The Life of a Fast Food Influencer

I’m not going to write much here because I think the work speaks for itself, but I just wanted to share my intent which is to demonstrate what it has been like for me working around fast food campaigns and often in the same room as many of the big fast food influencers for the last four years.

My art is about showing you the world as I see it and I often forget that my strange life is not the way most people live their own.

I took this picture back in 2021 at a McDonald’s for the launch of the McPlant burger. These are the guys who created Beyond Meat and everyone seemed to know who they were (I think from “Shark Tank” or something like that).

It was my first of many events where I would be surrounded by the who’s who of fast food influencers and watched as every table in the restaurant became miniature studios where everyone raced to get their videos about the McPlant burger shot and uploaded as quickly as possible.

I’m not going to get into this too deeply right now because I’m working on a history of the whole fastfoodlegend project, but this was the one that kind of triggered the feelings that I’m trying to convey in the video.

The video is a cut of introductions by an influencer named eatingwithshay. I don’t know anything about her beyond what you see in the video. I looked at her profile a little bit and like many of the people in this arena she is apparently into fitness and healthy eating, but her career as an influencer revolves around fast food. I don’t know how or why that is but it’s not particularly relevant to what I’m trying to say in the video, just an observation.

The video is not about her personally and should not be seen as any kind of insult or attack on her, it’s about the genre as a whole. There are countless of other influencers just like her who basically make the same content but with their own personality thrown into it a little bit.

What I’d like you to imagine is being in a Taco Bell with 20 or 30 eatingwithshays, everyone cranking out these same kind of videos. That’s the experience I’ve had countless times and how it has shaped my view of fast food marketing. This influence is considerable in how I arrived at making the kind of fast food videos that I make now.

Thanks for your continued support!