I heard a bit of minor sad celebrity news on May 24, 2024. When I heard of it, I thought of an Eddy Burback video.[i]
On May 24, 2024, documentary film director/producer Morgan
Spurlock, famous for his gonzo premise documentaries, passed away.
But why upon hearing Morgan Spurlock’s death would I think
of a guy who traveled to 18 Rainforest Café restaurants in 21 days?
Maybe because Morgan Spurlock is to the YouTuber clickbait-y
mega challenge video what Julia Child was to the entire cooking video media industry,
a pioneer everyone who came after owes a big debt of gratitude.
For those of you not familiar with Morgan Spurlock, he was
one those documentarians I can best describe as from the Michael Moore (Bowling
for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9-11) school of film documentary. A traditional
documentary film maker is absent from the film and lets the scenes featured in
the documentary tell the story with maybe an occasional disembodied
distinguishing sounding narrator providing some general narrative for the
audience to follow. Spurlock, on the
other hand, made it a point for him to be the focal point of the documentary in
addition to the subject matter. His
famous exposé into McDonalds “Supersize Me” chronicled how eating supersized
portions of fatty fried food 3 times a day affected his health and implied how
similar fast-food chains and their fast food was definitely having similar
affects to their patrons as well. Variety,
in their obituary[ii] talked about how “’Supersize Me’ captured the
zeitgeist when it was released in 2004”.
I’m not sure if Spurlock was capturing a zeitgeist as much as he just managed
to make a movie version of a reality TV show that were starting to proliferate
on TV at that time.
The reason why I’m saying Morgan Spurlock was the father of
the clickbait-y mega challenge video is because the idea of binging something
on a massive scale like McDonalds for a month, is something that I believe has
become part of the modern YouTube popular algorithm. Not entirely mind you with nearly 30,000
hours of videos uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis, which means there’s probably
over 208 million videos as I publish this blog[iii]
(including yes “Supersize Me” which you can watch for free)[iv]
but a significant portion if it. And let’s face it, if we weren’t watching
these clickbait-y mega challenge videos YouTubers wouldn’t make them. It’s obvious why the #1 YouTuber right now-Mr.
Beast, takes the mega challenge clickbait-y video to the max and like Spurlock
puts himself inside of these strange mega challenges as well. [v] We watch to see if they can make it through
the challenge. And unlike, say, Mr.
Beast who modus operandi appears to be an extreme game show contest on a weekly
basis, many of the YouTubers who create these mega challenge videos are doing
it just for the joy of trying to do an insane thing on camera that isn’t
reminiscent of some Jackass slapstick comedy stunt.
I believe most of the
people who watched “Supersize Me” when it came out in 2004 knew McDonalds was
as healthy as a cigarette and Spurlock was preaching a message that was a duh
obvious message. I think most people in
the late 90’s and early 00’s thought of McDonalds as a place you take kids to
get their Happy Meal fix and their parents to reluctantly chow down on subpar
quarter pounders with cheese or whatever burger McDonalds was trying to market
to grownups at that time(see endnote iv) as they watch their kids burn off
those Happy Meal calories pretty quickly in the McDonald’s Playplace ball pits
and slides. Most of the time if adults
want better tasting food especially fast- food options, there are plenty of
other places they could go with foods that are almost as cheap and quick like Wendys
where Wendys at least make sure their quarter pound hamburgers are topped with
an antioxidant rich tomato slice.
Furthermore, if Morgan Spurlock went with a standard
documentary about how the food industry targets us and maybe in particular
children (There was a lawsuit claiming McDonalds was responsible for some obese
children in 2002[vi])
it still could have won some film fest awards and maybe even nominated for an
Oscar [vii]. It wouldn’t have made $22 million dollars
which was an unheard-of amount of money back then and now for a documentary,
but still, going the standard route still would have given Spurlock some
prestige.
However, I believe most people went to see “Supersize Me” in
the theaters to experience a bit of schadenfreude with Spurlock. The beginning of “Supersize Me” emphasizes
how Spurlock was eating a vegan diet and was healthy at the start of the
challenge. Meanwhile we in the audience experienced
a twisted pleasure watching a health nut become sick on the food that he
probably poo poo’ed the rest of us for eating all the time especially in places
where a McDonalds restaurant may be the only food source available for blocks
or miles. It also came to light that
Spurlock rigged his McD experiment when he lied about how his liver became
fatty (he was an alcoholic) and scientists haven’t been able to replicate
Spurlock’s results. [viii] McDonald’s criticism of the film and us is
right. Most people are not eating fast food on a daily basis if they can help
it although I know the CDC said 1 in 3 adults eat fast food every day[ix].
Spurlock himself could have chosen healthier options from McDonalds like maybe
drinking a 44 oz supersized Diet Coke instead of regular Coke or going for a
Happy Meal portion which Dick and Maurece McDonald would have recognize as the
standard portion they were serving up to adults at their San Bernadino
hamburger stand back in the 1950’s. [x] I think McDonalds had some salad options
back then[xi]
too. Spurlock wanted to show us through
himself how bad things can get if we eat a non-stop fast-food diet. The audience, on the other hand, watched a movie
to see a skinny guy get fat on the food many of us love so much and let the
message of how we all need to eat heathier fall on fatty deaf ears.
Another reason why “Supersize
me” is a popular documentary is part of the same reason why ESPN televises the
Nathan Famous Coney Island Hot Dog eating contest on July 4th. I
think most of us, even if tempted to try and take advantage of all you can eat hot
dogs, or never-ending pasta or shrimp or bottomless fries, rarely if ever eat
more than one or two or maybe if we stretch our stomachs a little more three
portions of the foods we are trying to binge on before we become bloated and
disgusted with ourselves for eating to the point where we are ready to explode
if we dare to refresh our breath with a wafer thin after dinner mint. I’m
not sure nowadays if I could eat one Nathan’s hot dog (or let’s be real, a
Vienna beef Chicago style dog) and keep it in my system for 10 minutes let
alone the 62[xii]
Joey Chestnut downed in 10 minutes flat in 2023. We like to cheer on those who attempt to do
what we know we physically cannot do. It’s probably why we pay professional athletes
millions of dollars to throw a ball or hit a ball or dunk a ball we ourselves
haven’t been able to throw, or dunk, or hit since our childhood if we could
have been able to throw, or dunk or hit the ball to begin with in our childhood
years. Professional team owners know
we’ll pay millions of dollars to watch their players do something we ourselves
view as impossible and get joy when someone else accomplishes it.
Let’s also not forget, McDonalds started to supersize their
fries and drinks in the 1980’s when everything had to be bigger and more
outrageous to get someone’s attention.
McDonalds was not only competing against the usual burger rivals like
Burger King and Wendys, but they were also competing against the themed
restaurants that were popping up like The Hard Rock Café, Planet Hollywood, Johnny
Rockets, and, yes, The Rainforest Café who all had some type of gourmet hamburger
on the menu. Moreover you had the casual dining experience
growing like Chili’s , TGIFridays, Ruby Tuesdays, and especially Red Robin
gourmet hamburgers with their bottomless fries that clearly are miles above the
taste (and price) of McDonald’s Big Mac. McDonalds had to go large on those items were
small in price to them like the Cokes and fries to draw in the crowds. And
while supersize portions look great on TV, in the real world, they may not
always taste so great. I know myself
whenever I get a large fry from McDonalds about half of them are edible and the
other half are awful. So, it was nice to
see a guy suffer on the kind of food I find myself predominantly choosing when
it feels like I have no other realistic choice.
Which brings me to that Eddy Burback visiting 18 Rainforest
Café’s in 21 days which was added to YouTube on June 30th, 2022, and
to date has 9.7 views as of writing this blog.
For those of you not familiar with Eddy Burback and his YouTube channel,
I would describe his channel as vlogger version of my random thoughts
blog. One moment he’s talking with his
brother about Nintendo WII Sports Resort, another minute he is going on about
how awards shows should be like the Nickelodeon Kids Choice awards where the
winner is slimed. I really loved his
takedown of pompous Bill Maher[xiii]
. However, I know part of the reason why
the algorithm recommended Burback and the 18 Rainforest Cafés in a 21 day span to
me is because YouTube knows I love to watch Disney Food Blog for my vicarious Walt
Disney World trip without having to come up with the $5k-$10K I’d need to do a
standard Walt Disney World trip for me and my husband. Rainforest Café, for those of you who have
never dined there, gives you a jungle audio-animatronic experience that appeals
to your kids or to the kid in you, but has a greater variety of food and drinks
than a Chuck-E-Cheese pizza and wings place.
The idea to travel all 18 Rainforest Cafés came from Burback’s friend
and fellow YouTuber Ted Nivison[xiv]
who thought it would be a great idea to
relive a great experience from his childhood that was disappearing like most
actual rainforests on this planet thanks to the predominance of another
rainforest named company and the way they are destroying the Rainforest Café native habitat.[xv]
Like Spurlock. Burback was not having a
good time eating there and the food quality varied from boring to awful
depending upon the individual Rainforest Café along with the pathetic factor of
the malls that housed the café. Burback’s
suffering reaction to the various experiences he had is what made it watchable
for me. Nivision’s take on the
Rainforest Café was a joy-filled trip down memory lane combined with the
typical adventures of a road trip.
Burback felt he was being tortured which makes sense because who wants
to have their adult conversation constantly interrupted with phony fake thunder
or pay too much for basic boring food chain restaurant food.
Now, I did not feel the same sense of schadenfreude watching
Burback suffer the way I had when Spurlock suffered at the hands of
McDonalds. I indeed felt a lot of
sympathy for Burbeck’s situation. I think that’s because Burback made it clear
from the beginning going to 18 Rainforest Cafés was a stupid idea. I believe 9.7 million people watched (and
that video inspired a sequel where Burback traveled to all 21 Margaritaville in
the US that also has about 8.9 million views
[xvi]
) because we know he was doing something stupid and were caught up in the sheer
joy of the stupid nature of the video. Burback
isn’t layering the Rainforest Café video with some overarching highfalutin
narrative about how e-commerce and greedy monopolists[xvii] are pushing these types of themed restaurants
to the point of extinction thanks to inflation and lack of competition in the
food industry and elsewhere.
Now, there are other YouTubers who may take a mega challenge
and turn it for good. I like YouTuber
Ryan Trahan[xviii]
tries to confirm 1-star reviews of various places knowing many of the places we
go to aren’t that bad. Others are
content like the Good Mythical Morning to rank and rate various foods which can
be helpful.[xix] But I think what makes the Burback Rainforest
Café video stick out in my mind is the parallel of eating a lot of bad for you foods,
not feeling good and being somewhat entertained if you could call vicarious
empathy for a stupid situation entertainment.
Burback knew eating food at 18 different Rainforest Cafes was stupid, he had no
clue how this stupid idea would play out, but let’s just hop aboard that 2002
Tacoma truck and enjoy the journey he wasn’t.
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