For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
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I want to speak to the manager sweaty! This is why my kids are unhealthy!
This gets on my nerves because literally everyone gets this wrong as nobody really knows or cares about the history of McDonald's architecture. Yet the argument relies on a historical narrative. This is not new. In the 70s they did this exact same thing. They got rid of the bright and flashy style they had used throughout the 50s and 60s. They used more earth tones and natural materials. Their goal was to make it feel more homey rather than oriented at kids/young people. Imagine going from white, red, yellow with space-age curves, almost Googie architecture, to beige and brown.
There is no woke architecture crisis. The difference is how we react to any change. It's all driven by social media outrage and flat-out manufactured bait. Every minor change anyone makes is amplified and blown up and added to some kind of culture war narrative instantly. Then it's repeated so much that even leftists will be like "this is true but because of dialectical materialism." It's not even true. Your 80s/90s McDonald's that you totally remember accurately was colorful because some franchises reverted back to white/yellow/red for the same reasons. People thought the 70s retool was too drab. Some were repainted. It's not a linear decline in aesthetics it, get this, changes over time. Something you like may come into style but then it will go out of style. It may come back into style again.
I know we are desperately grasping at any canary in a coal mine for the fall of capitalism, but I don't think it's correlated to the appearance of McDonald's.
When I took marketing in college pretty much every expert blamed the brownification of McDonald's and other restaurants on the success of Starbucks. Bright colors encourage people to keep moving, earth tones encourage people to relax. Starbucks showed the value of making your restaurants into places people could meet up and hang out at instead of just a stop to get food, especially relevant with the proliferation of wifi devices, and the fact that the customer base was self-segregating with the people who wanted to eat and run increasingly choosing the drive through. Lots of restaurants, although this is far from universal because it's expensive, now have a table or two with more comfy chairs instead of the traditional booths and metal ones, following the logic through to its conclusion.
Now we're seeing cultural pushback on the brown, if it keeps picking up steam we'll see a response from McDonald's corporate, and the cycle will proceed to its next phase of appealing to millennial nostalgia. But the logic of "make people want to stay in the restaurant" will still be the same.
Things were better when capitalism had a rival and had to appease the plebs you say? What a novel take.
I mean it's true and freaking sucks. The playgrounds were cool and getting a kid a happy meal and letting them loose on the playground gave parents a well deserved break. Yes it's "corporate slop", but it's better than the current bland corporate slop. As a whole society is becoming more "child unfriendly" as people have less children, and I find it kind of sad. And less colourful too. Compare car colour options from the 90s/early 2000s to now. So much grey, white and black, compared to the colour options of the past which stood out.
Unhealthy food as a treat + exercise is better than unhealthy food as a treat with no exercise for sure.
Yeah, it's a genuine complaint tbh, corporate bullshit aside. The "millennial beige" epidemic is right up there with it. It just makes it feel like everything is intentionally bland and boring.
It's sad when Burger King has better play places on average lol.
The obvious answer is that it's real estate under late capitalism being modular to quickly buy, sell off, retrofit, etc. but the more exotic answer I'm sure they're gunning for is along the lines of (((they))) want to take this from you, RETVRN
I know a lot of McDonald's got rid of their playgrounds because they were expensive to maintain (especially the outdoor ones), clean and insure.
the more exotic answer I'm sure they're gunning for is along the lines of (((they))) want to take this from you, RETVRN
I saw a lot of that in the comments. There are some comments that say stuff like "capitalists gonna capitalist" but even those immediately sweve into JQ shit.
They transitioned from a strategy that primarily targeted children and parents who wanted to take those children out on experiences to a strategy that targets adults.
Videogames and the internet probably played a role in the loss of playgrounds.
I remember when they added Nintendo 64s to their playgrounds. All the kids did was fight over whose turn it was on the half working controllers.
nah it was stranger danger, "super predators, and budget cuts. we got into videogames because we weren't allowed to go run around unattended all day like kids were before the mid-1980s
The same thing happened here in the UK though and it wasn't for "super predators" or "stranger danger" or anything like that really. Kids like videogames more than outside.
is neoliberalism insufficient?
Isn’t there also a general trend where during economic depression/general dark times colourful architecture and designs become more prevalent? I’m far from an art historian but I predict Mcdo’s will soon become more colourful (but still boringly shaped).
Gotta lock in the next generation of consumers....
we can't crawl around in a big steel mayor mccheese that smells of piss because of woke
I was watching a yt short that was a clip from the McDonalds biopic they made. In the clip, the owners of the restaurant had optimized absolutely everything for speed and cost reduction, including getting rid of carhops and devices that release exact amounts of ketchup. There was a comment that said something along the lines of, "Mcdonalds used to be so wonderful until it was bought and now everything is only for making more money."
Did you not just watch the short that was about the creators of McDonald's doing exactly the same thing?
Lol of all examples, the old McDonald's was doggy shit.
They're complaining because it's no longer the brightly colored place for children that it used to be. It isn't hard to see, but be flabbergasted, I guess.
The aesthetic was purposely bad even I thought it was lame as a child. I'm pretty sure McDonald's originally picked that aesthetic scheme to hurt people's eyes so after certain time they dont stay for long. Like how Texas Roadhouse plays loud music to get people move along.
im pretty sure
👍
Your dislike of something doesn't mean others shared your dislike. As evidenced by the post on Reddit that people on a not-Reddit website are hollering about. there's some irony here.
Yeah, indoctrinated Gen Xers and Boomers have bad taste. Thanks for the input
It's also why the seating in fast food restaurants is uncomfortable, to encourage you to eat your food and leave as quickly as possible.
We had rainbow color Mcdonalds with a lot of fun stuff and now it is boring and dull because of woke 😔
They won't even let me piss in the ball pit anymore because "you're thirty-seven" and "oh god I'm calling the cops". Thanks, SJWs...
Maybe if we had child labor these would still be around. We could hire them to use their tiny bodies to get in there and clean them up