We're Starting a War With Ethan - H3 After Dark #22

The new McDonald's Big Arch burger, featuring white cheddar cheese, a tangy sauce, and a poppy/sesame seed bun, is perceived by the hosts as a slightly modified, more expensive version of the classic Big Mac, offering little significant innovation despite its marketing.

Hosts and guest review the burger, noting the two seeds on the bun, the tangier sauce, and the white cheddar, but ultimately conclude it's 'not very different from the Big Mac' and 'very safe.'

Food in commercials and advertisements is often meticulously constructed using non-edible props and techniques to appear perfect. Pins hold ingredients in place, shellac adds shine, and white glue substitutes for milk to achieve desired visual effects.

Kate, drawing on her experience in food styling, explains how art departments use pins to layer ingredients, spray items with shellac, and use white glue for milk in cereal shots to create visually appealing but often inedible props.

AI is increasingly being integrated into dating applications, offering users AI-generated response options. This trend raises concerns about the further erosion of genuine human interaction, potentially leading to a future where AI assistants manage dating lives.

The hosts discuss dating apps suggesting answers to messages and hypothesize a future where AI assistants could schedule dates based on user profiles, effectively removing direct human communication from the initial stages of dating.

Modern corporate social media accounts, like McDonald's, often attempt to engage in 'edgy' or self-referential humor in comments, but this often feels forced and less authentic compared to earlier pioneers like Wendy's, who established a genuinely witty online persona.

The hosts observe McDonald's social media trying to be 'cute' and 'self-referential' in comments, contrasting it with Wendy's early, impactful 'clapping back' on Twitter, suggesting that widespread corporate adoption has diluted the original charm.

A viral Instagram series documents a highly performative and unsettling speed-dating photoshoot in Oklahoma, where women paid to participate in aggressive, theatrical interactions, including being physically manhandled and kissed by a cowboy, all for social media content.

The hosts watch a series of videos depicting a cowboy aggressively interacting with women, including lifting and kissing them, during a three-hour photoshoot. The photographer confirmed women paid to participate, highlighting the contrived and uncomfortable nature of the event.

Harley reveals that he unknowingly lived adjacent to a trailer park for registered sex offenders in St. Petersburg, Florida, a fact he only discovered years later through a documentary.

Harley recounts living in St. Petersburg, Florida, and later learning from a documentary ('Pervert Park') that his mobile home park was either adjacent to or part of a community for sex offenders, a fact that deeply shocks the other hosts.