Why I Won’t Buy KFC’s Double Down Sandwich (and Think You Shouldn’t, Either)

Today, KFC announced that the Double Down Sandwich — which consists of bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken — is going to be available nationwide starting on April 12th. Below, our thoughts on what the KFC Double Down Sandwich means to us — and why it infantilizes the sandwich as we know it. Read this article for further context.

Danny O’Brien does a very good job of explaining why I’m completely uninterested in buying a KFC Double Down Sandwich — it really feels like the second coming of the Famous Bowl “revolution” in which “nutrition” people proclaimed that they were going to remake food by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products.

The model of interaction with the KFC Double Down Sandwich is to be a “consumer,” what William Gibson memorably described as “something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth… no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote.”

I think that the press has been all over the Double Down Sandwich because KFC puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who’ll promise them it’s OK to eat a sandwich which consists of bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken.

Sandwiches come and sandwiches go. The KFC Double Down Sandwich you buy today will be human waste in a day or two. But buying a KFC Double Down Sandwich for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that it’s OK to eat a sandwich which consists of bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken.

With apologies to Cory Doctorow, who we kid and who made us think, and inspiration from TechCrunch.