Doubled over for the Double Down

I'm pretty sure the new Double Down from KFC is proof that we are squarely in a post-post-ironic era. Marketing the "sandwich" where two chicken breasts serve as the "bun" around cheese and bacon seems intentionally designed to elicit incredulity. That's its genius.

I'm hard-pressed to believe that those who came up with the idea for it were oblivious to the cultural environment in 21st century America; if anything, I suspect they expect the Double Down to play to that zeitgeist. In the era of glib reactions, of viral videos and Twitter and "reality stars," it takes some doing to really smash through the din of pop culture. I imagine this came up in a meeting as a silly idea and was deftly identified as something that was just crazy enough to work. The notion of it cannot help but elicit a certain level of I-can't-believe-they're-selling-that, is tailor-made to be lampooned on show like The Colbert Report (follow the link to see the video), but it still registers in the mind of an audience; it's not something easily dismissed like, say, the new whatever the heck Taco Bell is pushing nowadays. The mockery heaped upon it still operates on a certain level as free advertising. It's allowing the writers for the late night guys (like Jimmy Fallon) to compose easy jokes about the crap Americans will eat, but still it's getting the product mentioned. And let's not even get started about how obvious it is that the food blogs and online media would (figuratively) eat this up as a topic.

Now, that does no good if no one actually goes to KFC to buy it, but the flip side of the so-crazy-it-works coin is there's a group of people who (predictably) will transfer the ironic appreciation in to an interest in actually trying it. KFC is essentially throwing down the gauntlet, daring the fast food consumer to consume one. And apparently there were sufficient numbers of those intrepid eaters in the test markets for the Double Down that it was worth seeing how many there were nationwide. (Heck, perhaps the idea is not so much to make people like the Double Down but to get them thinking of having one, going to KFC, and then reconsidering the idea and ordering a more conventional bucket of Original Recipe. It could be a roundabout bait-and-switch ploy for all I know.)

In any case, it seems to demonstrate not only awareness of how society is, knowing that the glib dismissal about how Americans eat atrociously requires an ostensibly risible one-upmanship to have an impact on a jaded audience. And that seems far likelier to be insidiously clever than mere happenstance.


And the smartest aspect of it: The Double Down is a limited time event. Some day there'll be a nostalgic clamoring to bring it back.

That's good pop culture eatin' even if the sandwich tastes awful.

~

Oh, and I should also admit I don't think "post-post-ironic" really means anything; it merely seemed like the sort of term that would play well in this era.