'90s-'00s McDonald's primarily appealed to kids, as the colorful characters and Happy Meals were a big part of the draw.
'10s-'20s McDonalds has pivoted to marketing towards adults, in part because they had come under fire for marketing greasy, oversalted calorie bombs to children as the US obesity epidemic took off. The other reason is that mid-to-low income adults became a much more lucrative demographic after decades of wage stagnation basically created an entire generation that's too tired and overworked to cook for themselves but too poor to go out to eat anywhere else.
Don't forget that generation also saw home economics classes removed from school, so if they don't learn to cook from their parents they just don't learn to cook.
My daughter had whatever they call home ec now (consumer science?) last year when she was in sixth grade. They baked cookies.
And that was about all I did in home ec back in the late 80s too. That and sew a stuffed animal dog.
So I don't know that home ec is actually all that worth it. Not the way it's been done for decades, anyway.
Industrial arts was the same way. He had us make wooden tulips after telling a bunch of horror stories about how the power tools would maim you, so I refused to use them. And had I used them, I know now as someone who has used them since that cutting tulip pieces out of a piece of wood with a jigsaw is not much of a learning experience.
Also those grease bomb refugees that were 5-15 during the 90s?
They were 25-35 for the '10-'20 pivot.
They never had a chance...
No, it doesn't look like a prison. It looks more like a school or a factory.
......wait a minute.
OPthe original creator has never seen a prisonIt's not terribly far off. The barebones brutalist style where the chairs are attached to the floor, hard plastic molded tabletops. Lack of items that can be moved or taken completely conveys "do your business and leave". Obviously a screen that size that wouldn't be that accessible in a prison, but it only adds the harsh nature and lack of human touch of the room.
7/10 definetly reminiscent of chow hall.
I was thinking 'Apple' when I saw it, but I didn't make the meme. So I put it in the title instead. If you change 'prison' to 'designed by Apple,' it works better.
You mean the person who originally made the meme that OP posted
no i mean OP. unless OP outright says otherwise, it’s fair to assume they probably have at least a marginally similar opinion to the original creator otherwise why would they post it?edit: ok they came and said it outright lol.
I grew up with this McDonald's, it had a jukebox. My sister had life threatening food allergies, so we only ever went there to get orange juice, but I still loved it.
The Rock 'n Roll McDonalds in Chicago was pretty cool when I went to it as a kid. Looks like it's gone now.
Your sister risked death so you all could hang out at a place with a shark's head biting a surfboard. Respect.
If there were ever anything worth risking death over, it would be to hang out at a place with a shark's head biting a surfboard.
Also, that was like all we had to do back in the 80s when cartoons weren't on.
That's rad.
I've don't think this person has seen prison.
You say that but dear god, that tree has seen some shit
"Come into my fun Playland"
FUN!!!
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Old MacDonalds was a trip gone bad
E I E I O
I miss everything having distinctive features, personality, and allowing themselves to use colors and shapes.
Restaurants, business logo and branding in general, apps, everything getting normalized to the death. I know a large part of that is accessibility and cost reduction, but it's a bit sad.
In my town, subway stations where all themed around what's above them. No two stations where the same (there isn't a lot, so there's that). Now that the network is getting extensions and the old stations are remade, they're all flat, white walls with square lights, flat uniform labels (harder to see, since they're lined with the walls). If you were dropped in one without indication, it'd take some time to even know where you are.
And just none of it is fun anymore. Noble Roman's Pizza, before it became gas station pizza, had windows where kids could watch them make the pizza and they showed old silent movies and cartoons on the wall. It was awesome.
Now? Even the McDonalds playgrounds I've driven past look depressing.
Tbh I'm finding that to be quite the trend for everything today as a car guy do see some cars being cool and fun but compared to the 50s when even their equivalent of a Prius shit box was still trying so hard to look like a god damn spaceship rocket thing with so many colors that almost every car had two colors per car green and pink where common place today everything is ether trying to look like a ford focus or a SUV brick granted I currently work at a Toyota dealership so I'm constantly surrounded by Toyota cars that are in my opinion are the blandest of bland cars that only good because of their reliability Honestly even when modern cars try to copy old car design they always end up looking like the old car having a allergic reaction
in my state, NC, they don't even have the playgrounds anymore (I think they outlawed fast food joints being allowed to have play places, as I typically only see them when I vacation in Virginia)
I think there's now a law about the modernization/regulation of fast food restaurants. Just so we don't have a bunch of leftover Pizza Hut buildings anymore when a store closes.
Probably good that a junk food merchant isn't marketing to kids to heavily.
Jokes on you, they dont need to anymore :)
What makes you think they're marketing to kids?
I mean we are living in an age where Call of Duty's audience is 14 year olds and Pokemon's audience is like 40
CoD was always 14 year olds.
They're not marketing to kids because those kids grew up and are adults now.
They're not marketing to kids becuase:
A) it's illegal in some countries
B) It should rightfully be looked down on
A Finnish prison? That's way too nice for an American one.
Maybe it's a Turkish prison.
nordic prisons are unironically way nicer than this, they're basically particularly boring and secure dormitories with normal looking (if very clean) rooms.
Gotta love the bottom picture.
Gigantic displays that can theoretically put whatever message you want on there before people interact with them.
Each has two printed leaflets taped to the sides.
Idk if other countries had this period, but there was a time where mcdonalds in sweden all had these semi-transparent glittery green glass mosaics on the walls and that is 100% the nicest it has ever been, it was actually nice to look at and the generally dark interiors made it very comfortable to be there.
The current interiors are.. okay, but so fucking uninspired.. At least they have some wood panels here and there, but christ would it kill them to tone down all the stark white?
I was so confused when the lyrics didnt rhyme
E I E I OThat tree looks like the stranger on the street who offers to babysit your daughters for free.
And you say "okay... come on over" and make sure that stranger is never seen again.
Top one looks like from a horror movie...
You didn't grow up in the 70s or 80s, did you? That was what half the shows we watched looked like.
And by design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_%26_Marty_Krofft_Television_Productions_Inc._v._McDonald's_Corp.
Old McDonald was more fun, E-I-E-I-O
Old McDonald’s looks like an „okay“ bad trip in this case
nvm that tree is creepy af
Neither of these looks good
And the old style chairs which you could "twist" the seat on lol 🤣
I'm missing the ashtrays in the 90s photo
And that's why I hate everything and everyone
A youtuber had a good take: MacDonald's used to be cheap cheap cheap. Then they slowly tried to become fancier. So I think now they're stuck in a weird middle ground. Great opportunity for a new chain to go back to cheap cheap cheap.
I don't even think they tried. They became cosmetically fancier. Other than some coffee options to compete with Starbucks, it hasn't really changed the menu a whole lot in terms of basic offerings. Just higher prices and slicker, more corporate restaurants. I'm guessing they still do most of their business in burgers and fries, plus maybe McNuggets,
I'm guessing it's for more efficient cleaning. Bummer.
They don’t want you to spend time in the restaurant. Less and less McDonalds PlayCenters are surviving. The seats in the restaurant purposely get uncomfortable after 20 minutes of sitting. Harsh lighting. Drab surfaces. They want you to get your food and go. Even better if you use the drive thru or mobile app. Any modern fast food restaurant like McDonald’s, but especially Starbucks, does not want to be your “third place”.
That doesn't mean it has to be eye searing white, imagine if they went with gray granite-like surfaces instead, that would be so much mre pleasant.
The world is not McDonald's though. But yes, there is a trend towards sterile clean environments with muted colors.
Have you seen the beige baby stuff? My wife watches weird videos and apparently there's a trend to have a colorless baby pretty much.
Humanity slowly goes insane... :)
McDonalds is a reflection of the zeitgeist.
The everything resembles the prison?
Compare to the Carl's Junior kiosks in Idiocracy.
That movie really wasn't supposed to be a documentary.
Great read, thanks for sharing that!
My old McDonald's in my hometown had a GameCube / N64 hooked up with 2 controllers. Was pretty dope. I think they got rid of it though, haven't been in years.
They do that partially to encourage people not to sit down and eat inside for a long time. They want you in, buying their trash, and GTFO quickly after. They make the seats intentionally uncomfortable so you don't stay for long.
It also discourages "them" from sitting there with their dirty unwashed clothes and body when they dared to only buy one thing with the money they were able to panhandle.
Wouldn't want to let such people have a warm place to sit that wasn't the public library, now would we? By the way, when do we close down the public library?
Source?
The kiosks are great. I can more easily customize my McChickens, and they almost always come out boiling lava hot.
The move toward self-serve stuff is actually revolutionary for people who don't like constant social interactions, i have autism and holy shit just 10 years ago i would have been spending all my social energy just talking to cashiers.
Old times: people did the good drugs
New times: drug tests
This guy was in the lobby at the McDonald's in the local mall jamming on a self playing piano throughout my childhood. Now it's just a bland, boring lifeless shell of its former self.
more like a hospital 🏥 than a prison.
Seems to me like there's a pretty wide variety of McDonald's interiors.
Top image looks like a dystopia abandoned place from a Disney villain. Low image looks like a nice simple area
I hope Gen Z fixes this when we're running the businesses.
i'm praying gen Z fixes this by telling corporations to fuck off and going back to how fast food worked for most of human civilization: just random people selling stuff from their kitchen, basically.
fun fact: at least in rome it was basically standard for most people to eat "fast food", the streets were jam packed with various little food shops.
I think that's still the case in some places, take countries like Korea or Vietnam, where street food is everywhere and it won't literally kill you to live off of it.
Their food is absolute garbage do not eat there.
The fancy look is just what everyone else is doing.
America doesn’t actually have style. They have architectural and design dickheads throw shit at a wall and we have to put up with it and that’s what winds up in peoples homes.
And I have remodeled some homes to look like McDonalds and the client doesn’t even recognize it.
It’s so sad.
And I have remodeled some homes to look like McDonalds and the client doesn’t even recognize it.
Can you elaborate on that story?
It's been in style for a while
Saddest part is, I also default to this sort of appearance. Though if I do see a cozy place, I like it - but if you asked me to design something, it would be millennial gray. I have no imagination.
I miss the looks of the 90's McDonald's restaurants
I don’t like McDonald’s. I’m just old enough that the Play Place thing wasn’t for me.
But I’ve got family that likes that stuff, especially the kids. The one closest to my house was kept to look like a 50/60's diner with murals of rock n roll musicians and an old school juke box (with the lil baby singles records).
It was a pleasant, if not fun, setting. They gutted it to look like the prison picture.
This is mostly because they don't want you eating inside. Maintaining a dining room takes extra staff and other expenses.
This post brings back a recent memory of my high school senior field trip to Disneyland where we went to the nearby McDonald's first, and trying to do hygene stuff in the crowded bathroom felt so ghetto, and then at the tables while other kids were talking I was writing a comment on a pull request on Lemmy's GitHub repository
Hurrdurr Apple bad
Please tell me five good things about Apple.
Fuck it, I love playing devil's advocate.
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Seamless integration between their products (at the cost of having to be in their walled garden)
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Best, smoothest mobile UX out there (and I've used many Androids, including custom ROMs)
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Moving their computers from from x86 to ARM (much better power consumption to performance ratio). This will likely improve Linux ARM support too, as people use Asahi on Apple Silicon Macs and more packages are then created for ARM.
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Taking active part in creating industry standards (such as USB-C, which they admittedly should've adopted on their phones long ago, but they DID promise not to change plugs for 10 years when moving to Lightning).
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Macbooks don't bend like a lot of plastic non-Apple laptops do. Their batteries also seem to last longer - might be anecdotal, but I've fixed thousands of laptops, easily over a thousand Macbooks produced in the 2010-2017 era (I quit that job in 2019).
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hurrdurr "hurdurr apple bad"
