. I was happy to buy a coffee and biscuit for myself and maybe a treat for them to pay for my occupancy.
Now, though, and I know I wasn’t a giant source of income, they have lost my custom and I just can’t see how any real business would ever run a meeting in a McDonalds conference room, so it just seems like a dumb move.
Maybe they want to discourage parents bringing their children? That also seems pretty stupid.
Probably liability issues with kids getting the stupidest injuries and parents suing them for it.
I blame the insurance industry and lack of public health care for this, not McDonald’s.
Has that suddenly become an issue in the last few years? They are famously the company that got sued for having coffee that was hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns, and that was in the 90s.
Like a lot of things I’ll bet it was an insurance liability plus a lot of labor to keep it clean and safe. McDonald’s is struggling to survive in a business where new=exciting and what your parents grew up with=lame. Burger Kings are closing left and right where I live. They’ve done nothing to adapt.
Funny thing about that conference room. I have an uncle who has quite a bit of money. He eats off of the McDonald’s dollar menu (or at least he did when it was still a thing). He’ll take us somewhere nice when visiting, he’s quite generous but he always makes a point to mention he eats at McDonald’s. He gives financial advice, i can see him holding meetings there
I once saw a group of about 15 elderly men having a get together in a Wendy’s. This was in a very small town. I didn’t speak to them but I got the feeling it was a regular thing. They were all very friendly with each other. Rather than a conference room, maybe it is more to attract groups like that.
I had forgotten all about that. I grew up in a pretty small town, groups of old men (and women, to a lesser extent) would meet up at the Hardees and McDonalds early in the morning and have their coffee. I’m sure that and the growth of remote work makes a conference-type room more appealing to more people than playground equipment.
Wasn’t part of it related to backlash McDonald’s got from essentially marketing themselves to kids? Make the place look nuts, kids say that’s awesome, let’s go there, now you got kids eating McDonald’s. Not suggesting that is how it goes, but I believe I recall reading something to that effect, regarding a rationale behind the new look.
As an aside, the building looks boring, but so does everyone’s “shades of gray” interiors inside and outside their homes. I drove black cars forever because black is best color for cars, but I got a blue one now, because we are just surrounded in shades of gray everywhere, and it is, as the sublemmy states, a boring dystopia.
Black cars look dirty so much faster than any other color, they get hotter in the sun, and they’re harder to see at night which ostensibly would lead to more accidents.
Yes they did get criticism for it but I can’t say if the change came about because of it. I did read that they got rid of Ronald during that short time that there were news reports of people dressing up as clowns and freaking people out.
Yeah you’re right about the colors of things. In the 90’s there was a big deal made about cars painted green again
Bottom picture: for adults
Top picture: for children and neurodiverse adults
At least, that’s my take since I like the top picture more.
My guess is because populations around the world are getting older, with an ever increasing median age. If there’s not enough kids to keep up profits, well time to focus on the adults, from their perspective.
Ronald’s second term
