The Brands™ Are At It Again

Boy I sure do love brands. They’re so quirky and relatable. They’re just like us people!

Take McDonald’s™ for example:

f! F! FFFFFFfffFFFff!!! OMG F!

I definitely relate to this tweet, McDonald’s™! I dropped a french fry while I was stuffing my face in the car once. LOL! I’m gonna like this tweet along with the other 10k obviously well adjusted, definitely not lonely, sad people following a fast food company on social media and liking all their posts like their quirky aunt posted them.

McDonald’s™ is practically my best friend at this point. I’m even thinking about asking McDonald’s™ to be the best man at my wedding. I hope McDonald’s™ says yes.

4.3 million people follow the McDonald’s account. All these brand accounts are followed by millions of people. Who are the people following these brand accounts? Who desperately needs to hear what Arby’s has to say about social issues?

This is probably the most Idiocratic (like the movie) thing about our society currently. Billion dollar companies using social media to seem relatable, and endear themselves to their consumers, who are nothing more than a source of revenue to them. It’s so creepy and depressing that it works so well.

I wrote about how insufferable the concept of “relatable brands” is in my January 11, 2021 post: right here.

I think the worst part is that there seems to be a mighty large overlap between the people who proclaim “Corporations are not people!”, and those that follow and like corporate accounts because they make cute quips or send out virtue signalling tweets about social issues. (see Ben & Jerry’s). Pick a lane champ. Are corporations evil, or are they excluded from that once they mirror your goofy-ass political opinions or make a few funny meme jokes?

The other day Facebook™ went down for some reason, most likely due to incompetence, and the other brands jumped on that fact to increase their P.R. scores amongst the meatbags on social media.

Get it? Because Facebook™ was down, but Twitter™ was still up. This is obviously because Twitter™ is a competently run company, and nothing bad would ever happen to them. Except this thing that happened last year of course:

Your website got hacked by a 17-year-old kid, guys. Maybe stop gloating, seeing as how your hack actually did damage and included theft.

But anyways, the tweet was popular, because there’s this creepy political divide between Facebook™ and Twitter™, wherein one is considered the “liberal” platform, and one the “conservative” platform. This is of course idiotic, because you’re responsible for who you follow and what shows up on your feed on both platforms. If your feed is garbage on either, this is a “you” problem. The garbage is looking back at you in the mirror, my friend. Consequently, both platforms poorly enforce their Terms of Service, and both platforms poorly filter out propaganda. I cover this in my previous posted linked above. Yet takes like this persist:

A bunch of folks (the impressionable ones at least) want to delete Facebook™ and Instagram™ now because a “whistleblower” who used to work at Facebook decided she needed to get famous and start making some real big league money (allegedly).

There’s already numerous things about this scenario that smell fishier than a wet market, but I’ll avoid going too much into it because it’s still too early to blow the whistle on this dubious story just yet. She does have connections to Democratic politicians (who are generally anti-Facebook) and is being propped up by twitter (Facebook’s competitor) already, which is suspect to say the least.

I do find it funny she’s being called a “whistleblower”, just like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning. The difference of course being that those three put themselves at risk to challenge the government’s power, while Haugen is fighting for the government to have even more power in regulating what citizens can say or post. If she ends up in a cushy political position within five years time, I will be exactly 0% surprised. But let’s all clap and cheer and pretend Facebook™ is the biggest threat to “weaken our Democracy” as Haugen puts it, and not government mandated censorship.

The thing that made me roll my eyes the hardest at all this, is that Facebook™ isn’t the only problem here, but Instagram™ is too. Yes, the website where people post endless selfies of themselves and food pictures is also a threat worthy of a government hearing. Thank you for speaking up about the harmful pictures, brave “whistleblower”. Hopefully you don’t get waterboarded for speaking this truth to power.

It’s led to this kind of nonsense reporting:

This kind of reporting even led to a #DeleteInstagram hashtag trending on Twitter™.

Yes everybody, delete your Instagram accounts because a “whistleblower” claims the platform harms teenage girl’s self-image. Lets also burn our rock n’ roll LPs because they’re corrupting the youth and turning them onto the ways of the devil. Sweet sweet moral panic. Good to see nothing ever really changes as the decades roll by. Definitely don’t take active participation in the lives of your children, or anything like that. Let’s try to use the government to ban or shut things down like rational non-authoritarians.

We’re doing it guys! We’re creating further protections for elected officials and celebrities! Keep going! Maybe soon we can start jailing or executing people who speak ill of the King. We’ll be back in the 1700’s before we know it, and all because moral panic is an effective tool to convince dumb people to give up their rights and give more power and protections to the wealthy and elite. Yay!

That’s it little meatbags… get angry at the technology. Get angry at the scary technology that you can use as a proxy for all of society’s problems. Burn the effigy! It’s definitely Instagram’s fault that we live in an empty, narcissistic society full of people who feel the need to post 7000 selfies a day on social media for attention. That problem will definitely go away if Instagram doesn’t exists. These people won’t just continue seeking validation on some other platform.

Like this for example:

Yes, she’s finally free after deleting Instagram™, yet her entire Twitter™ feed is endless pictures of herself. Good thing she deleted evil Instagram™, and broke the cycle of constantly posting pictures for other’s validation on the internet. See how Instagram™ is quite obviously not the problem in this scenario? It’s like complaining that Pepsi™ is full of sugar, and bad for you, then switching over to Coke™ and patting yourself on the back for making a positive change.

So now that I’ve gone completely off into the weeds, I’ll get back on the track I started this post about, which was the brands reacting to the Twitter™ post above. Get ready to witness pure, unadulterated visual cringe.

Here are multiple Amazon™ brands just naturally responding to another brand, as brands tend to do. Brands, they’re just like us. Good to see people could take time off from pearl clutching about how evil Amazon™ is to give free promotion to their creepy digital assistant who eavesdrops on your conversations and snitches to the government:

You goofballs are irate over drivers peeing in bottles, but this is a non-issue? We truly have our priorities in order here.

Here we have two of my favorite fast food restaurants advertising under the Twitter™ tweet. I like Burger King™ fries, but Cambridge University™ definitely has the better milkshakes.

Hey guys, are you bored? What with Facebook™ being down and all. Well you’re in luck because instead of going outside and getting some fresh air, you can order a pizza from Domino’s™ (only the UK one) or download some shitty mobile games off Google™ to pass the time. Hell, why not just do both.

This is where it gets a little weirder. Metallica is just yelling like a little kid hopped up on Mountain Dew Baja Blast™ , but what’s that on the left? Did anyone else not know that KFC Gaming™ was an actual entity? Evidently it’s not a parody account and KFC actually has a console in development:

What, I say what in tarnation? A console that warms my KFC™ brand official gamer chicken? Hell yeah, brother. A little chicken grease dripping in my gaming console can’t possible create any issues. Hell, make the console liquid chicken-grease cooled.

Sportsball™ chimed in with a generic “how bout that game” response, because what else would they have to add to this discussion. Meanwhile, Pizza Hut™ completely missed the point of the original post and replied like the topic was Garfield comics.

Twitter™ : “Hey guys, our site is still up and running, while our competitor is having technical issues.”
Pizza Hut™ : “I’m gonna eat your lasagna and sit on your newspaper while you’re reading it 😂”.
Very cool Pizza Hut™ . Thanks for that.

The bean water companies weren’t going to be left out. Starbucks™ decided to just shill their overpriced caffeine juice, while Tim Hortons™ went completely off-topic, because evidently they’ve been hanging out with Pizza Hut™ a little too much.

Next up, we have Uno™, who have a Twitter™ account for some reason. I haven’t even heard of anybody playing Uno™ since like 1993. What other obscure games have Twitter™ accounts? Is Yahtzee™ on that site? How about Parcheesi™? Does Mouse Trap™ have an account so I can keep up-to-date with all the latest important Mouse Trap™ developments? Then Warner Bros™ chimes in with the most half-assed response imaginable.

Lastly, we have Zoom™ . They make a clever screen joke, because what else are they really gonna add to this discussion? It’s just Zoom™.

That’s all the brand responses I saved, even though there were dozens more. No brand would be caught dead missing the opportunity to advertise their shit below a viral tweet that got 3 million likes. People proceeded to “like” these blatant advertisements by the tens of thousands because people are suckers for being advertised to in a relatable way it seems.

All these accounts exist merely to advertise on Twitter™. That is their only purpose. They hit you with the ads on television, they hit you with the ads in magazines, they even hit you with the ads on YouTube™ and Twitch™. You’re crazy if you think they’re gonna miss out on the opportunity to advertise to you on Twitter™ as well. Yet people like this kind of thing instead of simply ignoring it, like they probably should.

I can’t wait for the future of advertising, wherein you’ll arrive back at your place after work, and McDonald’s™ welcomes you home right before telling you about the new McLobster Milkshake. This won’t phase you of course, because ads are everywhere. They’re everywhere because you insisted on inviting the brands into your home at every opportunity. You even rewarded the brands by “liking” all of their horseshit. This dystopia is your doing, so enjoy it.

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