Cheeseburgers in Times of Crisis

Before going home this afternoon, I got myself a cheeseburger.  This has nothing to do with the recent McDonald's campaign wherein any random reason is good enough to treat friends to cheeseburgers. (In fact, my fascination with cheeseburgers have more to do with lolcats than fastfood dining.) I brought lunch with me to work--rice, chicken, veggies. But by past 4PM, I was so hungry and it was only then that I realized it's been over five hours since I last ate. So I got myself a cheeseburger.

But the McDonald's campaign became so popular that people in the streets coopted it as a way of teasing their mates into treating them to food. New bangs?  Tucked your shirt in? Managed to say a sentence in straight English? Get the gang a cheeseburger. It used to be that celebrations were special, reserved for graduating from college, passing the bar exams, having a new child. But now celebrations--and the feasts which accompany it--are seen as ordinary, even random. In fact, the ad's voiceover acknowleges it: "Kahit anong dahilan na lang, basta maaraw-araw ang cheeseburger." 

I have no quarrel with the ad people who made this campaign (Bangs, Tuck in, English)--it's effective.  It created enough buzz for the product, and I'm sure they sold a lot of cheeseburgers. But more than selling the product,  like most effective ads, they were able to latch on to values which ring true for people. Food is more than just something to fill you up when you're hungry. It has to do with sharing it with people you care about. And if you truly care about them, you will buy them cheeseburgers. 

Is this a dangerous thing? My cheeseburger set me back Php70, up three pesos from the last time I had a cheeseburger maybe a month ago. I dined alone, so I didn't have to pay for any one else's  meal.  Didn't hurt my pocket much, though it did set back my goal to dine out less. But what if I had some friends with me? Uuy, maaga uuwi! Cheeseburger naman! Now that would be really costly. The people in the ads were young people--students, recent graduates, new entrants to the work force. If you're a student on a tight budget, can you even manage to feed yourself cheeseburgers that often? 

We live in a world that uses a burger and soda to gauge happiness. Wherever in the world you can find Coke and a Big Mac, people are happy. Now the campaign used this line of reasoning and extended it to the way we view celebrations to mean random, ordinary things. Where do you draw the line at specialness then? What is extraordinary? When do we stop having feasts everyday?