A major part of the controversy surrounding the viral Japanese McDonald’s ad stems from the political divide. Numerous right-leaning or conservative users have accused left-leaning users of getting outraged over the ad due to it depicting what is ostensibly a traditional, nuclear family dynamic. Other users have strongly disagreed with this assessment and characterized it as a straw man fallacy, arguing that any left-leaning users who are frustrated with the ad constitute an overwhelmingly small minority. “These people are fighting made up wars,” @JUNlPER tweeted in response to one such right-leaning claim.
Tangentially, the ad also sparked some reflection on a perceived cultural divide in modern marketing and commercials in 2023. Some users opined that the Japanese McDonald’s commercial holds a quality of authenticity that is not commonly glimpsed in modern Western advertising. “It does have a certain wholesomeness to it, which makes it almost entirely unique in the empty and soulless and parasitic world of advertising, corporations..,” @AshaLogos tweeted. Other users shared similar observations, with @WGthink writing: “The reason this ad blew up is because it’s alien to us, for the West is no longer capable of producing basic messaging that speaks to the core of being human.”
