Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture…

Follow publication

Member-only story

The 15 Crazy Objects That Defined an Even Crazier 2019

Rob Walker
Marker
Published in
10 min readDec 20, 2019

WWhat’s the best way to tell the story of 2019 — of who we were and what we valued? Perhaps it’s the books we read, the politicians we elected, or the ideas we debated.

Nah. Look at the stuff. The Things. Objects. The products that overflow our commercial marketplace, designed for our consumption, that we loved, loathed, mocked, coveted, worried about, or just found so baffling we couldn’t stop obsessing about them.

The Popeyes chicken sandwich.

In an age of division and strife, few things united the country like a $3.99 fast food rendition of fried chicken on a bun, with pickles. Debuting in August, it won rave reviews — and sparked social media #ChickenWars with rivals Chik-fil-A and Wendy’s. This led to such demand (and long lines) that after two weeks Popeyes said it had run out of the sandwiches and would put the item on hiatus — with the puzzling implication that a fried chicken chain was having trouble coming…

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

Marker
Marker

Published in Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Rob Walker
Rob Walker

Written by Rob Walker

Author The Art of Noticing. Related newsletter at https://robwalker.substack.com

Write a response

The art / design in this article is amazing!

OK now I want a tuning fork.