You’re thinking of smoothies. Bananas are rarely in milkshakes.

If this kills Fandom/Wikia, that would be amazing and somewhat realistic.

New Corporate Owned Social Media Network: “ooh cool so many people are using it let’s put all of our critical stuff on there alerts weather warnings and kill our RSS feeds and only interact with customers there”

New Federated Open Social Media Network: “this is phase 7 of our extremely careful 10 phase plan to possibly repost stuff we put on twitter there if the social media intern remembers”

Don’t get me wrong I’m glad they’re doing this, but I find it hilarious that everyone trips over themselves launching on Twitter and TikTok without thinking it through at all, and yet for Mastodon it has to be a limited phased trial.

Obviously this won’t be 100% in every area in the world, but even in your own example you listed another cheaper franchise right nearby, therefore it is not the only option.

I haven’t been everywhere but I live in Canada and I’ve been to the US, UK and Southeast Asia and in all of those places this is true. There are towns that will literally just have a Subway or similar cheap franchise, but places with a McDonalds will almost always have another option.

This is just categorically untrue. People go to McDonalds because they want to, even if they may not want to admit it.

A McDonalds franchise is, by far, one of the most expensive franchises to own and operate. They have strict rules on where you are allowed to open one and startup costs are in the millions, most are owned by investment groups and people who own multiple franchises.

If you have a McDonald’s, you have a market. So you most certainly also have a Subway, Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, etc. Some of those franchises literally just plant themselves wherever a McDonalds is placed because it’s cheaper to do that then it is to do the market research yourself.

We can exchange them for a wobbly CD rack and some of those rancid meatballs.

Same boat. I think I’ll prefer Mlem in the long run but the Memmy dev is just cranking out updates like nobody’s business so it’s a lot more functional right now.