🎵Ba da ba ba bah! It’s Brave New World.🎵
I’m actually going to say that I think designing a restaurant for disastrously unhealthy fast food in a way that makes it look and feel like a playground shouldn’t be legal, and I’m happy to see them look as dull and unappealing as possible to young children.
The ongoing health crisis is so severe in no small part because of things like that 1990s picture getting kids addicted to trash. This post feels like someone from the 1970s yearning for the days of Joe Camel. Plain packaging does work.
Edit: I thought Joe Camel was much older than it really is.
I recently watched a (german) video about the exact development of McDonalds depicted in the meme and it made me realize how much of the experience had been catered towards children and how I felt when I went there more often (or at all) when I was younger.
it’s not about mc d’s. almost every business is doing this. Everything fun, colorful, expressive and artistic MUST go. All must be replaced with homogeneous minimalism.
mc d’s is used as the example because they led the way with this shit.
Fair point! I entirely agree with that perspective in other areas. If we’re using this as an example, then I understand why, but I actually think this is one example where the change is a tangibly good thing.
That’s what makes using mc d’s as the example is a bad choice, but nobody consulted me about it.
I also read that cars turned less colorful since 1970s.
And a colleague told me that he read that skirts got longer on average since 1970, but idk about that one.
Also i noticed that most pop music these days are break-up songs.
Really shows you the mood of society.
Interesting take. Maybe they should be designed like an art gallery of various medical office styles. Kids would hate that.
Edit: I’m glad cigarettes are on their way out, but I used to love these when I was even stupider:
In addition to moving away from marketing directly to children, the reason a lot of fast foot restaurants are rebranding to look like grey cubes is to make the buildings more generic and therefore more valuable as commercial real estate.
We’ve all seen the local Mexican restaurant that definitely used to be a Pizza Hut. This is to avoid that.
That sounds like the commercial real estate version of cancer to me, but I’m no expert in that field. I can see you’re right, though. It’s up there with motel art and off-white walls.
McDonald’s specifically is famously a real estate company that happens to serve burgers on the side. The corporation owns all of the land that its franchises are sitting on, so they can park a restaurant on it and sell it for a profit after the land appreciates in value.
Wheels within wheels within wheels…
That, and they want customers GONE. Eating in take space. People who come, get food, and leave are their favorites because it increases throughput.
Waiting for this…
“Two golden menus!”
Hooters is gone. This isn’t off the table.
We used to have the only McDonald’s (that I know of) that was in a building designed by Eiffel.
They “modernised” it last year.
Wow, which piece of shit did they bribe for that? They completely destroyed the interior of the building. Isn’t there any heritage protection?
AFAIK it was part of a larger restoration of the whole building complex (this is the Budapest Nyugati railway station), and the global redesign of McDonalds. They justified it by saying that the architecture is closer to the original - the lower level only became part of it when they built the McDonalds in 1990, before that it was a separate diner for the poors in third class. The furniture is default McDonalds.
The overall restoration on the building at large is not bad per se, but they basically destroyed a symbol of the Hungarian 90s - 00s. This was the place where if you lived in Budapest and got wasted, you could get some nutrition in the city center, and it wasn’t full of tourists because they didn’t think that the railway station buffet was so good.
BTW the local franchisee is trying to cater more to a “fast casual” crowd rather than the bare minimum, so a McDonalds in Hungary has a menu three times as long as one in the Netherlands for example. All I’m saying is that it was a nice place considering. Sic transit gloria mundi I guess.
Thank you for the interesting context!
The place was a part of my early youth, I was sad to see it go.
Can I have my fries tho you were holding them those last three paragraphs no keep talking tho this is interesting
From beautiful 19th century architecture to boring modern office lounge. Not everything needs to be updated for current trends.
My college did this. It might have been due to bedbugs. They swapped the cozy built in furniture with this weird vinyl stuff. Bugs can’t get into the seams.
Some of that is from white balance making the top picture look warmer, but even accounting for that, it’s a tragedy.
Corpo interior designers should be hunted, and theblicenses should fund repairing damage they die.
When I talk about how much I miss the 90s McDonalds, I’m mostly complaining about the loss of a third space. My parents would go to McDonalds so we had a safe, climate-controlled, indoor play space, and we could spend hours there for the price of something off the dollar menu.
I don’t know of anywhere comparable these days. Anything indoors is going to be expensive, you have to get the city to unlock the local hoops, the cops start asking questions if you just want to hang out with friends, and if you have too many friends they make you get a permit to use the public park.
Library? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Libraries are basically the only remaining third space, but they don’t fill the same need as the original commentor. Libraries don’t have places for kids to run around, be noisy, and climb things. That would be awesome though
And the right+libertarians want to destroy libraries too.
Some do. My library has a play area set up for littles and another area set up for infants. On Saturdays they have a sing along story hour thing, and other events like that throughout the week. We also have plenty of local parks with playground equipment. No free place with indoor slides and ball pits though like McDonald’s used to have.
Libraries don’t have playgrounds, and don’t allow food, drink, or birthday parties with friends.
Actually a lot of libraries do events. They have separate areas for it
Whaat, my library barely has computers.
Thats unfortunate…but my city is like 200k people so that maybe helps. 6 libraries
Discovery Zone, man. I actually feel bad for the kids that never got to experience Discovery Zone. Lasted for like 2 years. It apparently failed because they had a mountain of debt (all those plastic tubes are capital intensive buildouts) and adults had to sit around while their kids played.
I feel like if you made it work like a gym membership for your kids, and had something for adults to do off to the side, you might be able to make the numbers work.
Instead of McCafe, it should be “McSoylent”.
Excellent suggestion. Here you go:
Would you like a 64 oz McEnergy with your McSoylent?
“I’ve exhausted my monthly ration allowance for McEnergy, so I’ll have to pass today.”
I’d like to change the order of the meme
Me, too, but I wasn’t about to chop the original meme and stitch it back together in a better order. If you do it for me, you can have all my imaginary internet points, though.
“You are in McDonald’s. Consume and exit.”
No kidding. Not just them either. I know it’s a cultural thing in US restaurants, but I feel like I’m being rushed out the door. I know on the surface it’s a having respect for a person’s time thing, but it feels like an eating contest sometimes.
depends how they do it. Nothing says “we’re a legit chinese restaurant” more than getting the “fuck off oranges” when you’re done.
Funny thing is, I love those oranges.
Hahah the fuck off oranges. I’ll never see them differently now. 😂
Thanks! I might get a print. Those are cool.
You have set me back financially by at least a month, but thank you.
That is long enough for our plan
We will collapse the human empire by convincing the peasants within it to purchase art from artists until the economy becomes untirely imaginary (as all art is at least somewhat imaginary) and collapses.
CAWCAWCAWCAWCAW
Long live the Crowvelution!
That’s SO Raven!
The order needs to be reversed. People don’t really read from the bottom up.
You’re right. I just didn’t feel like chopping the original meme and stitching it back together. I just made my little addition to the top. I guess that did make the post a little…shitty.
Yeah, I can get not wanting to spend the time/effort. Though, there is a difference between a shit post and a shitpost. People always conflate the two.
Not me. I only post shit shitposts so no matter why people hate it, they’re right.
Welcome to McDonald’s, the All-American Restaurant, papers please
A couple of minutes in Dystopika, annnnnd…
You laugh, but a cashless society means ID’ing oneself with every transaction.
80s : Pizza hut
I miss it every day. That salad bar. The cups. The lamps. I wonder what things of today I’ll miss in 40 years.
Being alive. 😉
I will never recover from that. You have my begrudging admiration. If you need me, I’ll be in the burn ward.
That salad bar. The cups. The lamps.
My god, it even has a drinks fountain.
McDonalds: Fuck you I’m eating! / Home of the Extra Bigass Fries
I was so sure that movie was hyperbole.
Adapting to their growing customers
There’s the hauntingly predatory nature I was struggling to portray.
needs to change the sign and logo to be more brutalist as well
You’re entirely right, but you might be writing cheques my 5-year-old phone can’t cash.
