Burger King
Article
Burger King is a recurring brand in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 10, 2021 and February 16, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “basic protection borne out of the sheer size and visibility of corporations like Burger King”; “Burger King: “Have It Your Way”“. It most often appears alongside 1984, Abercrombie & Fitch, American.
Metadata
- Category: Brands
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: June 10, 2021
- Last seen: February 16, 2022
Appears In
Related Pages
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- 1984 (1 shared issues)
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- Abercrombie & Fitch (1 shared issues)
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- American (1 shared issues)
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- American ‘hobo’ culture (1 shared issues)
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- anarcho-syndicalists (1 shared issues)
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- Animal Farm (1 shared issues)
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- Anthony Bourdain (1 shared issues)
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- Athenian democracy (1 shared issues)
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- Athenians (1 shared issues)
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- Athens (1 shared issues)
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- Auberge de Jehan Cottard (1 shared issues)
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- Ayn Rand (1 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
I see Orwell’s dream as having come true in a limited sense. Upscale restaraunts that serve terrible food made by people working for pennies are relatively rare now( except on cruise ships). Their two primary aspects (hellish working conditions and bad food)have split and diverged and now exist in different food industry niches: on the one hand we have the modern fast food restaraunt, where the work is “done with simple efficiency…[scullions] might work six of eight hours a day” and true mid-to-upscale restaraunts, where a higher level of cleanliness and quality in preperation and ingredients is assumed, and I think in most cases, delivered upon. In these sorts of places, which Bourdain describes in Kitchen Confidential, the chefs work in hellish conditions, but are paid relatively well and work more reasonable, if irregular and nocturnal, hours. In fast food places, people are paid less but are subject to a form of basic protection borne out of the sheer size and visibility of corporations like Burger King and McDonalds. No doubt Orwell would find this situation ghastly in it’s own way, but I doubt he’d deny the life of restaraunt and hotel workers has markedly improved since the 1920s. Trouble is, Orwell doesn’t see these horrible working conditions are merely a result of people’s misguided desire to eat overpriced, low-quality food:
Inline links: Kitchen Confidential
As for you, you’re probably even more contemptible than these Athenians. Teach thinks the modern psyche is downstream of decisions by advertising agencies. At some point their usual trick of selling products through implied peer pressure and hot women stopped paying as many dividends. The companies did some kind of judo move where they told us “well, darn, you’re just too individual and unique a person to fall for a mass advertising campaign - and incidentally the surest way to make everyone understand that is to drink Coca-Cola, The Drink For Individual Unique People”. And everyone lapped it up. This isn’t even subtle, the highest market value company in the world uses the motto “Think Different”. Or Burger King: “Have It Your Way”. Literal actual Coke printed the 150 most popular names onto their bottles in the hopes you would see your name and think you had a special relationship with them.
Inline links: the modern psyche