Trumped for a Whopper

This is for all of you Facebook addicts out there. Sometimes modern technology can hurt... sniff, sigh.

The NY Times recently ran an article about Burger King's latest marketing ploy. Essentially the campaign stated that if you 'defriend' 10 of your friends on Facebook that the fastfood chain would reward you with a free Whopper. Oh, but that's not all. Once a Facebook user went ahead and defriended 10 of his compadres each rejected friend would receive an email notification from Burger King stating that they had a been sacrificed for a burger. Actually only 1/10 of a burger. The company claims that 234,000 friendships were sacrificed for a taste of BK meat.

Burger King says that they decided to run this campaign because they find it interesting that there is a social change towards valuing the 'quantity' rather than the 'quality' of friends. So since Burger King is the benchmark for all things ethical and introspective they felt compelled to remind us of what is really important in life: giving into marketing gimmicks and trading people for a slab of dead cow.

I just want to clear the air out there for all my readers that are also Facebook friends. I would never defriend you for a Whopper. I would much rather have a Taco Bell Bean Burrito.

You can check out the full story here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/fashion/29facebook.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1