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#26. The Substandard Will Not Re-Tweet That Wendy's Nuggets Guy
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Dudes Chatting — nuggets and internet panhandling: This micro-episode takes up the viral moment where a teenager asked Wendy's on Twitter for a year of free nuggets if his tweet got retweeted 18 million times. Sonny is pointedly annoyed — not at the kid, but at the broader culture of jokey internet panhandling and the corporations and celebrities who play along, arguing it rewards nothing and means nothing. The discussion pivots naturally to ranking the actual chicken nugget competition: Chick-fil-A is the uncontested #1 for both JVL and Sonny, Popeye's holds #2, and McDonald's is disputed but falls somewhere in the mix. JVL and Sonny both reveal they worked at McDonald's as teenagers, which settles the question of whether either of them has any standing to be picky.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00♪ ♪
Vic00:00:29Hello, and welcome to another micro-episode of The Substandard. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a quick reminder that full episodes of TheSubstandard are available every Thursday at 11 a.m., and Substandard show notes are posted by Jonathan Last every Friday at weeklystandard.com. Today, on the mini-episode, we are talking about Wendy's, the fast food chain, Wendy's Chicken Nuggets, and specifically, a guy who wants them for free. Sonny, please explain.
Sonny00:00:59So, this kid tweeted at Wendy's, which is one of the kind of fun-having corporate brands on Twitter. They like to mix it up with their people. He said, hey, how many retweets do I have to get for free chicken nuggets for a year? And the Wendy's account replied, 18 million. So, he, you know, quote tweets that and says, hey, I need free nugs. Let's get up there. Let's get the nugs. N-U-G-G-S? N-U-G-G-S, like nuggets. Or N-U-G-G-Z, because that's how the... I think it was S. Cool. That's how the cool kids, that's how the cool panhandlers do it. So, here's, I saw this and I was basically just annoyed. I'm annoyed at everything I see on Twitter, but I was especially annoyed at this, because it got into this weird thing where all the brands were trying to one-up each other. United, before its disaster this weekend, tweeted, you know, we'll fly you anywhere you want to get to eat. The nuggets, you know, if you get to 18 million, Amazon was getting in on it, which I love, obviously, Amazon is the only company I could not do without. Do not criticize Jeff Bezos. But, you know, it was just like, and it's this weird kind of culture of, like, jokey panhandling that I really despise, that we're supposed to act like this is just like a fun thing, where like, oh, yeah, we're all in this together. You know what? No. I'm not in this with him, and I hope he fails. And I hope everybody... Everybody who retweets him is sad when he fails. That's what I want.
JVL00:02:33Sonny, JVL, how do you feel about this? It's emotional blackmail. It's like the YouTube people saying, you know, oh, here, Emma Watson, will you go to prom with me? That some people... I mean, look, I'm not judging you, Vic. How dare you? And it's another example of millennials ruining everything. And here's at base what bothers me about it. It goes contrary to the spirit of the web. The original idea, behind the internet, was honest egalitarianism. And I think people would say, see, look, it's egalitarian. Like, we're able to just tweet right to Wendy's the way Wendy's can tweet right to us on the same platform. But it's not. Like, just because you're on the same platform, you have these giant class divides between people who are begging for free things and corporations who give free things. And this is exactly contrary to what the web was supposed to be. It's not democratized.
Vic00:03:25But this is essentially a win-win for Wendy's, isn't it? I mean, how many nuggets were they going to give the kid anyway? Six pieces, ten pieces, something like that? And what did they get? He's a 16-year-old boy. You have no idea. But it's really up to Wendy's. He could probably eat a thousand nuggets a day. Of course. But I mean, Wendy's didn't specify the free nugs, how many free nugs. They can go, here's your six-piece happy meal.
Sonny00:03:45I would assume a free year of nuggets. A free year? Yeah, it's a year of nuggets. So, I mean, I would say... You get your card that says, give me all my nuggets. I want nuggets.
JVL00:03:54So, here's my... Go ahead, Sonny.
Sonny00:03:56So, I mean, I thought Wendy's was actually kind of clever in this by specifying whatever TweetMonkey was tossing off numbers that day, pick 18 million. Why 18 million?
JVL00:04:08If it had been a full round, 18,720,613.
Sonny00:04:13Yeah, that would have been... But at 18 million, that's six times as many retweets as the most retweeted tweet has ever gotten. So, I mean, it is like an astronomically high figure that can never be achieved. Now, here is what... Don't say never on the internet, Sonny. It can never... No, he will never get it. He will never get to that number. It will never happen. And I will drink a whole bottle of Hufferschuffer if that actually occurs. Hufferschuffer? A Huffer... Huffercheffen, whatever. The orange beer that Jonathan Last drinks. I will drink one whole 12-ounce bottle of it if he gets it. Here's what I think there should be, though. I think there should be consequences for failure. If you go... If you go to a store and you beg them for free food and they say, okay, look, if you can get to this number, we'll give you free food for a year. But if you don't get to that number, you're banned from the store. You're banned from the store. You don't get to come in. I think that should be the deal. JBL, what do you think?
JVL00:05:13That's very running, man. You know, on his About page for this challenge, he says that all his life he had wanted to be a chicken nugget and that was only late in life when he realized that he couldn't. Although that doesn't really fit with the orthodoxy we have currently about people's own self-use. But put that... Put that to the side. Maybe he becomes Soylent Green. Maybe he becomes the chicken nugget. He becomes the chicken nugget if he fails to reach his 18 million. But don't you have to set a timeline limit on this, right? I mean, can this 18 million retweet go out in perpetuity? Does that have to be within a year? No, that's exactly right.
Sonny00:05:44Well, I mean, if we're saying...
JVL00:05:46In 2025, he comes out,
Sonny00:05:48he emerges from college and says,
Vic00:05:50I made my 18 millionth retweet.
Sonny00:05:53Yes. Well, in that case, I think he should probably get it, frankly. There's a contract. There's a contract.
Vic00:05:57So nothing has even come close to 18 million retweets, has there?
Sonny00:06:01Oh, no, no, no. I'm pretty sure the most popular retweet is still the Ellen DeGeneres-Oscar selfie. Yeah, quote selfie. That got like a million... Spontaneous. That got like 3 million retweets in a day or something like that. And it kind of has stopped at that because it's like, why would anybody keep retweeting that? This is his insurmountable...
JVL00:06:20He's already close to 3 million.
Sonny00:06:21No, he's at 2 point something. He's at 2.2 or something. He might get the most retweeted tweet of all time and it still won't... won't be anywhere near the number he needs to get to.
Vic00:06:30And it's still creating great awareness for Wendy's. Right. Brand awareness.
Sonny00:06:33The problem he faces, the problem this young man faces and that he didn't really consider was that we only have enough attention as a society for one viral thing at a time. So, like, this guy had a whole weekend, basically, to himself, which is a billion years in internet time, basically. It's like from now until, you know, the sun explodes in internet time.
Vic00:06:56What is it he wants? What is it he wanted again?
Sonny00:06:58Exactly. No, but so, like, now everyone's mad at United. We went from being happy and playing with Wendy's to being mad and shouting at United. And this was, of course, the Nuggets guy comes a day after. We were all mad and angry and shouting at Pepsi. Like, you could just, every day, there's a new viral internet outrage. He can't get to 18 million because we don't have the attention span to get him there.
JVL00:07:19That's interesting.
Sonny00:07:22That's an interesting thought.
JVL00:07:23No, that is an interesting thought. The problem is, yes, they just assumed that the might of corporations was so great that if somebody was really going to dig in and push this thing, that you can push it to infinity.
Vic00:07:34They have to hold firm because if they say, oh, he didn't, he came short of 18 million by 12 million or 14 million retweets, they can't, well, here's the card anyway because then you're going to have a whole bunch of other copycats wanting to do the same thing, right? Isn't that the problem?
Sonny00:07:48Well, that is certainly, there is certainly a... And I only have a year to live. Yeah, exactly.
JVL00:07:53No, they don't mind that. I mean, you think about what Twitter, advertising costs, right? I mean, if you were a corporation, you'd be happy to give away products worth, let's call it like five grand or something like that, in exchange for having a bunch of people spending all of their time on social media doing organic promos for you. What is five grand of chicken nuggets? Is that like 20,000 nuggets? I don't even know how many nuggets is that.
Sonny00:08:18No, I mean, I'm like honestly curious. What the
Vic00:08:22kid essentially wants, Jonathan, is that platinum card that you had for Pizza Hut. For Pizza Hut, yes. But you had to work for yours, sort of. Well, not really.
JVL00:08:31Just really quickly, can we rank the nuggets? Where does Wendy's even fall on the nuggets scale? Number one, Chick-fil-A. Number one is obviously Chick-fil-A. Number two, Popeye's. Yeah. Popeye's is awesome.
Vic00:08:42Well, those are more like tenders, aren't they? They're actual pieces. I think they have nuggets. They do. They have smaller ones, too.
JVL00:08:49They're chicken tenders, but they're bone. What about KFC?
Sonny00:08:52Like KFC popcorn. They'll like popcorn. Yeah. You don't like that? Oh, Popeye's. I still like
Vic00:08:58the McDonald's McNuggets. The pink slime. It's nice and carefully grinded into a nice ground. People have no problem with ground beef. Why not ground chicken? I have no issue with that. It's all white meat now, they say. It's all white meat.
Sonny00:09:14I think. When I worked at McDonald's, I would occasionally just grab one out of the hopper and eat it because I was a disgusting pig. How was it? So there were two kinds of McDonald's chicken nuggets at the time. You'd get kind of the gross dark meat ones, and then you'd get the really nice light meat ones. Yeah, I remember those. And it was really Russian roulette. It was like, what am I putting in my mouth this time? I don't know. And you wouldn't know until you bit in. I think that we've lost something as a society when you're not punished with half of your nuggets being terrible.
Vic00:09:45The other thing I was going to say about one of these great claim to fame is the great Dave Thomas in 1971. He perfected the drive-thru window. That was his great claim to fame. No kidding. Wow.
JVL00:09:56That is very interesting.
Vic00:09:59JVL, any other thoughts on this? You were a McDonald's guy. Were you a McDonald's guy?
JVL00:10:02I worked at McDonald's, too. We used to give away nuggets to all my friends whenever they would come into the store, too. None of my friends ever paid for a single thing at McDonald's when I ran that
Sonny00:10:11store. The amount of theft that happened at McDonald's. No, food turnover. When the food sits for a certain amount of time. But they changed that. While I was working there, they actually changed it from having the food sit there to making everything fresh. I think mostly to cut down on the theft.
Vic00:10:27And when you gave it away, did you feel guilty about it, or what was going through your mind? What did you think when you gave away the free food?
JVL00:10:32I just thought, I'm sure it's fine.
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