<\/p>\n
Last month, McDonald\u2019s CEO Chris Kempczinski took on the Herculean task of enjoying a hamburger like a regular human. Describing the food as \u201cproduct\u201d on a \u201csort of bun,\u201d assuring the audience that he will be finishing the rest \u201cfor lunch,\u201d Kempczinski took a bite out of the Big Arch burger, then stared at it like a doctor\u2019s note. As more videos emerge of Kempczinski attempting to eat his own food, a simple question comes to mind: Don\u2019t you have clowns to do this?<\/p>\n
Kempczinski\u2019s video has kicked off a humiliation ritual as C-suite types from competing fast food chains strive to show that their food is not only edible, but enjoyable! It\u2019s become such a sideshow for the internet that folks are hunting down more videos of Kempczinski sitting alone and eating sandwiches. In one, he appears to attempt some sleight of hand with a napkin and a mouthful of chicken.<\/p>\n
On the subject of the online ecosystem, it does illustrate how Kempczinski is out of touch with his audience. I\u2019m not just talking about the cab drivers, the last-call drunks who need fries to stave off the morning after, or someone just ordering a coffee to use the washroom. No, I\u2019m talking about the true burger lovers of the world wide web. The silent royalty of YouTube, eager to throw each of these new menu items a parade from the driver\u2019s seat of their car.<\/p>\n
Kempczinski\u2019s setup? A muted gray office. Likely his own but it doesn\u2019t bode well how closely you need to look to make sure he didn\u2019t ask everyone to leave the common area. Outfit? Not much better. He looks like Tintin\u2019s uncle. Now let\u2019s compare it to a professional, like Joe of Joe is Hungry fame.<\/p>\n
In Joe\u2019s Big Arch video, he\u2019s showing off the hamburger like Xzibit just opened the garage door. Taking the Big Arch home to his den decked out in fast food memorabilia like it\u2019s the Batcave but Batman targeted the wrong famous clown. He\u2019s breaking down minutiae on the weight, juiciness and flavor of this sandwich like stock advice on cable news. He is eating the Big Arch to wedding anniversary music. He gives it a 7.0 but god, does he enjoy eating these things.<\/p>\n
McDonald\u2019s is one of the most influential corporations in the modern world. They were there when the Berlin Wall fell, eager to feed \u201890s Russians reconstituted chicken paste. They\u2019re a forever fixation of American culture, from their nonstandard franchisees to reactionaries angry about what they cook their fries in. Their iconography, from Ronald McDonald to the golden arches, are shorthand to Adbusters<\/em> types as the religious symbols of greed and imperialism. They have a trading card game.<\/p>\n Which is all to say, how far has Kempczinski fallen through his own ecosystem that he feels the promotion of these sandwiches rest on his shoulders? This isn\u2019t \u201cpink slime\u201d levels of gross but the sentiment since his influencer debut has mostly been that it was an unconvincing pitch. The internet is capable of providing a human face for him, for McDonald\u2019s, with Reviewbrah, with JoeysWorldTour, with Peep. Most of us eat junk food when we are hungry. The web has forged a new type of guy whose hunger goes deeper, to a spiritual level. They are the professionals of eating a sandwich on camera. The bigwigs at McDonald\u2019s should know better than to disrespect their craft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last month, McDonald\u2019s CEO Chris Kempczinski took on the Herculean task of enjoying a hamburger like a regular human. Describing the food as \u201cproduct\u201d on a \u201csort of bun,\u201d assuring the audience that he will be finishing the rest \u201cfor lunch,\u201d Kempczinski took a bite out of the Big Arch burger, then stared at it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5367,2869,5368,5366,4712,5369],"class_list":{"0":"post-5425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news","8":"tag-burger","9":"tag-ceo","10":"tag-enjoying","11":"tag-leave","12":"tag-mcdonalds","13":"tag-professionals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beteja.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}