The Angry Whopper

I'm still miffed about missing out on my chance to get a free Whopper from Burger King, but I'm going to try to do something constructive with all that negative energy. The Angry Whopper gives me the perfect chance.

What better way to work out my own anger than to chomp down on what Burger King Commercials call "an onion, raised on anger"? My own rage can collided with that of the burger, resulting in some pretty strong opinions and, I hope, a fiery review. There is some danger that with all the fury involved, this review could tear the fabric of the universe and deep fry the world, so read with caution.


First of all, Burger King always seems to make me wait too long for my food. I had to stand for ten minutes before being served and there were only two people in front of me. Yes, they make the food to order, but they do it at the pace of a snail on morphine. There is no good reason I should be considering pitching a tent while waiting for two people to get their food, at least in a fast food restaurant.

Once the burger arrived, it wasn't too bad. I winced paying for the meal, which was $6.29 for a single-patty burger with accompanying drink and fries. But sitting down with the Angry Whopper wasn't a terrible thing. It's slathered with sweet and sour sauce, which is oddly paired with deep fried onions and jalapeno peppers. Yet the combination works. And Burger King's burgers do always taste a cut above those of McDonald's.

Still, I'm not happy that the best I can say about the Angry Whopper is that it wasn't too bad. It needs to be far spicier than it is. The jalapenos do spice things up, but those angry onions are a major disappointment. Instead of being hot and crisp, mine were soggy and tasteless -- they're irritated onions at best. This fancied-up whopper only merits three disappointingly bland sporks out of five. Obviously, truth in advertising does not live.

Not that that is a shocking revelation these days. All the recent spicy fare fast food joints have trumpeted has been disappointing. Remember Taco Bell's Volcano Taco? If you do, it's because it was pink, not because it was hot. The same holds true for the Angry Whopper.

Therefore I would like to issue an open challenge to any willing fast food restaurant. Make something spicy, and make it truly spicy. Back up those inevitable advertisements that show fire shooting out of someone's mouth with some actual habanero peppers and hot sauce or something. Jalapenos are good, but fast food needs to light a bigger fire in my belly.

The Whopper Sacrifice: The untimely end

It seems no good things come to those who wait. Those free lunches get gobbled up quickly.

I took a week to consider which ten of my Facebook friends to cut in order to get my free Whopper from Burger King using their Whopper Sacrifice application. When I sat down last night to make the cuts, I discovered that the promotion has been shut down.

As this New York Times article explains, Facebook didn't like the idea of Burger King notifying your sacrificed friends that they lost out to a hamburger and asked Burger King to change that feature. They said it disappointed users' privacy expectations, since you normally aren't notified when someone de-friends you. Rather than sacrifice the integrity of their promotion, Burger King chose to sacrifice the stunt itself.

Kudos to Burger King and egg on Facebook. The social-networking site's privacy claim is pretty dubious. It seems a lot more likely they were afraid their users' couldn't cope with a little stomach-driven rejection, or that they felt the promotion was against Facebook's spirit of compulsively collecting as many friends as possible. But at least Burger King held their moral ground.

Burger King wanted you to be upstanding about your disregard for having a profuse number of pals. You had to look your former friends in the digital eye with a message saying "I cast you aside to get a free Whopper" in order to get the burger. The passive-aggressive move of cutting them without their knowing will not be tolerated.

The downside of Burger King's moral high road is that those of us who waited and deliberated which Facebook friends to cut have been left without our free burgers. There's a moral to this story: When opportunity knocks, open the door quickly. I didn't and now I'll never be able to taste a Whopper that was paid for in bruised brotherhood.

This moral runs directly against my usual rule of waiting to adopt new things. Typically you can save money and get a more reliable product if you wait a few months to buy new technology after it comes out. You can make a better decision by sleeping on it. But I suppose I should have known better than to drag my feet on free food. When you come late to the table, your meal is going to be cold.

Now you might still be wondering which of my friends I was going to cut. Of the strategies I discussed last week, which of them was I going to employ?

I'll tell you. If you buy me a Whopper.

The Whopper Sacrifice: The beginning

Burger King is making a big splash on the web with its "Whopper Sacrifice" stunt on Facebook, where the company will give you a free Whopper if you de-friend ten Facebook friends. You install a Facebook application from www.whoppersacrifice.com, pick ten friends to kick to the curb and Burger King mails you a coupon for a free burger.

In the name of reviewing, I'm going to participate in the stunt and document it. Today I installed the application on my Facebook page and am currently contemplating which of my "friends" to cut. There are a few strategies I have to choose between, though.

First, I could pick ten of my best friends, cut them, get the coupon, and re-friend them. Since they're my best friends, they'll understand I'm only sacrificing them temporarily. They'll also know how important food is to me, and won't be offended. But there's always the chance that they'll see the message proclaiming they've been sacrificed for fast food, get angry, and never re-friend me. That's a pretty big downside, as I could actually lose some people who are pretty close to me.

Second, I could just pick ten of those people I never interact with on Facebook. You know the ones -- you friended them as a freshman in college the day you met them, saw them one other time, and now you're burdened with seeing their updates on your newsfeed all the time. You don't care about them and all they're doing is making it look like you know more people than you actually do. The downside to this strategy is that these people are the most likely to be offended when they see the message that they were sacrificed for a slab of ground meat, because they're least likely to understand how important food is to me. And since I use Facebook as a way to promote this blog, that might not be the best move for my role as a food critic, either.

Third, I could try to de-friend up as many "fake" Facebook friends as I could. A few years ago, when George Mason made a run in the NCAA basketball tournament, I befriended the Facebook account "George Mason." It's one of those clever little accounts that has a picture of a statue on the school's campus and contains snarky information that makes you snicker when you read it. Accounts like this are a good way to sacrifice "friends" guilt-free. The problem is that I've never been willing to befriend a lot of "unreal" people, and therefore would only be able to come up with three or four "fake" friends -- far short of my quota of ten.

Fourth, I could make friends with the sole purpose in mind of cutting them. Maybe I could start a Facebook group titled "I'll befriend you just to de-friend you so we can get free Whoppers." It's would be like Craigslist for free burgers. Of course, that seems like a lot of trouble when I have perfectly good friends of my own to sacrifice.

Fifth, I could scour Facebook for friends I care about moderately who rarely update their accounts. Chances are they wouldn't be offended at all, and wouldn't even notice if I chose to re-friend them in a couple of weeks. The downside is that will take even more time then setting up the Craigslist for free burgers.

So, my loyal readers, what do you think I should do? Let me know if you want to be sacrificed for a free Whopper or if you know someone I should kick off my friend list. I'm sure that, together, we can come up with a way to get a free lunch without destroying any real friendships.