When Keepin’ It Real Goes Wrong: Corporate Twitter Accounts Acting Black

It finally happened. White kids that went behind their mothers’ backs to buy Tupac CDs from Tower Records in 1996 are now in charge of corporate social media accounts. You know exactly who I’m talking about, too. The guys that may have had a couple of black friends, wore Sean John velour suits ALL OF THE TIME and spent tireless hours trying to get corn rows in their hair despite their whiteness are sitting in meetings deciding just how black their company should sound in tweets.

In their defense, culture appropriation has been crazy hot in the streets since forever, so do as Elvis would do, I guess?

Here are some of the worst.

Denny’s Diner

Wait, is this the same Denny’s Diner that got sued because they refused service and charged more to black customers in 1994? By god, it is! No worries, 20 years has passed and according to their “Are we cool?” math, everything is all good now. Apparently good enough to start tweeting exactly like you think Black Twitter tweets.

“On fleek”, guys? Come on. I’ll be very honest here, I have nary a fucking clue what “fleek” means. I have some guesses, some assumptions, but nothing really solid to go on. Granted, I don’t think Denny’s is targeting washed, out-of-touch black dudes like myself for business.

Full disclosure: maybe I chuckled at the first tweet the same way I laugh when a white guy and a black guy hilariously mangle a dap. Spontaneity works. Not calculated “will THEY like this?” analysis. Keep that in mind if you ever one day ascend in the power position of controlling chain restaurant Twitter accounts.

Burger King

“Oh shit, people like Big Macs, right? Let’s make the EXACT same sandwich and name it the ‘Big King.’ I’m pretty sure no one will notice” – Burger King, like 3 months ago, probably.

Should we be surprised that Burger King was lazy, uninspired, and downright lost when they decided to “bring black culture” into their tweets? I mean, Ludacris’ “What’s Your Fantasy?” only came out 14 years ago and the notable lyrics actually rhymed, but other than that, Burger King nailed it.

The onion rings tweet wasn’t really “bad”, it’s just so fucking dumb that it deserves to get lambasted in some way, shape, or form. Petty on my part.

IHOP

In IHOP’s defense, we all got our Bobby Shmurda-related jokes off over the last few months, but yo, YOU SELL PANCAKES. You think the old people coming back from church on Sundays give a shit whether or not you caught a body let alone when? No. They’re just trying to wait in the lobby for 2 ½ hours to be seated like normal geriatrics. The late night drunk crowd is even less receptive to the jokey jokes. All you need to do is throw up a picture of a stack of pancakes and two condoms every Friday and Saturday night from 1 a.m. – 4 a.m. and business will boom. Did I just save IHOP? I think I just saved IHOP.

Seamless

Jesus Christ, Seamless. Clean it up. That song, to this day, still makes me want to throw up every time I hear it regardless of setting. I have no idea why, but I thought you were better than that, guys. I just want a mild-mannered online food delivery service that cared none about cunnilingus and rim jobs. Ew, yo.

BONUS: Helper

Helper is a different animal all together. This account is hilarious because it has been tweeting like this from the get-go. Weird tweets. Hip-hop tweets. Flirty tweets. Helper is all over the board. If you’re a girl, I wouldn’t be surprised if the glove tried to slide into your DMs once or twice.

With all that said, I’m fairly certain that this account is run by a black person or, at the very least, that white guy in a group of black dudes that Dave Chappelle described:

Hope there was a lesson in there somewhere or, at the very least, I receive mad offer letters to become the black curator of corporate social media accounts. As we all know, MLK Jr.’s dream will never full be realized until we get a firm grip on the antics of fast food/chain-restaurant Twitter accounts.