BTS - logos, BLM and hopefully doggie poop bag sponsorship
Stock footage
By Stephen Weir: I am a law-abiding guy. I always wear a mask when I am on Yonge St. I throw my McDonald’s wrappers in the trash and if I had a trendy Labra doodle I’d always pick up after him.
Yesterday I went to McDonalds down the street to pick up my take-out order – Chicken McNuggets, Fries and Sweet Chili dipping sauce. No place to sit-down, so I stood in the parking lot with all the waiting Dash and Dine delivery guys and managed to lift my mask up, eat the chicken, slurp my Diet Coke from a purple cup and hoover my fries without dropping anything.
Not a self-conscious guy but I noticed a lot of people, especially a young crew slouching around the nearby communal trash bin, staring at me. They watched every chew I made and every fry I slayed!
Didn’t take me long to finish my food. I walked over to the trash bin and waited until a trendy guy put a Labra doodle waste bag down beside the can (he was too cool to put it in the bin). Then it was my turn. The purple take-out cup. The nugget box. The unopened sauce container (I am a purist, no sauce shall touch these lips) and the wrapper all went in.
As I stepped away I felt a whoosh go by me. A young’un had launched himself into the bin. There was shouting from inside the bin and then he pulled himself out with my unopened sauce in his hand.
He looked me in the eyes and said “Thank-you Bro. You've done me a solid,” Made me feel good, he was at least 50-years younger than me.
But, what just happened? According to the CBC I just had a Globalization Cultural Experience. You see BTS, or Bangtan Sonyeondan (Bulletproof Boy Scouts), is a Korean based K-Pop Band that is considered the most popular musical group in the world (think of them as the Beatles with nicer hair). 1.
They have teamed up with McDonald’s restaurants to sell this meal inside an exclusive BTS designed and logo'd package.
The purple coloured wrappers, boxes and cups bear their trademarked names. The meals are such a world demand that there is Black Market for the wrappers, even like the one I had just drooled on. The unopened BTS Chilli Sauce container (pictured above) is today worth $50 on E-Bay and climbing. The Labra doodle’s green shit bag? Still worth nothing.
The dumpster dive was not a one-off. It is happening at select McDonald’s stores in the U.S., the Bahamas, Canada and eight other countries. The arrival of the BTS meal coincides with the dropping of their English song called Butter, which is “spreading” across the very top of Billboard’s world charts.
Still shot from Butter – I was the 338,060,694th viewer on YouTube this morning
“The (BTS /McDonalds) collaboration highlights the globalization of culture,“ says Michelle Cho, an Asian Studies Professor at UofT. Speaking in a CBC TV interview she explains, “ BTS kind of shows us that their North American popularity from here forward is a kind of provincial mindset. In fact the reason they are such a cultural phenomena is that their appeal reaches so extensively around the world.”
Mass Media plays such a big role in this globalization process. It somehow is able to makes that simple food wrapper or a dipping sauce cause people on every continent in the world to search garbage bins, dine at Micky Dees and buy BTS music, swag, collectables and empty used McNuggets boxes.
The BTS meal, commercial, music and merch is indeed “putting us in touch with one another,”
In 2021 BTS is a Global movement that has no race, a look that has no gender, a sound with planet wide appeal, a philosophy that has no country and a meal so world famous it is worth dumpster diving for.
For the BTS fan base, the key to the globalization of everything related to the musical group, has become a major disruptive force within the world’s body politic in terms of fighting racism and slapping down fascism.
Fans, well aware that the members of the BTS group abhor racism. Over the past year BTS supporters have raised over a million dollars for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Esquire Magazine has recently uncovered how BTS fans are now using Twitter to fight white supremacists by attacking and jamming and rendering useless the hashtags favoured by racists groups around the world (i.e. #whiteoutwednesday.)
“In 2019, the fans sent six billion tweets (to Right Wing accounts), which is approximately three percent of all tweets sent by everyone in the world. Account numbers are in the tens of thousands.”
What the Esquire reporter Justin Kirkland noted was the ability of their fan base to organize. “Its stunningly organized and a connected community. More successful posts average retweets and likes well into the thousands”
What next? Are BTS and McDonald’s planning a special Big Mac Meal to promote the coming drop of BTS’ net album? We are hoping they might take pity on us non-dog owners and get their logo on doggie dodo bags. They will clean up the world!
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