The 4 Weirdest Things Hiding On Famous Fast Food Websites
The requirements for building a website for a fast food chain seem like they would be pretty simple. You take pictures of objects that are filled with a meat-like solution, and you put them beside the addresses of the places that serve those objects. Any other piece of information is superfluous, and if you disagree, you're obviously not the kind of person who would go to Wendy's. My lust for an order of six junior bacon cheeseburgers has never once coincided with a need to know about the history behind those little delights. A man created Wendy's. I get it. And trust me, I am thankful for his efforts.
This column is the story of those that went above and beyond and out and around and down into the bowels of hell in order to deliver the greatest fast food website experiences possible. Most of them were surely driven insane along the way, but you can't deny that they all had an indescribable vision. I say this because, if they'd been able to describe it properly, the hiring manager would've definitely gone with someone else.
Colonel Sanders' House Of Pain
ColonelSanders.com seems like a domain that you would buy just so it doesn't become porn. It's damage control that's purchased so that some misguided soul doesn't go searching for fried chicken and wind up with the erotic KFC parody Sanders' Original Recipe 9: College Gravy Girls.
There's no way to tell what combination of life experiences and inherent personality traits led to the creation of something like this. It's comforting to think that this all came from a single, contained person that could be wrestled to the ground by multiple other people if the situation called for it. If it came from one mind, we could identify the root of the problem and stop them before they make a Long John Silver's website from ransom notes written on the pages of The Old Man And The Sea.
If they don't just assume you can hear the disembodied voice
of a lifeless bust, that is.
It's terrifying to consider that this might've been concocted in some kind of group setting. A person thought of it, and then more people agreed that it was the best option. Those people are walking among us right now. They look like us and sound like us, and they may even act like us. They go home and kiss their spouse and ask their children about school, and no one will ever know that the assimilation has begun, until it's too late.
"So it's agreed: This is the best way to advertise our chicken. Kudos all around."
If your response to viewing the Hall Of Colonels is getting a craving for fried chicken, leave. Walk away from our communities. We didn't do anything to deserve the onslaught that you've planned for our species. Show mercy. We just wanted a family-size bucket for a reasonable price. We mean you no harm.
The website itself looks like it would play on TV in the background of a Rob Zombie film. There is something cadaverous about the way the Sandersbots roll forward, as if they were once buried by a creator who had suddenly realized what he'd done. There are six of them, and if you know anything about the strength of androids, you know that any one of them is as strong as three humans. They aim to tell the life story of Colonel Sanders in the most haunted-wax-museum-esque fashion possible. KFC's recent commercials have proven that the company knows humor in the same way that a man knows when the skin of his face is falling off, and all they can do is make blind rushes toward anything that might provide help or relief. The website isn't "haha" funny, as much as it's "Who left the door open? Is there something behind me?" funny. There's even a video game, just in case you need an excuse to spend a whole day drenched in horror.
For those that long for the excitement of escaping school to become
a sixth-grade dropout. Because chicken, apparently.
If I had to guess, I'd say the singing one was constructed to be their leader. That's why the boy robot has such a cold, un-loving gaze. He is forced to live in a dark world, surrounded by this. He is either being groomed to take over their operation or will wake up one day to find that, while he was sleepwalking, he stabbed the other five robots to death. I truly pity his existence.
Taco Bell Is So Hip That It's Frustrating
Taco Bell needs only one store, and they already have it. It's called "Taco Bell." It's hard to fathom why they would need an online store just for Taco Bell-related merchandise, but as with all of these exercises in madness, Taco Bell knows something that we don't. Taco Bell knows the crowd that it appeals to, and Taco Bell is here to make sure that they have every resource necessary to scream to the world "I LOVE TACO BELL. ALSO, I'M INSUFFERABLE."
As seen here.
I'm a big fan of Taco Bell. Hell, Taco Bell can help to decide whether I want to break up with a person or not. I can date someone who doesn't eat fast food. It just means that I'll be running a lot of "errands." But it'll never last with someone who specifically doesn't like Taco Bell. If we're driving back from a bar, and I ask where we should get food so that the next morning involves less vomit, and they say, "Anywhere but Taco Bell," the relationship gets an expiration date. Because that person is eventually going to try to change me. If you don't like Taco Bell, the mass of flesh to your left is going to be overflowing with other problems in a few months. "Anywhere but Taco Bell" has started the countdown to "We just don't connect as well as we used to" every time.
Then it's only a matter of time before the "I Live Mas you, but I'm not in Live Mas with you" talk.
If I eat Taco Bell, rest assured there will be some on my chest to let others know where I just had fourth meal. I don't need to put a logo on it, or worse, the sentence "IF YOU DON'T LIKE TACO BELL, YOU'RE WRONG." What kind of hip popularity do I attain by being needlessly combative about my fast food choices? What does the world get out of seeing that? But the biggest question is, who likes Taco Bell that much? It's hard to measure love for Taco Bell in any quantifiable terms. Taco Bell sells a taco 12-pack, and that's really the only way that you can identify just how much you love the place: You love it 12 tacos' worth.
Along with a shirt that reads "YOU HAD ME AT LET'S GO TO TACO BELL," the Taco Bell douche museum also encourages strange sexual appetites with an adult onesie that has "TACO BELL" written down the leg. Have Taco Bell scientists discovered a way to hump pure irony? Did one of them wake up and say aloud, "I know what my dick needs right now!" after dreaming about dollar PBRs and dogs wearing funny hats? A Taco Bell onesie was invented because some man looked down at his junk and discovered that he never really knew what he wanted.
Arby's Is Here To Encourage You
Being a human is hard. I've watched people adopt this mindset of "If you actually love your life and your job, you shouldn't need encouragement," but that's just not true. Every once in a while, you need to be told, "Hey, you're not shitty, even though you feel shitty." So, I'm not against getting inspiring advice. It's just that getting inspiring advice from an Arby's website is something that I never would've counted on. It's more reasonable to expect to get tax tips from the label of a Patron tequila bottle, because I can at least get drunk on tequila and call the IRS to find out that I, in fact, cannot write off my tequila purchase as "emotional research material." I can barely be inspired to go to Arby's when I'm missing the entrance to the Hardee's beside it.
Pictured: capitalism's D student.
The "About" page at Arbys.com is making some pretty serious assumptions about the people who are visiting it: They are in a fit of despair, and they need some cheering up. It has the standard links, and even a history of the company, but in the middle, it lists "SOME THINGS WE BELIEVE IN." When I first read this, I thought that these THINGS might be tangentially related to Arby's. Something about their sandwiches, or their curly fries, or the way that every other customer in the place always has the expression of "I wish I'd called my grandfather one last time." However, Arbys.com went with "SOME THINGS WE BELIEVE IN THAT COULD BE RELATED TO YOUR LOCAL ARBYS."
The first THING, out of six, talks about dreaming big and relating it back to the employment opportunities that Arby's has. That's nice. Jobs are nice.
Ideally, those dreams wouldn't involve a deep-fryer, but we're not here to shit on a consistent paycheck.
It only took two seconds of scouring Minion memes to come up with the insight for THINGS two, three, four, and five. Sure, you can apply them to Arby's, but what is Arby's trying to prove to us? We don't think that they're shitty people, and if we do, I certainly haven't seen the viral "undercover" video that proves it yet. Is their commercial going to feature a cashier grabbing some helpless woman by the shirt while shouting, "I am a good person! I am! I didn't do anything wrong!"? What are they compensating for? We wouldn't go to the Arby's website if we didn't have sincere trust in the tenets that Arby's stands for. No one needs them spelled out.
Six core values and not one mention of "5 for $5." How is that not #1? HOW IS THAT NOT ALL OF THEM?!
The sixth THING brings it back around with "Can a restaurant make a difference?" It's a question that certainly involves more than what I think Arby's intended. If you plan to make a difference, why are you spending manpower to tell us how fucking cool you are? When I go to the gym, I don't waste time telling anyone that will listen about how many doors I've opened for people that week. If you want high-fives, your one THING to believe in should be "We offer kick-ass roast beef sandwiches." At the end of the day, I'm going to bed with Arby's. Arby's doesn't need a wingman in the form of a quote saying, "Nice people are the kind of people that we like around here."
Chill, Arby's. I think we're on your side.
Long John Silver's Should Just Stick To Not Showing A Modern Long John Silver's
Has anyone ever eaten at a Long John Silver's before? If you're shy, you can message me about your experience. I know that this column makes it seem like I have the dietary habits of a single-celled organism that just consumes whatever it happens to come in contact with, but I can't seem to muster what it takes to try out Long John Silver's. And I doubt I'll be able to, unless there's an animatronic "Long John" Silver that greets you when you walk in. Is there? Message me about that too.
I like it when seafood restaurants appear weathered. I want them nearly crumbling from the effects of the sun, salt, and surf. The first Long John Silver's picture on their "Our Story" page looks like the kind of place that only fixes windows when a drunk person gets thrown through them. It looks like it serves questionable food and may smell like dead crabs on the inside. The floors would creak when you walked in, and the waitress would be kindly, but kindly in the sense that if you caused any trouble, she'd crush your jaw against the bar.
"You'd like a glass of water? Sure, here's a cup; ocean's right outside."
The modern Long John Silver's, displayed below it, is obviously meant to signify that Long John Silver's had humble beginnings, but it's now an empire.
This pirateless tragedy.
Back in the old days, you had to eat their food out of wooden bowls and you enjoyed the taste of fish and splinters, and now everything is plastic and easy to clean! How far they've come! But seafood usually isn't about convenience, or smooth, rounded edges. Seafood is usually about the locale and how it's cooked and the experience. If I'm going to eat potentially awful, quickly made seafood, I'd like to eat it in that first place, where a guy who looks like Blackbeard may ask me why I'm giving him a dirty glare and shoot me with his flintlock pistol.
The second picture just tells me that I'm going to be eating seafood in a building that might be a Burger King one day. Do the cashiers call you "landlubber" when they take your order, though? I could have my mind completely changed if they do that.
Daniel has a blog.
If you like Taco Bell enough to buy their merchandise, maybe you're the type of crazy that loves fast food so much that you're willing to make it at home for yourself. (And you probably aren't the type to notice the irony.) Learn how in 5 Do-It-Yourself Fast Food Recipes Tested For Accuracy. Then again, a strong love of Taco Bell may pay off. Just ask the guys who found $3,600 in their order in 4 Criminal Items People Found In Their Fast Food Order. With a promotion like that, maybe we'd all eat Taco Bell.
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