There Is No Cat - The word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary

As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

The word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary

David Weinberger links to McDonald's Interactive, which claims to be an interactive division of McDonald's that is breaking away from their corporate father because of a corporate computer simulation that showed that the company's current course contributes to global warming and catastrophe.

I'ma suspish.

So I looked up the McDonald's Interactive web site in whois. The administrative contact is shown as Marc Cohen, address 1 Kroc Drive, Oak Brook, Illinois. Sounds legitimate. "Cohen's" e-mail address, however, is given as info@mcvideogame.com, and the technical contacts are at Aruba.it. Why would McDonald's host something in Italy?

Looking up mcvideogame.com in whois shows similar technical contact information, but the administrative contact is one Luca Nasi in Milano, Italy. Visiting the mcvideogame.com site reveals a take on corporate icon Ronald McDonald that a corporation like McDonald's would never countenance with such a valuable trademark. The Press section of that site gives the rest of the story away with links to stories about "La Molleindustria, developers of 'political games against the dictatorship of entertainment,'" as one of the stories puts it.

Clever. Deceptive, but clever.

Tags: McDonalds activism Molleindustria

Posted at 1:02 PM

Comments

Note: I’m tired of clearing the spam from my comments, so comments are no longer accepted.

suspish is right.

David is a very trusting soul. Even after years of blogging.

Shelley Powers Dave Winer's wife

Posted by Shelley at 5:01 PM, June 6, 2006 [Link]

Regarding "1 Kroc Drive": sounds like a reference to former McDonalds boss Ray Kroc.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kroc

Posted by R Mutt at 2:16 AM, June 7, 2006 [Link]

1 Kroc Drive is the actual address of McDonalds HQ in Oak Brook, Illinois.

Hi, Shelley! Hope you're enjoying the peace and quiet. :-) I don't know how much effect culture jammers like La Molleindustria have; I think they mainly convince people who want to believe what their saying. Hell, I'd like to believe it, but I'm not able to turn off my skepticism (something that serves me well in cases like this but not so well at other times; I expect the converse is true for David). But I get a kick out of seeing them do what they do. If they get people to think, even if it's easy to figure out that they're not what they claim to be, maybe that's effective. Maybe not.

Posted by ralph at 8:03 AM, June 7, 2006 [Link]

They cover up traces. ;-)

Posted by Alice at 10:56 AM, July 13, 2006 [Link]

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"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

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