This past summer, one of the biggest internet trends was the Grimace Shake, a McDonalds milkshake that spawned some of the funniest posts of the summer. It all started on June 12th, when McDonalds released a berry flavored Grimace themed milkshake to celebrate his birthday. It was a huge marketing campaign of the summer. The result of the campaign was however not what McDonalds expected. At first, Days after the shake released an online trend of of milkshake related reels and videos quickly surfaced. Each of them were generally the same idea. Someone would go out and buy the milkshake, wish Grimace a happy birthday, and then proceed to cut to the end of the footage showing them pretending to be dead with the milkshake splattered all over them. All over TikTok, gen z was pretending to play dead covered in the Grimace Shake.
The first to do this was Austin Frazer, a social media manager who thought of the idea from a simple food review of the shake. As the summer continued, millions of these reels continued to surface and it sparked a digital culture phenomenon full of memes and McDonalds. This has caused many to wonder why a trend like this would arise, given the fact that the outcome was so unexpected. Many believe this event was due to gen z. McDonalds simply wanted market one of their characters with an usual milkshake, and the randomness of it made gen z treat it like that, given that most of the younger generation didn’t even know who grimace was before the shake. As stated in the book Superconnected, the majority of us, especially gen z, has a tendency to form ties and connections over digital medias. Eventually, McDonalds caught on, posting their own memes online. This event was such a big part of our digital culture this past summer because it connected a big portion of gen z over social media through the trend.
Citations:
Holtermann, Callie. “In a Tiktok Trend, Grisly Scenes of Purple Milkshake Horror.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 June 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/style/grimace-milkshake.html.
Gennis, Sadie. “TikTok’s Grimace Shake Trend Turns the McDonald’s Mascot into a Murderer.” Polygon, Polygon, 28 June 2023, www.polygon.com/23777288/tiktok-grimace-shake-videos-trend.
Chayko, M. (2020). Superconnected: The internet, digital media, and techno-
social life (3rd ed.)
How I can remember seeing the grimace shake memes and the videos of people supposedly dying after eating it, and me and all my friends getting in the car just to go to McDonald's and try it. Disappointedly, nothing happened. It is humorous how McDonald's didn't intend for this to even become a meme, let alone a viral one about people dying after drinking it. However, it did very well and sales probably went through the roof, so if other fast food restaurants were to take anything away from this it would be to release unusual or seasonal items on their menus.
Hi Eli,
I personally interpreted the humor behind the Grimace Shake meme as having stemmed from a distrust towards processed foods, especially ones that look outlandish. When we encounter processed foods that just don't seem "right," like the Grimace Shake with its purple hue, we tend to derive a certain amount of comedy from the distrust and mystery surrounding the food item. In this meme's case, said comedy was taken to the extreme that the Grimace Shake will kill the consumer immediately, which is quite funny when the goofy character of Grimace himself is kept in mind.
I like your connection that you made between this digital culture phenomenon and our readings in Superconnected. It was very well stated.