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.
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
That's because the nature of the marketing model has changed. Mcdonald's has shifted their marketing demographic to exclusively adults due to the decades of growing backlash and lawsuits over the nutritional value and predatory practices of targeting children. Among many other controversies. Of all the businesses in any industry, this is probably one of the worst examples to give.
Yes, their's truth from an architectural stance that does show a shift to contemporary minimalism. But McDonald's, while perhaps not the most inherently evil company in the world, at least by the amount of true harm they purposely do or the product they provide and those who voluntary choose to consume it. Is still a reflection of many of the United State's problems. Everything from issues concerning wages, labor relations, nutritional literacy, and lifestyle practices, to name a few.
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.
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.
Honestly sometimes I wonder if some form of Solipsism is true and the reason the world isn't bright and colorful anymore is because I'm no longer a kid.
Now do I genuinely believe I'm the only one who really exists and the world around me is a reflection of my mental state? No, but sometimes it's fun to think "What if?"
But yeah the only fast food joint in my town with any color or a play place is a single chic-fil-a, and it's always overly crowded, so clearly customers respond to this stuff.
Don't eat at Chic-Fil-A btw, the profits go to passing Anti-LGBT legislation.
All fun and games untill obesity sets in, probably before puberty. McDonalds tries it's very best to instill the habit of regular fast-food consumption in to children across the world. I'm all in favor for fun and games for kids, but I get uncomfortable when you target your fast-food chain at children. Let's just make a public playground for kids, and let's not allow the obesity-salesmen to target them.
Ronald's second term
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.
Ahem, not marketing to kids is bad?
Nah, bottom is better. Attracting kids to get the habit of eating unhealthy isn't.
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?
Isn't the business model based on getting people to love it when they're kids and become addicted then, before they're able to critically think about food, and then coasting on the people that have fond memories of it?
The adults going there now were kids in the 80s and 90s, and remember the old style. No kid gives a rip about a place that looks like this, with no characters or colors. Even today when I see red and yellow together it makes me think of them, but now it's all gray, brick, and beige, with a dollop of yellow just for the logo.
Personally I like this boring look fine. But damn if it's not gonna take a huge hit from being loved by generations that have no memory of fast play places and mascots.
Getting rid of the play area is probably good though because I mean really they are gross if you just think for a few seconds. But capitalism does dictate wringing every drop of injury money from anyone whenever possible.
Now while I support draining the bucks from corporations, ruining opportunities for kids to have fun memories too. If only having fun wasn't so injury-prone.
Why should garbage unhealthy "food" be marketed to children though?
Architecture in the Soviet Union
Look at how they mascaraed my boy. Enshitfication in its best example
CONSUME
Dude those ball pits were special, they don't exist anymore. Disease infested suffocation hazards, but special.
Looks like their customers have grown up and they tried to follow suit and became boring adults.
And it also just got more expensive
Code enforcement in cities and towns, especially more are more to blame for this than any other factor. Where I’m from the more affluent suburbs, barring in any kind of real individual expression or even signage.
Thanks for reporting the often ignored extinction of wildlife at the local Mcdees
They're the same picture.
We’ve been turning in Russia all this time without even noticing.
Ronald McDonald is a capitalist.
someone got tired of mopping up all the jizz from the ball pit.
Hail corporate!
I smell a Pizza Hut
