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.
Dude those ball pits were special, they don’t exist anymore. Disease infested suffocation hazards, but special.
Slowly all colour and fun is being removed from our world it seems.
The death of Skeumorphism, the rise of brutalist minimalism.
Personified into the real world.
What is the skeuomorphism here? Because I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
In this case literally a Zoo.
But I was speaking for the physical manifestation of the transition of our software personified onto McD buildings.
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.
I’m my country they made it illegal to market fast food directly to kids. It may not be a choice, it may be regulatory.
This is about the US, the undisputed capital of the fast food world. That is definitely not the case.
Additionally, you know McDonalds corporate office did all kinds of research; they wouldn’t rebrand unless they were confident in the new branding. The sleek, monochrome building probably reminds people of cleanliness or something.
Look at how they mascaraed my boy. Enshitfication in its best example
There really is a lack of kids-themed restaurants. Rainforest Cafe, Old McD with play places, You’d think they’d be able to keep a place that caters to families open.
They’d need to charge amounts that families can afford for that to work.
Yeah, totally. All of fast food is in this downward spiral of giving you less charging more.
Looking at the menu back in 1980, you could get a meal for four for about $10.
That same meal today is just shy of $40
Unfortunately, inflation from 1980 is about 3x.
So they’re about 25% more expensive than they used to be. But the mean salary per household is certainly nowhere near 3x.
The cost of housing and everything else is way above 3x.
Economically as a society we’re in pretty bad shape, we’re scraping that lower limit of infeasibility.
And it also just got more expensive
For laughs, I checked out how much the meal cost in my city. It’s $12.
For two dollars more, I can get a better burger at my neighborhood bar.
Last time I ate mcdonalds we paid 15 euros a person which is quite a price for the garbage quality
It’s far worse in the states. Trust me, I had McDonald’s in the UK once because it was the only thing open, and I was shocked at the quality.
This was in Dallas. There was another one in Brownsville that this happened to.
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One is makeup the other one is the ugly truth
Not entirely, the food and price was also way better back in the day, especially the 90s
It was just as unhealthy back then though.
Unhealthy, sure, but better quality and yet cheaper. Now it’s expensive, but made really cheaply
Not exactly though, I mean yeah sure it is fast food but you dont get it that the quality of food there was way better back then
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
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.
Bottom picture: for adults
Top picture: for children and neurodiverse adults
At least, that’s my take since I like the top picture more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When places go bust faster resale value is more important. this means you need to build generic buildings that hold value when sold or rented.
McDonalds isn’t a fast food company. They are a real estate investment company. Their former CFO said as much “we are not technically in the food business. We are in the real estate business. The only reason we sell fifteen-cent hamburgers is because they are the greatest producer of revenue, from which our tenants can pay us our rent.” - Harry J Sonneborn
Problem being that even when they try for that, near as I see they are still just as prone to demolish it and rebuild anyway. At best the framing is retained, but they rip everything out including the drywall and renovate.
Same reason you see so many neutral colored cars these days. People used to have colorful cars because they were buying the car they’d be driving for years; now they get soemthing they know they can dump.
Or the customers who were children grow up?
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.
Look at fashion. There were huge changes from 1960s to 1970s to 1980s. The last wild change to clothes I can remember is pump basketball shoes. Cars used to come in dozens of wild colors; now everything is a generic neutral tone. BJork’s swan suit is the last really outrageous fashion statement I can recall [I know someone showed up naked recently, but dozens of folks have worn equally revealing outfits over the years] Almost all the new movies coming out are re-makes.
Look at James Bond. Amazon acquired the studio that owns Bond and pushed out the producers who’d helmed the character for decades. The creative process is in the hands of MBAs who only care about the bottom line. I can spend hours talking about how bad Henry Ford the man was, but I give him credit for truly loving cars and driving. I’ll bet 99% of the car executives today don’t drive themselves, so why would they care about the rest of us?
I hear you but I have to disagree on fashion. Check out what the teenagers and 20 somethings are wearing in cities. There was also a racial divide in fashion and music when I was growing up that seems to be gone. Today you can spot a white kid wearing an ODB shirt and a black kid wearing a Nirvana shirt. Most of the “rules” are gone outside of work. I’m in my 40s and one day I might dress punk and the next I might have a more hip hop look. I can wear things that would have someone questioning my sexuality a decade ago and now it’s normal for a straight person. It’s fun and freeing.
I tried to phrase that last bit so I didn’t come off as a homophobe but I’m done messing with it.
I live in NYC. Guys here have been wearing the same belt below the ass style since 1996.
If you’re in your 40s think of it this way. Remember Spice Girl mania? Even if you never picked up a CD, you’d hear them on the radio, in stores, all over the place. Whenever I hear the radio these days I hear an oldies station.
Compare fashion from 1960 with 1985, and then do the same with 2000 and 2025.
Interesting. I stayed in Brooklyn for four months a few years ago for work, and spent time in Manhattan and Queens. I saw far fewer people saggin there than in the small city in a red state I come from. I do agree the differences are smaller in the latter of the two timeframes you mention.
Pretty amazing to see some stuff about Solipsism and of the idea of what-you-see-is-what-you-are here.
I’m the only one who really exists and the world around me is a reflection of my mental state?
What did you (I) do to deserve Donald Trump? Is this a punishment for misandry?
What did you (I) do to deserve Donald Trump? Is this a punishment for misandry?
Yes. Unironically, yes. Young men have swung right in a way that the youth usually doesn’t and it is in a meaningful way because Dems and progressives offer them little, blame them for much and the right welcomes them in with open arms.
Oh, progressives offer them plenty, just not on social issues (and that’s the only type of change on the table)
To put it another way, anxiety is preparing for a fight. It destroys you spending all your life looking for an enemy you can’t see. But we all feel it
The right offers them an enemy, and a way to fight for something better. It’s a bald faced lie, but the need for something to change is overwhelming for a lot of people
but the need for something to change is overwhelming for a lot of people
More than that, it’s the need for community.
We are social creatures to the degree that we literally can die without a social identity.
The missing sense of community in the developed world is part of the many reasons so many young men are lonely and don’t know how to talk to girls anymore making them seek out incels and andrew tates, but it also community is supposed to help you feel purpose, identity and belonging. Your community is who (traditionally) helped you find a job, make friends and establish your traditions and ways of thinking.
When you don’t have these things around you, you will seek it out and yep, the right certainly has a open-door policy, they don’t care HOW fucked you are in the head or how ignorant you are, they welcome everyone with open arms, give them a target and reward you when you lie to the enemy and cheat them. This gives a sense of accomplishment and belonging to something greater than yourself. It’s addicting.
We don’t have community anymore, we have unwalkable neighborhoods and delivery services and social media and a general sense of apathy and cynicism that often results in violent pushback against ANY form of genuine emotional expression between peers. Is it any wonder young, dumb, desperately lonely men are reverting to dark-age attitudes?
This has all been designed. A population at odds with each other will never unify and cripple institutions of power with combined effort.
blame them for much
Is it time to bust out the crime statistics?
I’m sorry, I just have so much negative life experience exclusively caused by men. My heart tells me that these are just damaged boys that are too scared to heal but my brain says ‘dont get assaulted again’.
Is it time to bust out the crime statistics?
What is it you’d call someone who said exactly this but was talking about crime statistics broken down by race rather than sex, again?
Not analogous in any meaningful way. Unless you want to argue that men are underprivileged in society.
Continuing Feminism instead of switching to Egalitarianism was a mistake
Feminism has always been egalitarianism. There will always be people co-opting terms and movements for negative reasons. If men see feminism as something different that’s on them to educate themselves. Women never achieved equity and now (in the US) we are backsliding as a country.
And… that’s part of the problem,
Women haven’t achieved equity, this is true, and we ARE backsliding as a country.
But at the same time saying “Could people be co-opting Feminism for Misandrist and Transphobic purposes? No, it’s the men who are to blame!” that pushed young men to the Right to begin with. It’s time to take some responsibility, and say “Not my circus, not my monkeys”
Another reason why this can’t be Solipsism, Donald Trump is too horrible to be true, if the world was I see it, he would be a plot point in a really shitty movie panned for how unrealistic it is despite playing things so seriously.
Misandry or misanthropy?
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.
Unhealthy garbage, full of sugar, made off the backs of tortured animals not being peddled to children is a good thing.
We need more fun, kid friendly spaces but I’m grateful there’s one less hook these places have in children’s minds.
