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KFC Mascot Col. Sanders Talks Malbolge Programming on General Hospital
- BitwiseFool 6y agoKFC has got a zany marketing team.
- dawnerd 6y agoW+K (not sure if they were part of this) is pretty good.
- mbg721 6y agoIt seemed like Burger King was headed that direction when they released their line of (surprisingly playable) Xbox games, but I guess they've backed away since then.
- monocasa 6y agoThat was because they hired CP+B, but then CP+B were too much of classic problematic ad bros for them, so Burger King backed out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispin_Porter_%2B_Bogusky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispin_Porter_%2B_Bogusky
- mbg721 6y agoInteresting; I wasn't familiar with the various players in big advertising (other than Sterling Cooper).
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoTheir Subservient Chicken website was one of the strangest pieces of marketing I've ever seen for a major corporation.
- cylinder714 6y agoPerhaps you missed it when the Quizno's marketing people had Rathergood's spongmonkeys sell toasted sandwiches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePP7jPYl-pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePP7jPYl-pg
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoProbably shrinking their marketing team like they did to their sandwiches.
- mbg721 6y agoAs opposed to KFC doubling-down?
- astrange 6y agoThey just did a great looking rebrand, at least. Although the building renders look like Jony Ive did them. https://www.fastcompany.com/90591634/burger-king-unveils-its-first-major-rebrand-in-20-years https://www.fastcompany.com/90591634/burger-king-unveils-its...
- glaugh 6y agoThe BK bumper car game has turned into a weird little christmas tradition in my family. Actually a very fun, easy-to-learn/hard-ish-to-master game (basically 2D Rocket League)
- kyle-rb 6y agoBurger King created WhopperCoin, but only for Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhopperCoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhopperCoin
- Apocryphon 6y agoMaybe big tech companies aren't the only ones who try to expand their moats with entries in random product categories and moonshot projects.
- marktangotango 6y agoI had this thought as well. "Sneak King" and the commercials back then were brilliant. Too bad the BK nearest me is nearly unedible.
- eindiran 6y agoOn the topic of zany and bizarre KFC marketing strategies, there have been several I bumped in to in the last few days. This dating simulator is published by KFC, starring the Colonel himself: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colonel_Sanders_A_Finger_Lickin_Good_Dating_Simulator/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colone... Another bizarre one I encountered in the last few days; there is the new Lifetime movie about Colonel Sanders starring Mario Lopez, entitled "A Recipe for Seduction".... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGUMA2LwskQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGUMA2LwskQ [EDIT] Apparently the whole mini-movie is available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0e7Bj_7T3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0e7Bj_7T3k
- tclancy 6y agoIs Steam compatible with the new Coolermaster? https://landing.coolermaster.com/kfconsole/ https://landing.coolermaster.com/kfconsole/
- munificent 6y agoAs consumers naturally learn to tune out advertising, advertisers must constantly adapt in order to get past their cognitive defenses.
- isaacimagine 6y agoBeautiful.
- smoyer 6y agoWhile watching college b-ball with my son last night, I noticed that the field-house at Louisville is (now?) named the "KFC Yum! Center". I can't really eat KFC but do appreciate brands that can poke fun at themselves or otherwise advertise with some humor. The melting Colonel Sanders snowman was a little creepy though! [0] https://www.kfcyumcenter.com/ https://www.kfcyumcenter.com/
- at_a_remove 6y agoIt is interesting to see how much of human parsing of language depends on prior probability, probably expected pairs of concepts, because I had double-take on that sentence, since my brain really was not expecting to find combinations of KFC, Malbolge, or General Hospital in a single sentence.
- motohagiography 6y agoSeriously thought the whole thing was generated by a connector between GPT-3 and a new deepfake engine. Still think that's what it is. This is mind breaking.
- dane-pgp 6y agoAh, you beat me to writing a comment that mentioned GPT-3, but I promise I didn't see yours when I started writing mine. Perhaps human thoughts are more predictable than we like to believe. Anyway, to make your suggestion of "a new deepfake engine" more concrete, let me include a reference to DALL-E, the recently announced text-to-image engine from OpenAI: https://venturebeat.com/2021/01/16/openais-text-to-image-engine-dall-e-is-a-powerful-visual-idea-generator/ https://venturebeat.com/2021/01/16/openais-text-to-image-eng...
- motohagiography 6y agoThank you, that's deeply horrifying! :)
- scrps 6y agoThat was my first thought as well until I saw the tweet, though the possibility of it being an acid flashback was a close second.
- dane-pgp 6y agoI had a similar experiencing when reading it, and now I'm wondering if there is a way to use a language model like GPT-3 to measure how unlikely a given string of words is, relative to other headlines.
- jandrese 6y agoThe Venn Diagram of people who know about Malbolge and people who watch General Hospital has to have little to no overlap. Was this reference made for exactly one guy or something?
- SkyMarshal 6y agoMaybe it was just an experiment with viral marketing, estimating a 1%-10% chance it would make it into programmer social media circles and make them hungry for KFC instead of pizza or avocado toast. The inclusion of Malbolge is obviously intended to cause them to look up how it works, resulting in acceleration of both their mental fatigue and physical hunger.
- mywittyname 6y agoMight have also been included because Malbolge is included in a listicle that is the top search result for "weird programming languages." I wouldn't be surprised if show writers did a search for something close to that phrase, found the article, immediately got the literary reference and included it in the show for that reason. Also, you probably can't say brainfuck on daytime TV. None of the other languages had interesting names, i.e., glass, whitespace, chicken, lolcode. Edit: They've probably done something similar with other technical topics, but we don't watch the show to know. Such as, having a rocket scientist on the show talking about building rocket recovery wadding or something after looking through a GIS for "rocket parts."
- oh_sigh 6y agoFWIW the title is probably the best part of this story. I watched the video clips and it just seems no different from any other cheesy soap opera.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThis is a new frontier for native advertising. Instead of a few gratuitous product mentions, the entire script is co-opted.
- Apocryphon 6y agoThis is like the modern equivalent of the Max Headroom signal hijacking. Bizarre mashups of tech, television and corporate icons. It's definitely a form of culture jamming.
- munificent 6y ago...except this time it's literally just marketing material for a giant corporation hawking junk food. The opposite of culture jamming, I guess.
- Apocryphon 6y agoThe commodification of culture jamming!
- krrrh 6y agoThe guy that named gifs may insist on a soft g, but he’s obviously wrong or a troll because graphic isn’t pronounced /jrafik/, and everyone other than a few pedants pronounce it the correct way. Similarly, Kalle Lasn‘s perspective was limited by ideology when he coined “culture jamming”. The term’s usage has expanded to encompass a wider range of mashups, thumbs-in-eyes, and appropriations than what its creator intended, and is frequently used in ways that raises the hackles of old school readers of Adbusters. In some ways its modern usage has become a meta-commentary on itself.
- eindiran 6y agoI agree with your general point, but the claim "everyone other than a few pedants pronounce it the correct way" does not match my experience at all. People I talk to seem to be pretty evenly split on the matter, and most are entirely unaware that there is any controversy about the pronunciation at all.
- sellyme 6y ago> but he’s obviously wrong or a troll He once made this assertion while standing in front of a PowerPoint slide that read "It's pronounced 'JIF' not 'GIF'". It has to be a troll, because no-one smart enough to invent the format is going to look at that slide and go "yep, this strengthens my argument".
- vessenes 6y agoKFC’s current marketing team is on fire. My teenagers sat us down recently and forced us to watch the kfc lifetime special, and have been asking for their gaming console (comes with a warming bucket for chicken, natch). HBS cases are going to be written about these mad geniuses very soon.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago> KFC’s current marketing team is on fire. My teenagers sat us down recently and forced us to watch the kfc lifetime special, and have been asking for their gaming console (comes with a warming bucket for chicken, natch). HBS cases are going to be written about these mad geniuses very soon. What the absolute fuck is this... I can't wrap my head around what seems like an AI based structured sentence, that I presume you wrote, and is starkly reminiscent of that story written about an app based darknet economy that is really just an AI meant to kept Humans addicted to devices and plugged into 'the matrix,' but I can't help but be intrigued. Can you provide links to this console and this series... I want to give myself a reason to stop being on the internet for a few days and I'm sure this would do it.
- eindiran 6y agoConsole: https://landing.coolermaster.com/kfconsole/ https://landing.coolermaster.com/kfconsole/ Lifetime movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0e7Bj_7T3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0e7Bj_7T3k Bonus round -- the KFC dating simulator game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colonel_Sanders_A_Finger_Lickin_Good_Dating_Simulator/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1 https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121910/I_Love_You_Colone...
- Melting_Harps 6y agoIt has fucking Slater from Saved by the Bell as the Colonel in it!! Oh, I can't take more of this I'm taking an internet sabbatical for a few days, this it just too much non-sense to process. It's like the Corpo dramatized parody version the Libertarian® Utopia™ [0] story run amok. In case its relevent: if I ever feel like fried chicken and get tired of chicken katsu or kare-age, I'm going for the grocery store option or Popeye's, this is the worst thing I've seen in ages and we really have to a deep look at ourselves if this actually works to move KFC buckets in masse. I'm going dark for a few days. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DloaYxQn1BM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DloaYxQn1BM
- snake_plissken 6y agoI love these commercials (and the Dr Pepper Fansville ones). So stupidly clever. But man KFC makes me feel so very ill afterwards. I'm not sure what exactly it is: I can eat Chik Filays and Burger King fine (the ~3-4 times a year I get fast food). But KFC, it's been like 7-8 years and I just steer clear now. It's nostalgically saddening because I remember loving the stuff when I was a kid, especially those mashed potatoes.
- mywittyname 6y agoKFC probably does not today taste much like it did when you were a kid (unless you are very young). > especially those mashed potatoes. Their potatoes are made from those dehydrated potato flakes and powdered gravy. You can make a decent facsimile using Idaho Spuds and Heinz jarred Homestyle Chicken gravy.
- Answerawake 6y agoI agree with you. I also feel ill after eating KFC. It seems more greasy than something like Popeyes. My body feels like it has had a sucker punch after eating KFC so I try to stay clear. My theory is that it is a combination of something in the breading they use + the method of frying. KFC uses a Pressure Fryer: https://youtu.be/9ZLKj2a_OPM?t=546 https://youtu.be/9ZLKj2a_OPM?t=546 Wendys and Chickfila also use a pressure fryer but notably their sandwiches are not dripping with oil when you order them. Here is the same pressure fryer Wendys uses but to fry chicken wings instead of sandwich patties, noice that they are dripping with oil: https://youtu.be/7owZz26W1_U?t=176 https://youtu.be/7owZz26W1_U?t=176 Popeyes uses a standard fryer plus a thick coating of buttermilk(as seen earlier in the video) and their chicken seems to come out cleaner: https://youtu.be/31dGYRnhS8k?t=113 https://youtu.be/31dGYRnhS8k?t=113 Seems like Pressure fryers + breading might be the culprit but really, this is just a wild guess. If there are any fried chicken masters here, feel free to jump in.
- phaedryx 6y agoMy takeaways: 1. Colonel Sanders is cannon in General Hospital 2. He knows how to code; in Malbolge 3. He doesn't know how to pronounce Malbolge 4. He was cursed by a warlock 5. Some Syndicates cannot be reasoned with https://twitter.com/generalhospital/status/1015384908192190464 https://twitter.com/generalhospital/status/10153849081921904...
- ravenstine 6y agoThey should bring back the actual secret KFC recipe. Sanders actually said that, after he sold the company, they changed the recipe and he thought it sucked.
- Aloha 6y agoAnyone who has read anything about Col Sanders, would know he would have actually done this sort of thing, he was success at marking himself, as his brand.
- ggm 6y agoWell.. I'm now thinking about fried chicken. So, while I am not going to eat any, they kind-of succeeded.
- stuart78 6y agoWhat I loved about this article was the feeling of being dropped into a completely foreign world. The visual and acting style of the soap is so weird. The presence of Sanders is so unexpected. Not being familiar with Malbolge, it was all especially esoteric. While there are many things in this world that I don’t understand, I few like this whole thing was a kind of delightful puzzle for five minutes. Nice to remember that off kilter feeing.