A Boring Dystopia

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.

Dude those ball pits were special, they don't exist anymore. Disease infested suffocation hazards, but special.

Look at how they mascaraed my boy. Enshitfication in its best example

This was in Dallas. There was another one in Brownsville that this happened to.

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.

I'm kind of fine with not overmarketing fast food to children.

It's the subtler version of hostile architecture. You know how they designed benches to be impossible for homeless people to sleep on? They do not want a customer to stay at the building after they have made a purchase. It is more efficient if the children do not come inside and a new customer can take their place. The building is not made for humans, it is made for money.

This is misleading. The top picture is bright and sunny and the lower one is gray and dreary. Notice the tree in the background on the left without any leaves?

That is because the top picture was taken in the summer and the lower one in the winter when it is cold and the animals have been moved indoors to keep them warm. They will be back in the spring.

smh

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.

And it also just got more expensive

Ronald's second term

Hey, I live near that McDonalds!

It's right across from the Dallas Zoo, so you can imagine that there was a not insubstantial traffic of kids leaving the zoo and getting a McNasty with Cheese with their parents.

Everyone around here hated that they turned something fun and unique into another corpo hell hole of blandness, so there's that at least.

I know it's not a perfect example but I'm sick of modern design trends. Muted colours and uniform shapes, nothing ever interesting or emotion inducing. I'm probably pretty biased but still I'd love to see something that had some life to it.

They wanted to shift from marketing to children to marketing to adults so they could raise the prices.

I remember getting to play Nintendo 64 at our McDonalds. You could play things like smash, and usually could get in a full match before it did its mandatory reboot things.

Grocery stores would often have childcare areas up until the 90s I think.

So many of those little casual extras/“customer service” has gone out the window. It’s about stripping out everything that doesn’t immediately gain you profit.

Like, back in the day - retail worker was supposed to know their shit. It was a full time job. You could go to Dillard’s and some older guy could give you advice on what to match with what. You could go to a Radio Shack and say you were having trouble with a project, and there’d be a good chance that you’d end up getting some help.

But businesses would rather pay someone $9/hour for a part time job that’ll fuck with their hours every week. Why have someone who’s paid a living wage who can help sell you a really nice coat for a few hundred bucks, when you can pay some shit for some teenager to hawk polyester shit that wouldn’t even be worth paying a commission on?

It goes into this rejection of aesthetics - that all of these retail businesses are things which exist to funnel money. Aesthetics has cost - and might not even be agreeable to everyone! Why risk it when you could have Brutalist McDonalds.

TBF, the latter is a much better reflection of how lifeless and awful their food is.

Not just McDonald's, every big chain has it's own neutral toned square box exterior now. Nothing interesting about any of the architecture. Not that they have to be great works of art, but everything looks exactly the same.