U.S. — An expert panel of sociologists has weighed in on the decline of Western civilization, and they believe they've found the exact moment that our society began to crumble: namely, when McDonald's started taking out those little cheeseburger stools and began updating its restaurant to look more like a soulless food factory.
"The moment McDonald's took out these bad boys, that was the point of no return for us as a nation," said sociology expert Dr. Brad Warren of USC. "No longer could you, as a child, look forward to feasting on a Happy Meal for a couple of dollars - which included a pretty rad toy like an actual Hot Wheels vehicle or a McNugget dressed up as a fireman. Now, instead, you just go to a gray building that looks exactly like a Starbucks and get a dumb sheet of stickers or some toy from a Pixar movie you've never heard of."
"But most importantly, you sit on a normal chair. Very sad."
The study found that no longer do McDonald's restaurants have a creepy anthropomorphic Apple Pie Tree whose roots you can sit on, as though you were whisked away to a magical forest. A magical forest where you can eat fries and something resembling chicken. And this, according to scholars, even further accelerated the decline of our society.
At publishing time, sources had found that McDonald's nearly saved our society by installing GameCubes in the early 2000s, but has since torn those out, dooming us forever.
Citing concerns about stiff competition from Amazon and an impossible-to-please Gen Z, Santa has announced he's hanging up the hat for good.
