Double Plusgood! New! Improved!
I went to Arby's today. I hadn't been there in a long time. My sandwich was terrible. I know what you're all thinking... "Yeah, Arby's sucks. What's your point?" The point is I remember going there as a kid and eating a beef'n'cheddar that was actually pretty damn tasty. I remember when Burger King was good too. And Orange Julius for that matter. I can't even drink their overpriced fake smoothies anymore. Hell, I even remember when Taco Bell tasted good. It wasn't always the bottom of the fast food chain. There used to be a Taco Bell in the mall that I would go to pretty regularly and it tasted nothing like whatever toxic shit they put in there now. This was of course before Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and A&W became Kentucky Fried Taco Root Beer Hut. The thing is everyone knows fast food is shitty and everyone expects it to taste shitty, which is why no one notices when over the course of a few years the ingredients start getting cheaper and cheaper as more corners are cut until pretty soon you're eating 75% grease, 20% chemicals and 5% meat. When I was a kid you could order a quesadilla at Taco Bell that was killer. After a while though they stopped making it and no one had ever heard of it if I tried to order it. Then all of a sudden like 3 years later they came out with the awesome new quesadilla! They acted like it was such a huge deal. I ordered it and it was something totally different. It was disgusting.
The gradually decreasing quality of things reminds me of the book "1984." It reminds me in particular about the part where the chocolate ration is decreased but the public are tricked into thinking it has been increased. The government simply tells everyone it has been increased and prints articles showing where it used to be less and then went up. It's that easy.
The phrase "new and improved" is a good example of this. Things that are "new and improved" are not improved at all, they're just different. I first noticed this when I ate a toaster streudel from a box that said "new and improved" on it. The only thing I noticed different was that there was less icing in the little packet. This seems to be true of everything that is supposedly improved in some way. Improved really just means different. Every time a company decides to cut a corner somewhere and it has a noticable affect on the product, all they have to do is say it's improved so that when people notice it doesn't taste quite the same they'll just think to themselves, "Well it says "improved" on the box, so I guess the difference I'm tasting must be that it's better." Do this gradually long enough and you can pretty much destroy the quality of your product and get away with it.
But food is not the only thing that has been gradually decreasing in quality. Movies, music and pretty much life in general are going steadily downhill. Back when making a movie was a big deal, people would try hard to make a great movie. Now it's like they just come out on a conveyor belt. If you want to see a good movie you have to really search for it and it will only be showing at some small independant theatre. Throw in some tits and a few good explosions and you've got it made, so why bother with that whole artistic element? Same with music. Linkin Park. Godsmack. Limp Bizkit. That generic phony Scott Weiland/Eddie Veddar voice. I never thought I would see music get so commercialized.
So much has changed since I was a kid. What's scary is that I'm still very young and I'm saying this. I'm 22 for Christ's sake and I can remember when a double cheeseburger was considered a big burger and a 44 oz. soda was unheard of. I remember when you won a free soda under your cap and not some stupid code to enter online. I remember when a half hour TV show had one commercial break. I remember when cell phones were cutting edge technology. I remember when Tetris was a quality video game and games did not take months to beat. I remember when we didn't need to constantly be watching TV, listening to music or on the phone. I remember when kids played outside and got dirty instead of staring at a screen for hours and hours and hours. I remember when the customer was always right and businesses would sacrifice a little to gain good word of mouth advertising. I even remember life before zero tolerance policies, taking off your shoes at the airport, and schools putting two young boys in anger management classes for brawling over a girl they both like.
I am going to have to tell my kids legends of independant businesses. "This may sound weird little Bobby, but when I was your age Starbuck's was not the only coffee shop. There were different coffee shops with different owners. Sometimes the owner would even work behind the counter!"
I fear for the future.
The gradually decreasing quality of things reminds me of the book "1984." It reminds me in particular about the part where the chocolate ration is decreased but the public are tricked into thinking it has been increased. The government simply tells everyone it has been increased and prints articles showing where it used to be less and then went up. It's that easy.
The phrase "new and improved" is a good example of this. Things that are "new and improved" are not improved at all, they're just different. I first noticed this when I ate a toaster streudel from a box that said "new and improved" on it. The only thing I noticed different was that there was less icing in the little packet. This seems to be true of everything that is supposedly improved in some way. Improved really just means different. Every time a company decides to cut a corner somewhere and it has a noticable affect on the product, all they have to do is say it's improved so that when people notice it doesn't taste quite the same they'll just think to themselves, "Well it says "improved" on the box, so I guess the difference I'm tasting must be that it's better." Do this gradually long enough and you can pretty much destroy the quality of your product and get away with it.
But food is not the only thing that has been gradually decreasing in quality. Movies, music and pretty much life in general are going steadily downhill. Back when making a movie was a big deal, people would try hard to make a great movie. Now it's like they just come out on a conveyor belt. If you want to see a good movie you have to really search for it and it will only be showing at some small independant theatre. Throw in some tits and a few good explosions and you've got it made, so why bother with that whole artistic element? Same with music. Linkin Park. Godsmack. Limp Bizkit. That generic phony Scott Weiland/Eddie Veddar voice. I never thought I would see music get so commercialized.
So much has changed since I was a kid. What's scary is that I'm still very young and I'm saying this. I'm 22 for Christ's sake and I can remember when a double cheeseburger was considered a big burger and a 44 oz. soda was unheard of. I remember when you won a free soda under your cap and not some stupid code to enter online. I remember when a half hour TV show had one commercial break. I remember when cell phones were cutting edge technology. I remember when Tetris was a quality video game and games did not take months to beat. I remember when we didn't need to constantly be watching TV, listening to music or on the phone. I remember when kids played outside and got dirty instead of staring at a screen for hours and hours and hours. I remember when the customer was always right and businesses would sacrifice a little to gain good word of mouth advertising. I even remember life before zero tolerance policies, taking off your shoes at the airport, and schools putting two young boys in anger management classes for brawling over a girl they both like.
I am going to have to tell my kids legends of independant businesses. "This may sound weird little Bobby, but when I was your age Starbuck's was not the only coffee shop. There were different coffee shops with different owners. Sometimes the owner would even work behind the counter!"
I fear for the future.