Coarse, rough, irritating, gets everywhere

CHEWBACCA’S BACK

AND HE’S

The third season of Rick and Morty began with a convoluted story in which series villain Rick breaks out of prison before breaking up his daughter’s marriage. There’s also a huge battle that includes many Ricks from other dimensions as the story folds back over itself and past seasons, and the whole thing ends with a wonderfully nonsensical speech about how this all happened so Rick can get more of a promotional dipping sauce from McDonald’s.

The joke, which plays with the show’s theme that Rick is empty, alone and despondentdespite having everything he could ever ask for, is that all that work was done for a silly, arbitrary reason. There is no plan, and there is no meaning. It may as well be a dipping sauce.

This flew right over the heads of some of the show’s biggest fans, and McDonald’s stepped right up to take advantage of this fact.

McDonald’s is struggling. It’s an older brand that has become synonymous with low quality and disposable culture. Sales are down, and the new CEO needs to get them back up. So why not turn to the internet?

What started as a silly joke about Rick’s hollow soul became a marketing opportunity, and the best part was that McDonald’s didn’t have to pay Adult Swim anything to cash in. The promotion was never officially tied into Rick and Morty in any way, although McDonald’s did everything it could within the bounds of the law to connect the two brands.

“Look at that art, look at the font,” Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon told Polygon. “Look I’m not being sarcastic when I talk about this. If anyone from McDonald’s is reading this, I don’t see anything wrong with what they’re doing and clearly neither does their legal department.”

But of course the fans revolted. McDonald’s either underestimated demand for the sauce or tried to manufacture scarcity of an old product that was already meant to be promotional — the sauce was originally supposed to tie into the Disney film Mulan — and ugly scenes broke out as fans waited in line for hours only to be told that their location was out of the sauce.

This is a weird situation for everyone, because Adult Swim had nothing to do with the promotion, nor did anyone from the show itself get a heads up about how McDonald’s would try to take advantage of the joke. McDonald’s, for its part, didn’t seem to understand what it was tapping into when it leaned into this gag.

No one was prepared for the enthusiasm of Rick and Morty fans, who are already getting an online reputation for, believe it or not, narcissism and toxicity. And they took that toxicity out on McDonald’s employees, who had little idea of how bad their day was going to get.

Rick and Morty superfans, the ones who are giving the rest of us a bad reputation, like to “joke” about how you have to be smart to understand the show while proving over and over again that they don’t understand the show. Rick wasn’t saying the sauce was important, he was saying that nothing is important. Why not destroy a family over a sauce? Why do or don’t do anything?

The fans responded by giving the subject of that joke an absurd amount of importance in their lives. They felt real anger over not getting their sauce, and they don’t mind taking it out on McDonald’s.

It’s funny because McDonald’s is attempting to reference how Rick talks without paying the creators of Rick anything while making both brands look bad while also highlighting how quickly online fandom can turn into angry mobs in real life. OK, maybe this isn’t funny at all. Maybe the whole situation is sick, and you’re right to feel a little sick when you read about it.

Because the fans don’t understand any level of what’s going on. If they understood Rick, they wouldn’t care about the sauce because no one in the show really cares about the sauce. It was never referenced in the show again. Dan Harmon himself explained to us that the line was put there just to rip on co-creator Justin Roiland’s love for the sauce. If they understood Morty, they would be kinder to the McDonald’s workers who didn’t ask for any of this.

And if they understood the point of the show so far — that living only for yourself is destructive and selfish no matter how smart you are — they would be ashamed at how they’re acting.

But these Rick and Morty fans don’t understand anything about this situation. Not the way commercialism stepped in to cash in on nihilism, nor the irony of how they’ve given something intense meaning and value after being told by a fictional character that it had meaning as a way of illustrating that nothing has meaning.

They’ve turned into Fight Club fans who start their own fight clubs, not understanding that the point of the movie is how easily white male anger is co-opted for violence and mindless support of empty and hateful causes.

I’m really sick of of opinions and discussions being shut down with “it’s not oppressive if we like it! don’t you know that some women choose to do these things?”

me:

You are stuck in roadworks. There were no roadworks yesterday. There will be no roadworks tomorrow, when you do not need to drive. You turn down another street, but there are roadworks here, too. There are roadworks behind you. Everywhere, the sound of jackhammers.

To get from home to work, you must walk uphill. To get from work to home, you must walk uphill. There are no downhills.

You cross a bridge. Below it is Edinburgh. Around you is Edinburgh. Above you is Edinburgh. Inside you is Edinburgh.

Outside it is raining. You look up and see sun and blue sky. At your feet is snow.

You walk into a building and cross over ot the window. You are six stories up. You return to the door. You are twelve stories up. You return to the window. You are in the void.

Your feet stick to the floor in Hive. You can feel yourself beginning to sink. You try to escape, but every door leads to another dancefloor. You sink into a sticky darkness where unseen figures gyrate against you. Shots are a pound.

Humans are seen bringing sticks and toys to Greyfriars Bobby’s grave. No human is seen removing them, but they disappear.

It is 12.59. You hear nothing. It is 2pm. No cannon fired and one o’clock did not happen. 

You spit on the heart for luck. The heart beats. The city pulses. The city blesses you.

You wander down a side street. There is a statue of John Knox and a shop that sells only hats of many colours. Tomorrow you will return, and there will be a statue of Adam Smith and a cafe that does not serve coffee.

A tourist wants a history book about Princess Merida. A tourist tells you that William Wallace is only a movie character. A tourist wants to know why you do not know your own history. You weep that you only know the history of the reality that you are from.