• Efficiency or inefficiency? Or efficient for whom??
• “Unreality” Sometimes we can experience things secondhand where we otherwise couldn’t, like the blooming of the cherry trees in a Washington, DC park. Or video games. Or indoor skiing. Check out Ski Dubai! Yes, that Dubai
• ‘Unreality’ of place, intimacy, competence (to put it another way, simulation–think of those ‘personalized’ offers with your first name on them that come in the mail)
• Homogenization (check out Levittown, sprawl)
• Food and factory farming (chickens, hogs n’ cows)
• Dehumanization–the McJob
• Discomplexity–McPolitics, News. For example:
  • Talking points (standardized language, flooding media outlets, creating illusion of consensus, helping politicians avoid gaffes)
  • Sound bites
  • Presidential debates … substance, anyone (in the debate or the news clip)?
  • TV news (ESGN, Fox 5, ABC 7, KXAS, WTVF [the teaser …])
    • then there’s PBS
• McHealth (including McDeath and McBirth)–the stakes are slightly higher than getting a Big Mac slapped together during lunch hour rush
• Consumption and environment–the consequences of quantity over quality can sometimes be measured in public health outcomes, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions–that is, externalities. It would be wise to apply this concept specifically to some McDonaldized good or service or retail model.

Ritzer’s cage metaphor

• Velvet–I’m lovin’ it (but it is still a cage …)
• Rubber–I can bend the bars and leave if I want to (the ‘personal responsibility‘ and ‘personal choice‘ rhetoric and a new buzz term, ‘intuitive eating’). But why would I want to (advertising, the other frame)??
• Iron–Weber said, the trend of rationalization is a relentless march (what could stop or slow it? What if the price of energy, oil, tripled?)

Social problem?

Fast Food Women (Documentary)

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV