The fast food restaurant chain Burger King has conducted "field research" for a series of advertisements, among those peoples "really who live outside of things", who "have never even seen a burger. Who don't even have a Word for burger." The aim of the "research" is to let humans, unspoiled by advertisement and fast food experience, judge over the question, whether the "Whopper" or the "Big Mac" is ultimately the better burger.

The advertisements are a creepily interesting mixture of usual exoticization and pseudo-science based on some odd assumptions, like confining material culture (or at least, the one that's worth talking about) to "the West". Are there people who "really live outside of things"? I thought "things" is something, we all do care about in one way or the other - maybe my definition of "thing" is too inclusive. The assumption, that "unspoiled" people (i.e. in Romania, Greenland and Thailand) all have the same ideas about good food and deliver comparable data for the final and unbudgeable judgement over the too rivals, is likewise absurd.

Anyway, I won't comment these ads any further, for a thorough discussion read the post on Sociological Images, where I stumbled upon the sources.

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