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International Visitors Going Nuts Over Fast Food and Walmart Has Me Wondering if We’ve Been Taking American Culture For Granted
By Matt Schultz
Published:
I’ve been spending the last couple days watching tons of content about international World Cup tourists losing their minds over American fast food and consumerism. These guys love it. They’re going nuts. And it’s making me think: Are we, as Americans, taking this stuff for granted? Should we be more pumped about the ever-presence of preservatives, high-fructose corn syrup, heart disease, drive-thrus, strip malls, parking lots, chain restaurants, consumerism, corporate greed, shareholder value, and late-stage capitalism? All that sounds bad when you list it out. I get that. But seeing how much fun international tourists are having, I’m faltering a little. Maybe this is some good stuff:
This guy is famous and rich as hell, and he’s using his time in the U.S. to absolutely load up at Walmart. There is so much stuff in his cart. This wasn’t a quick pop-in. He didn’t run in to see what the Walmart buzz was about and then leave. No, this is a man who fell in love with the store. Its brightness. Its sheer size. The endlessness of aisles, products, and opportunities. He was spellbound. Enchanted. In a kind of capitalism-induced fugue state, before his conscious mind could even register what was happening, his body had taken over, filling his cart to the brim with DVDs, bananas, tissue boxes, a phone charger, an AC/DC t-shirt, a car battery, and so much more. Walmart had everything he needed. Maybe it has everything we need, too. Maybe it’s kind of sick to have big-ass stores like this in America. I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud. It’s possible.
“I can refill this a thousand times.”
“Yeah, but you won’t drink a thousand cups of Coke.”
(Scoffing, shaking his head in disgust) “You don’t know me.”
As American as it gets. This guy learned quick: Don’t tell him what he can’t do. Maybe we should all adopt this kind of attitude toward soda consumption. Why not? It is objectively an awesome deal to drink as many sodas as you want for the price of one. Look at how much fun they’re having. Outdoor patio. Nice server. Energized buzz going from downing 400 caffeinated beverages. Seems great. The option is there. Who’s gonna stop us?
This person is just mesmerized by the big TVs. The slow pan up makes the video feel so dramatic, like a big reveal is coming, and in the end, it’s just a huge TV. And if you think about it, he’s right. It is objectively sick to watch a TV the size of the side of a house surrounded by a bunch of smaller, ancillary TVs like moons orbiting a planet. Think about how big a room has to be to get a TV like that in there. This building had to have been constructed specifically to accommodate that. A whole-ass building designed with the TV in mind. Amazing.
This woman went all caps over ranch. I haven’t been excited enough to go all caps over anything since middle school, and she’s worked up enough to do it over ranch. The food doesn’t even look good. That’s a burger on white toast. But she’s having the time of her life. We have much to learn…
Love that this guy used a stock image of a Big Gulp instead of just taking a picture of one he was drinking. Gotta assume he couldn’t get a photo of one in real life because every time he had one in his hands, he downed it in seconds and crushed the cup and spiked it on the ground and pounded on his chest and demanded more, then repeated the process with the new Big Gulp. It probably wasn’t until way later, after evening fell, pacing his hotel room unable to sleep because of the caffeine, that he thought, “Everything that happened in my life, good and bad, led me here, to this moment, to America, so that I could discover the Big Gulp. It’s my destiny. I was put here for a reason: to learn about Big Gulp, then spread the good news. Like a missionary evangelizing the word of the Gospels, I will bring Big Gulp to all corners of the world. I will start by by tweeting about it. Lemme check Google Images and see what I can find. It’s okay if the photo is kind of blurry and has a plain white background. As long as the words ‘Big Gulp’ are visible on the cup, that works.”
I like these guys’ attitudes. It’s contagious. We do have some pretty cool stuff here. It’ll be interesting to see if the tourists still agree after enduring the copious amounts of fast food diarrhea coming their way.
Kinkead: the Euros came to America, and discovered Diabetes
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…) email: M.Schultz@sportradar.com