Maybe the author likes retro games and fast food?

The anti-corporatism shtick is so lame. Just because something is done by a massive corporation doesn’t make the thing bad. Just because something is an advertisement doesn’t make it bad.

I think this is pretty cool. Maybe I’ll buy some McDonalds today too.

Honestly I've been impressed with their fish sandwich recently – wild caught and actually flaky filet!

I'm no expert, but I thought we should prefer farm raised, no? Seems weird to advertise they are wild caught when that's a big concern with over-fishing in the wild.

My understanding of the situation is that the U.S. federal government has been doing an excellent job of managing fisheries over the past couple of decades — there was an overfishing crisis in the 80’s, but since then we’ve gotten our act together and implemented population monitoring and fishing quotas. There are definitely problems (especially with certain methods of fishing causing bycatch problems or habitat destruction), but researchers and regulators seem to be mostly on top of them. Farm-raised fish have their own set of challenges — mainly health concerns and the potential for environmental disasters [0] — so there’s not necessarily a clear winner between farmed and wild fish. It also depends heavily on the particular species of fish.

My source for this is an elective class I took at Oregon State University a few years ago, taught by a professor who is deeply involved in fishery research and management. So perhaps he was biased, but from what he presented I was thoroughly impressed with the sustainability practices of the seafood industry. One of my big takeaways was that wild Alaskan halibut in particular (which is what McDonald’s uses) is among the best seafoods, and one of the most sustainable foods in existence.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Island_Atlantic_salmon...

I agree with you broadly, and despite their abhorrent reputation for sourcing unethical animal products, it does seem that you're right about McDonald's fish. However, on a larger scale, one of the hidden ethical pitfalls is that a lot of wild-caught fish comes from international waters, where there are no regulations whatsoever, or are imported from Asian countries with little to no regard for such things. Japan infamously still allows whaling. The global fishing industry is also rife with modern-day slavery.

> or are imported from Asian countries with little to no regard for such things. Japan infamously still allows whaling. The global fishing industry is also rife with modern-day slavery.

Those are very good points that I neglected to mention, and my professor spent a lot of time discussing them. One of the main points of the class is that seafood sustainability is extremely dependent on the species of fish and the country of origin, and so it’s important to do research on where your fish is coming from. I don’t remember a lot of details anymore, but I do specifically remember that most stuff from Alaska is excellent, and shrimp is awful in terms of ethics & sustainability.

For bulk, sure; for flavour, wild is superior. But it's a finite luxury.

Double-blind tested, of course.

Pick your poison. Wild caught can deplete wild fish and farmed fish pollutes the environment. I spring for wild caught whenever possible.

There's a third option...

Literally everything you do has an impact in some way on the environment. If you want to boycott everything, you won't have an existence.

Living is all about understanding trade offs and making informed decisions. Just because plants don't scream when you kill them doesn't mean a plant-only diet is without negative effects as well.

> If you want to boycott everything, you won't have an existence.

And a fourth option, it seems. However dark.

Fish flavoured soylent green?

Not a nutritionally viable one

The new burgers are better as well. It's not in-and-out but they improved the cheese and the patties have gone from "circular cardboard" to "kind of resembles a burger" on the quality scale. For folks that live in Europe and have access to better McDonalds this might not be anything new, but for us it's a big upgrade.

Have you been trying the fish sandwich multiple times over the course of time? I didn't think that was allowed.

For me, it's the McChicken. The best fast food sandwich. I even ask for extra McChicken sauce packets and the staff is so friendly and more than willing to oblige.

One time I asked for McChicken sauce packets and they gave me three. I said, "Wow, three for free!" and the nice friendly McDonald's worker laughed and said, "I'm going to call you 3-for-free!".

Now the staff greets me with "hey it's 3-for-free!" and ALWAYS give me three packets. It's such a fun and cool atmosphere at my local McDonald's restaurant, I go there at least 3 times a week for lunch and a large iced coffee with milk instead of cream, 1-2 times for breakfast on the weekend, and maybe once for dinner when I'm in a rush but want a great meal that is affordable, fast, and can match my daily nutritional needs.

What is McChicken sauce packets? Mayonnaise?

It's a Canadian thing

https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca/product/mcchicken-sauce-p...

I'm concerned that it says "Mayonnaise Style Sauce Packet" and thank you for bringing that to my attention!

probably no eggs, which is what holds the oil and water together

Mayonnaise Style Sauce ingredients: Soybean oil, Water, Liquid egg yolk, Vinegar, Sugar, Salt, Mustard seeds, Mustard bran, Xanthan gum, Potassium sorbate, Calcium disodium EDTA.

Miracle Whip ingredients: water, soybean oil, sugar, vinegar, modified cornstarch, egg yolks, salt, mustard, spices, potassium sorbate, calcium disodium EDTA, dried garlic.

Thankfully you don't have to be too concerned. It's for the same reason Miracle Whip doesn't actually call itself mayonnaise, and Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise does. Mustard, garlic, etc., are not mayonnaise ingredients.

mustard is definitely a mayonnaise ingredient

Indeed, you're right. I thought at its most basic it is just egg whites and oil, but googling that specifically says mustard is part of the recipe.

So it's still a mystery why McDonalds doesn't just call it Mayonnaise when the ingredients are pretty much identical to every other mayonnaise out there, including Hellmann's REAL Mayonnaise.

Maybe it's one of those "It's only X if it comes from the X region" type issues. It just makes it sound suspicious for no discernable reason. Like buying a bottle of "Wet 'water' style beverage."

Hey, good for you finding something that you like, but god damn if this doesn't read like ad copy. If you're not getting paid by them, you should be.

You probably already know this, but fast food 5 times a week is basically putting in a request for health problems.

It's a copypasta. There are different versions floating around, but this one's my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnXgbMgfkYg

Damn. The sooner reddit gets its shit together the better.

agreed, you need to go back

Right. My experience in this realm is often the store employee either charging me or acting like I'm stealing from their personal savings account by asking for extra sauce.

e: Wow, I got sniped big time.

As someone who eats like shit all I can think at that list is that’s a lot of McDonald’s

>> when I'm in a rush but want a great meal that is affordable, fast, and can match my daily nutritional needs.

Huh. My experience with McDonald's: never met daily nutritional needs, no longer affordable and struggling to be fast.

I don't think it's unreasonable anti-corporatism so much as it's a very rational cynicism about the psychological effect of marketing.

They did something cool and now you want to give them money. Why is that?

It may be reasonable and rational but it makes for very boring reading.

What is rational about being cynical that I want to spend my money on things I think are cool?

Maybe there's merit in asking why I think it's cool to begin with (and in this case I hardly think mcdonalds is responsible for people who like gameboy games), but there doesn't seem to be much to gain in asking myself why I want to spend money on things I like. What else should I spend my money on?

But that's not what's happening.

They made a Gameboy game and now you're buying hamburgers.

If you're doing a 'vote with your wallet' thing to try to convince them to make more retro games that at least makes sense, even if id argue it's a little naive, but that's not even what were talking about. They made a videogame and now people are pledging to buy their hamburgers.

It makes perfect sense. McDonalds did something unconventional and apparently popular. People that found that valuable send the strongest signal you can send in an economy - money. "Corporate profits" take a look at the bank and they think "hmm, that seemed to work, we'll do more of that". They might not produce another gameboy game, that signal might need to be calibrated over further attempts to figure out why people bought more hamburgers. But certainly some signal concerning the approach they took will be loud and clear.

That makes perfect sense to me.

McDonalds obviously made the game in the hope that it will sell more hamburgers. If you buy a hamburger, their strategy worked, which means they (and other companies that are watching) have a reason to do similar things in the future.

What’s weird about incentivizing behavior you like in the hope that you get more of that behavior?

The behaviour in question isn't simply producing retro games. It is producing something unique and interesting that their competitors are not offering. It is an edge.

If their competitors copycat McDonalds' marketing, they totally didn't get that message, because by the time they clone it, the uniqueness McDonalds demonstrated does not apply to them - they've made a copy, or even a shadow of what came moments before. The edge McDonalds had is their cliff to behold unless they find something unique to counter with.

Acknowledging that it’s a multifaceted mega-corp (and some of the facets are bad) is it really naive to associate excellent marketing with moral goodness? What is this marketing doing if not signaling that at least some of the company reflects values you support? Deciding to support the company by buying hamburgers logically follows.

I’m enjoying the corporate apologetics personally. I’ve heard there is a Christian resurgence among the youth, and this makes me wonder if there will be a resurgence of pro-capitalism sentiment as well. Ideas, values, culture: it all evolves with time.

Because the food is delicious.

Ask a busker

Yeah, the evisceration of corporate-everything has really unnecessarily crowded out enjoyment of all the good parts, while at the same time somehow managing to look more ridiculous as a POV than I ever expected.

Back in the edgy days, I never thought I'd find blanket-corporate-hatred becoming quite so lame, to the point of even taking on its own corporate-style blandness, in the 2020s...

The “other people don’t speak how I prefer” regardless of the context is such a lame complaint.

Corporate blandness has infected us all; from my reference frame you’re just some bland text on a corporate website that silences spicy discourse.

Are others lame or is that all you feel given hypernormalized routines?

Look at the rebels willing to risk going against this thread by eating McDonalds; highway to the danger zone.

How bold

I was gonna eat McDonald's tonight anyway. Regardless of the sneering of the privileged commies who live around me.

"privileged commies" is a fascinating oxymoron. Is that really how you think of the people that disagrees with you?

I say it with humor, because it sounds like an oxymoron. But it does describe a certain wealthy, anti-capitalist clade here in Portland. (And I'll happily point that out to my friends, whether or not we agree on things).

I was just thinking of the last time I was waiting in my car at the McDonald's drive-thru with the rest of the proles, and a friend called. When I told him where I was, he had let out an involuntary "ugh" sound, and expressed that he can't believe I eat that garbage, let alone support that corporation. This particular friend owns a business that serves billion-dollar corporations, lives in a $1.2M house, drops $200 on bottles of wine at fine restaurants (where he's known for showing up in Transformers pajama bottoms) and grows almost all his own vegetables. Bernie stickers all over his (multiple) Subarus.

I guess "privileged commie" was a bit of wry shorthand, but it's not that much of a stretch.

It’s funny since pricing is set based upon social behavior (do we spend that or not and/or should we charge that or not?) capitalism is socialism with obligation to carry around a mind virus that preserves the figurative identity of Bezos and the like; they’re “better” capitalists.

Also hi from Portland

I mean, socialism is capitalism with a mind virus that encourages displays of self-sacrifice, without really eradicating greed. Personally I think hypocrisy is more corrosive than ambition, and bitterness is more corrosive than misplaced hopefulness. (I also don't compare my worth to others based on money, and I don't envy the likes of Bezos. I do enjoy being paid and occasionally buying things that make my life more enjoyable, but certainly not because other people can't afford them; holding a grudge upward or holding a superiority complex downward would be the kind of "mind virus" you describe, but it's totally unnecessary if all you want is to have an enjoyable and productive life in a capitalist society full of fun shit and chances to build things that people in communist societies couldn't have dreamed of).

The thing I love most about Portland is that you can have these intellectual debates almost everywhere you go, really get to hear other people's thought processes based on their personal situations, and understand where they're coming from. I'm by no means a hard-liner; but I spend half my time out in Newberg which has an entirely different set of baked-in assumptions and priorities. I'm as likely to get into deep debates with people there as I am here, but far less likely to get into interesting theoretical territory. At least this place still has the ferment, the ideological exploration and experimentation of one of the 1920s capitals of Europe, as opposed to the stochastic but rigid normie-core preference structure of everywhere else in America. I appreciate that.

So yeah, greetings from inner southeast ;)

American culture is sick from advertising. There will never be enough anti corporate sentiment anywhere. You should assume these businesses are killing you and know it because that's the one thing they reliably do. Anything else is to distract you from that. If they do something "nice" you can bet they could have done more better.

I think this is pretty cool too, but um..

> Just because something is done by a massive corporation doesn’t make the thing bad

I don't think anyone was saying this. Some airlines plant trees. That doesn't make planting trees bad.

But massive corporations (with maybe ~1% or fewer exceptions) don't base their practices on anything remotely resembling bad or good, and this leads them to profit-seeking behaviours that harm people on an individual level (which I think is a "bad" thing), as well as the planet, the environment, the economy, their competitors.

McDonalds is not a good or ethical company. The corporate apologism is "so lame".

> I don't think anyone was saying this. Some airlines plant trees. That doesn't make planting trees bad.

Then you misunderstood the comment in question. It was quite clearly saying this. We're reading an innocuous blog post, and this person is aping reddit /r/hailcorporate language to vilify a marketing ploy by McDonald's, "exploiting nostalgia blah blah blah."

You're right, they are not a good or ethical company. If it's corporate apologism to disagree with this complaint about "exploitation" of nostalgia, count me in as an apologist too. This doesn't register on the list of corporate misdeeds for me to be mad about. I'm more upset with "flushable wipes" that end up clogging local sewage systems.

It's hard to see what they misunderstood. The comment is about this thing being done by McDonald's rather than "something ... done by a massive corporation". The difference is in the specificity.

The point I get is not that "advertising from any large corporation is Bad" but instead that advertising from a corporation whose operations are Bad is Bad (because that specific corporation is Bad). It reads to me as an uncharitable take that OP is saying "making retro video games is Bad" (because large corporations are Bad) when I read "McDonald's being McDonald's is Bad" (because McDonald's is Bad).

(where Bad = "not good or ethical")

As a plumber flushable wipes have kept several of my service-friends employed-- use more, they've got kids!

> don't base their practices on anything remotely resembling bad or good

Exactly - they base it on profit and people who think this is good react accordingly

Their profits pay pensions of the ordinary people. How is that not a good thing?

I would otherwise be 'on your side' but this is not a great take. Lockheed Martin's profits also help pay for pensions. Phillip-Morris as well. I don't think this makes their business actions a net good.

Lockheed Martin's profits pave way to Pax Americana, unprecedented peaceful period in world history, deter China and Russia and helped getting Saddam, Gaddafi and Miloshevich to justice. It would be a net good to humanity either way.

> I don't think anyone was saying this. Some airlines plant trees. That doesn't make planting trees bad.

So therefore anything that produces profits that pays pensions is a good thing? Wow.

Relativism is used as a universal cudgel to reason that some short-term good of limited scope, outweighs a widespread long term bad behavior.

Moral objectivism is more popular than moral relativism.

ie Some good does not outweigh lots of bad.

> Their profits pay pensions of the ordinary people. How is that not a good thing?

It's difficult to take your comment as anything but raw trolling, as it intentionally chooses to strawman limited benefit by ignoring obvious consequence.

Their profits exist solely because they exploit and steal from other ordinary people. Most ordinary people will lose far more money to labour or wage theft than they'll ever gain from profits.

You think that finding a way to get food in front of people at the largest possible scale and the lowest possible marginal price hasn't helped anyone at the individual level? In your own words, they don't base their practices on good or bad. Meaning their actions should be statistically uncorrelated with doing help or harm. You can say its not a good or ethical company, but you can also say its not a bad or unethical company either. It just is, and that was kind of the point.

> You think that finding a way to get food in front of people at the largest possible scale and the lowest possible marginal price hasn't helped anyone at the individual level?

I agree with your point. McDonald's value meals have been a staple for low income households for a long time, and from what I hear the app provides daily deals that can mean the difference between someone going hungry or not.

Of all the corporations a person could get mad at, choosing one that is well known for feeding low income families is an odd choice.

The parent comments only criticism was this was done by a large corporation. There is literally no other substance to their comment.

The behaviour you’re describing as profit seeking is also really just value seeking, as in providing something that their customers value. I don’t think there’s substantial moral consequences one way or the other for a company to do this, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying or commenting on a corporation providing a product that you value.

Paste this reply:\r\n Their Big Macs are also incredibly tasty. The sauce and double patty beats anything at their competitors.

Yes.

Fuck capitalism, though.

> The anti-corporatism shtick is so lame.

Oh give me a break.

Don’t have a cow, man.

Why not give money to support retro game creators, instead indirectly via a fast food chain?

If anyone can find a spark of counterculture in 2023 I encourage it. There is no longer a battleground for the soul of society. It's safe to say the suits won.

Are you familiar with normcore? There's an argument to be made that the most counterculture thing you can do is to semi-ironically eat a Happy Meal in order to support indie Gameboy devs

> the most counterculture thing you can do is to semi-ironically eat a Happy Meal in order to support indie Gameboy devs

Like Winston at the Chestnut Tree Cafe

Yes. Only once you truly love eating your big mac will the hamburgalar murder you.

When you examine the most common deaths for Americans, it's either the Hamburglar or cars

Of course there is a battleground. The counterculture is more alive than ever. It's just all been thoroughly subsumed by capitalism.

Those kids on the streets protesting most recent excesses of multinational corporations? The hoodies and Guy Fawkes masks they're wearing, the signs they're holding, the chains they're rattling - all bought on Amazon, happily providing specialized merch for the "fuck the system" market niche. And what do those kids achieve? Mostly they generate attention that moves newspapers and keeps millions glued to where they can be best exposed to ads. Etc.

Yes, the suits love the anti-corporate movements. They are a quite profitable form of entertainment.

Counterculture doesn't really work post-90s because mainstream culture started embracing all the previously marginalised groups.

You can hold an illegal gay rave under a bridge, and in response mainstream media figures will write articles demanding the permit process be made easier, then McDonald's will retweet photos of your ravers eating a meal the morning after. This is...okay, I guess. Social permissiveness is the circus, and it's still good even though our share of the bread is constantly shrinking.

Hmm, I think I actually have something to contribute here in terms of understanding: you're right that counterculture doesn't really exist as it may have in the past, but the desire to show individuality still is there which has led to a progressive acceleration in the edginess/weirdness of modern meme culture.

If you feel slightly put off by the memes you see and/or discourse around them, it's sort of by design. It's meant to differentiate.

I've only recently realized this though (as I've expanded my perspective), and I think for the most part, this is something that largely happens subconsciously. If you ask someone gen z or younger, they won't know what you're talking about if you ask. That's mostly because your baseline of edginess/weirdness is defined by relative experience, and someone who's grown up perpetually online is likely to be skewed much more differently than someone who hasn't.

Hate to break it to you but the counterculture in the 2020s is the mindset of Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, and that overall crew. They are the ones pushing back against mainstream consensus and institutions, for better or worse! Really gives a perspective on how the "counterculture" glorified by the baby boomers was perceived by the older generations.

Chex Quest and Sneak King were both pretty amusing for what they were.

Chex Quest was my first FPS and only many years later did I learn about Doom. It all clicked and my gratitude for whoever at General Mills was responsible for the title flowed immensely.

Sounds like a win for society of you eat as much of it as possible. It'd really teach us a lesson if you ate multiple meals a day.

> I think this is pretty cool. Maybe I’ll buy some McDonalds today too.

Plenty of people will have plenty of issues with a major corporation. But it's worth pointing out that McDonald's is one of the most prominent fast food chains which has no problem with animal abuse in terms of products from horribly treated livestock animals. They have trouble even making their french fries livestock-torture free .

Maybe this issue doesn't personally matter to you, but it does create a huge problem for a company that does something so shamelessly unethical.

> They have trouble even making their french fries livestock-torture free

They haven't cooked their french fries in beef tallow since 1990.

I just think it's weird to say that McDonalds, of all companies, needs or deserves 'support'.

No one needs to "support McDonalds", and no one needs to be encouraged to. It'll do fine.

The article feels very "teacher set a minimum word requirement on the essay"

Get used to it, it's probably at least partially generated by ChatGPT which really likes fluffing up the prose.

TBH, there are also quite a few posts here in this thread where my internal ChatGPT detector goes off. The funny thing is, they could also very well be meant ironically, and I can't really separate this anymore.

Explains the recent slew of "long form" articles.

It is okay to like things, even if those things are marketing campaigns by global corporations.

They're clearly joking.

How is this the only response which acknowledges the obvious joke? Are people even reading the words, how do you not see the jokey tone?

One of the symptoms of autism is the inability to recognize sarcasm <http://www.healthcentral.com/autism/c/1443/162610/autism-sar...> without the "help" of idiotic, illiterate signals like "/s".

There are a lot of autists on social media, sadly not excluding HN.

The irony of this post on YCombinator

Kinda makes me think of those tobacco advertisements of yesteryear. It's like "oh hey, Winston cigarettes sponsored the Flintstones, I'll never stop smoking Winstons."

Who knows, perhaps one day we'll look back on modern day fast food ads and consider them equivalent to cigarette ads.

I cannot read any enthusiastic endorsement of McDonald's without thinking of the meme/patent [0] from Sony proposing viewers skip commercials by yelling brand names at their TV:

> Say "McDonald's" to end commercial

> "McDonald's!"

[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sony-patent-mcdonalds/

You will eat the feedlot beef to support retro video games, citizen

If you see something obviously stupid, consider for a moment that the author may not be entirely serious.

I'd wager the game was made by a digital agency for expressly this purpose