4 ms·
This article blows it way out of proportion. I had no idea that this even existed, and if it does as the article says, what a new low America has reached - find
by reedx8 7y ago
This article blows it way out of proportion. I had no idea that this even existed, and if it does as the article says, what a new low America has reached - finding culture and community at fast food grease joints.
- cm2012 7y agoYeah, those gross low class people. I, too, enjoy claiming that things I didn't know existed must be unimportant. Everyone knows that culture is found at stylized bars and haute eateries.
- nexuist 7y agoRight! I am shocked to see some of the rhetoric in this thread that is clearly held by higher income folks. To believe that community and culture requires material things like fancy tables and premium meals and dressed up waiters is....feudalistic, and the same sort of thinking that leads to golden toilets on $20 million yachts. Community and culture requires friendship and comradery, something the poor hold in droves and the rich spend their entire lives trying to find. It really must be lonely at the top.
- GuiA 7y agoPeople do their best, trying to make do with what people is accessible to them. If this revolts you on a deep level, then you could try putting some of that energy towards building the community places not owned by mega corporations that those people are lacking.
- sircastor 7y agoIt's more about spending time with people, rather than the quality or content of the food. It's not McDonald's that's providing or defining the culture. It's the people.
- Stratoscope 7y agoThere is a group of SF Bay Area amateur radio operators who hang out on the N6NFI repeater. Every week, one operator announces the Wednesday Luncheon (he always calls it a Luncheon) at the Black Bear Diner in Sunnyvale. This is a long lunch, nominally from 11:30 to 3, but sometimes they stay into the late afternoon. Apparently the turnout is typically 10-15 people. Now, the Black Bear Diner is not a fancy kind of place where you might expect to find "culture", but maybe community? I haven't been to one of these events, so I can't speak from personal experience. But I can tell from the ham operators who talk about these Wednesday Luncheons that they look forward to meeting up with their radio buddies in person, and they really enjoy the conversations and camaraderie there. Is that a new low?
- wavefunction 7y agoPeople will spontaneously form "community" with what is available to them, whether this is the dog park or hanging and slangin on the street corner. Far more repulsive is a society that promotes nihilistic anti-community based on materialism and conformity.
- StandardFuture 7y ago> promotes nihilistic anti-community based on materialism and conformity The GP never suggested anything of the sort. For saying negative things about fast food? This makes zero sense. There are objectively negative things about fast food chains and their targeting of poor communities. When did HN devolve into a complete lack of intellectual honesty?
- jcranmer 7y agoIf this to you is a low, then where do you suggest that culture and community should be found in these places?
- StandardFuture 7y agoCommunity should certainly not come from food sources that have a long history of slowly killing said members of community. And an article that could have very well been sponsored by said "community builder" is not proof of being such. Anecdotes are not validation of a pattern.
- DonHopkins 7y agoSo I suppose quickly killing yourself with Grand Slams at Denny's is right out, too? And if that's too slow for you, there's always the Pork Store Cafe on Haight Street in San Francisco, but they're too busy serving hoards of self destructive people to let them hang out for hours after poisoning themselves.
- glofish 7y agoThis makes no sense, from the beginning of time people would be hanging out at pubs and watering holes - places that primarily sell alcohol - a poison technically speaking. If anything hanging out at McDonald's is a positive development compared to hanging out at the bar
- listenallyall 7y agoif you read this article (or just looked at the pictures) or others about groups that meet at McDonald's, you'll notice most individuals consume little more than coffee. And "slowly killing people" is vastly over-dramatizing McDonald's effect on the vast majority of its customers. It's actually healthier than many similar options.