We all know that ludites hated technology
and that McDonald's was just the victim of frivolous lawsuit culture
or do we know that? Find out another episode of my series.
Oops, you fell for historical propaganda.
There are plenty of myths
but I'm really interested in the ones that were spread on purpose
to make somebody look like the good guy
who wasn't. And in this case it's big corporations.
Like in the early 1800s when a group of textile workers
was trying to fight back against terrible working conditions,
child labor and being replaced by machines that make crappy products,
sort of like how your boss can't wait to replace you with AI
even though it doesn't work.
They started with a lot of letter writing and government petitions
and this is gonna shock you.
But that didn't work so they decided to smash some looms
and that did get the government's attention.
It sprung to action to protect the machines
and because of propaganda from the factory owners,
we now use ludite to mean afraid of technology
instead of what it really was
which was trying to protect children and sick of writing letters.
Then there's the woman who sued McDonald's
because she didn't know that coffee is hot.
What a silly goose. That was the story corporate lawyers put out
because it sounded better than a 79 year old woman
getting third degree burns
and spending eight days in the hospital getting skin grafts.
And she wasn't The first
McDonald's was selling coffee that was 20 degrees
hotter than anywhere else in the city.
And they had received over 700 complaints of serious burns.
And then she settled for a tiny fraction of what she won in court
because McDonald's threatened to drag out the appeals process
for a decade with a 79 year old woman.
And then corporate propaganda turned that into a funny story
about how people get too much justice.
And that makes me so mad. I wanna get together with a bunch of ludites
and smash your McDonald's coffee machine for the children.