A voluntary picture voluntarily uploaded to the public internet.
Sure, McDonald’s got bitten on the ass last time it tried to tick “leverage social media” off its corporate to-do list. But what is it supposed to do, learn? Apparently not, since it’s back in the Twitter game, and this time it’s chosen a hashtag that sounds filthy even before the haters get their hands on it.
This time, the company is trying to take advantage of the Ribwich-style frenzy that grips fast food fans during the brief time that the company makes Shamrock Shakes available. (These are a St. Patrick’s Day-pegged milkshake-like food item made out of, like, non-dairy creamer and leprechaun pee. They are extremely popular on account of forced scarcity.) The plan: Create a fad called “shamrocking,” and make it the new Tebowing, which was the new owling, which was the new horsemaning, which was the new planking.
Well, it sounds good on paper. Oh wait, no it doesn’t fucking sound good on paper, it sounds stupid and potentially like some kind of depraved sex act which it is. Well, it is according to Urban Dictionary, where basically every word also means some kind of depraved sex act. In truth probably nobody in the universe has ever used “shamrocking” in a dirty context.
Or rather, they hadn’t, until McDonald’s tried to make it a thing. Now, a few brave souls are apparently trying to turn the tide of #shamrocking to something decidedly non-mint-flavored. This hashtag hasn’t been fully occupied yet, though, so if you’re looking for something to do on Twitter, you can help give shamrocking the Santorum treatment. (I’m going to go out on a limb and say that McDonald’s doesn’t deserve it NEARLY as much as Santorum, but whatever, it’s Friday.)
Honestly, even if we can’t invent and spread a convincing alternate meaning for shamrocking — and come on, we’re the internet, this should be easy — we can make fun of the fact that the whole campaign is, as Ad Week points out, basically a super-embarrassing knockoff of an also embarrassing Captain Morgan thing. Seriously, McDonald’s, stop trying to make fetch happen.
