That Deleted McDonald's Tweet? Too Surreal, Even For Fast-Food Twitter

• BRIAN RAFTERY CULTURE
 
• DATE OF PUBLICATION: 03.16.17.03.16.17
 
• TIME OF PUBLICATION: 1:45 PM.1:45 PM

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

THIS MORNING, SOMEONE with access to the McDonald’s Twitter account went into an emotional state best described as “Rage McMuffin”: “@realDonaldTrump You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back,” read the tweet, which was quickly deleted. “[A]lso you have tiny hands.”

The company later said its account had been compromised, a situation that likely inspired a lot of grimaces around McDonald’s HQ. But if the idea of a fast-food social media account going off the rails totally surprises you, you haven’t been spending too much time on Twitter, where burger chains and national restaurants have been serving up 24-hour weirdness for years. The reasoning makes sense, as fast-food chains make a virtue out of their bland predictability: you know exactly what you’ll be able to eat, what color your seats will be, and how much saturated fat you’ll consume (usually 37 quarts/serving). Twitter gives even the oldest companies a chance to reshape their public persona—and perhaps as a pushback to their vague, sterile public images, a lot of restaurants opt to set their Twitter default to “yakkity oddball.” There’s the official Denny’s account (@DennysDiner), for example:

There was also a day last month when the Denny’s account tweeted nothing but the same picture of an egg over and over again. The goofy tweets might seem strange coming from a mainstream, classically square diner chain, but they capture the sort of 4 a.m., synapse-straining, scrawled-on-a-napkin zonkiness to which many overcaffeinated Denny’s customers no doubt relate. Who among us hasn’t sat in a Denny’s booth for a few hours, mentally repeating the word “egg”? That’s how I spent most of my weekend nights between 1991 and 1993.

Then there’s the Wendy’s account, which earlier this year got into a sort of one-sided shit-talking spree:

Hardly grade-A zingers, obviously, but they qualify as at least semi-daring for an international chain that prides itself on literal squareness. This re-positions the company’s voice away from that of its hyper-sincere shirt-sleeved founder and towards something more sarcastic and knowing, much like the teenagers who, at this moment, are making fun of the sad, solitary middle-aged man dipping his fries into his Frostee (which is the best way to consume them, or so I’ve heard).

As for the Burger King (@BurgerKing) account, it also vies for weirdness, even if it mostly stays within Dad-Joke Land(TM). But that’s a fitting approach: Burger King is, after all, a place where parents make well-intentioned if corny comments while their kids sulkily slide under the table, wishing they were old enough for their own booth, or at least a trip to Chi-Chi’s:

It’s totally fine—a little sly, but safe enough that no one’s going to get offended, which is the point of accounts like this: To make you think they get you, even if you’re just one of several million followers. Of course, the idea that so many massive, impersonal brands would try to appeal to young people by adopting a cool persona and swingin’ on the flippity flop has sired some righteous outrage, whether from (now sadly inactive) Twitter watchdog Brands Saying Bae or the parody account Nihilist Arby’s. For the last two years, in fact, the latter has captured the dead-eyed, even deader-hearted ennui that grips many of us when faced with nothing but soulless, charmless fast-food options.

Nihilist Arby’s has grown so popular, in fact, that you’d be forgiven for briefly wondering if this morning’s McDonald’s Trump-tweet was some sort of botched attempt at cool-points-scoring dark humor. But the @McDonalds account is easily one of the most predictable fast-food accounts out there, full of winking plugs and greeting-card-like platitudes. Visiting @McDonalds is like visiting a McDonald’s: You’re not sure how you wound up there, but it’s exactly the same as the last time you stopped by, and you’re not going to remember any of this in an hour.

Obviously, the meh-ness of @McDonalds is totally fine—no one expects a place that sells hamburgers and plastic toys by the zajillions to risk alienating any customers with the occasional quasi-edgy one-liner. But the account’s commitment to upbeat, empty-calorie missives is what made that Trump-tweet so especially shocking: Who hasn’t walked into a McDonald’s, with its seemingly contractual good cheer and literal Happy Meals, and wondered whether a magma-hot ball of rage lingered just below the surface? Maybe the message was a rare burst of irked-employee real-talk, like a drive-in order-taker angrily kicking the recycling bin during his smoke break. Maybe it was all just payback over the Grimace-Trump commercial. Or maybe this is what the real voice of McDonald’s would be like, if we could hear it speak: Jerky, frustrated, making exhausted—and exhausting—jokes. No matter what, it’s the first thing from McDonald’s worth chewing over in a long time.