I wrote this for FTW!!!1 a while back, and decided that I wanted it to follow my blog too, because that lives on ‘ol Blue and I don’t know what’s going to become of the TS server after this schoolyear. The following is the complete reproduction of the original article.

I was at McDonald’s the other day, with Aaron, and he and I were talking. Of course, you should know at this point that nothing good can come of this. He and I were discussing McDonald’s newest ad campaign featuring people of many ethnic backgrounds eating McDonald’s food and stating that they are “lovin’ it.” We agreed that this is in itself quite amusing.

Webster defines love as:

1. to hold dear, cherish

Let me just start with a question. Do you hold your McDonald’s dear? Do you cherish it? Is it, to you, an extension of your being? I hope not. Don’t get me wrong, I like McDonald’s, but I don’t cherish it.

2. to fondle amorously

Have you ever fondled a burger amorously? I have, but I can assure you wholeheartedly that I was joking at the time, and my feelings for the burger were purely those of hunger.

3. to copulate with

Finally, how recently have you copulated with a food item? I can’t quite recall the last time that I did so, and the last food-related copulation that I recall seeing was Jason Biggs vs. an apple pie. Perhaps that should have been the tagline for the film: “American Pie: I’m lovin’ it.”

How incredibly ambiguous.

If you have not yet familiarized yourself with the theorized psychological stages of love, I reccommend it. I don’t intend to analyze them deeply in parallel with the McDonald’s ad campaign, but if you read them and you think about them, I’m sure you could be just as sarcastic as I could. What these bring to mind is a realization that love is a complex emotion, one that is hard to define, hard to pinpoint, and one that is (IMHO) impossible to fully understand. My ultimate question is: do we trust McDonald’s to assert that what each of the people in their ad campaign, or anyone who eats McDonald’s for that matter, feels for their food is “love?” I don’t think that the McDonald’s corporation understands love enough to be credible in that respect.

I propose that McDonald’s adopt a much more appropriate slogan:
“What I feel for this may be construed as ‘love.'”

Until then, I think I’m going to go get 2 apple pies for $1. I’m not hungry, I’m just lonely.