This wholesome McDonald's ad keeps going viral simply because it is wholesome.

This tweet has made the Twitterverse very angry, as all tweets do. Or wait, should that be 'this X has made the Xverse angry, as all Xs do'? I don't know, X didn't send out a new style guide for their new brand.

There are several reasons why people react angrily, but the tweet's content is likely the primary cause.
A couple of days ago, people shared it far and wide because they thought it was cute. And it is! So the tweet got 33 million views and reached far beyond the Japanese target market. Just because it's sweet. There are no words spoken, you'll see mom, dad, and their adorable daughter just enjoying themselves eating some McDonald's.

特別じゃない、しあわせな時間。 pic.twitter.com/P7Og6hbMsx

— マクドナルド (@McDonaldsJapan) September 20, 2023

A Japanese Tweep notes that 'This is a huge buzz in the US because it doesn't have any political correctness elements.' and that seems to be exactly it. The little animation is just wholesome, and for some reason, this set people off.

これ米国圏でめちゃくちゃバズってて、なぜならポリコレ要素がないから。

数秒のCMにBLMとかLGBTQとかエコとか女性のエンパワメントとか有害な男らしさとか誰が弱者で強者で善で悪でみたいな社会正義の押し付けを感じなくていい、核家族が幸せに描かれてもいい。

米国は病的にポリコレ疲れなんよ。 https://t.co/0eOApU0sQB

— 🇺🇸 🇯🇵Blah (@yousayblah) September 22, 2023

As far as the copywriting goes - and please know that my Japanese is terrible and I am a very bad source - there is something a little odd in there. The tweet says " 特別じゃない、しあわせな時間。 (Tokubetsu janai, shiawasena jikan.)" which should translate to "Nothing special, just a happy time."

However, because of the way it's written, it translates to "It's not a special, happy time.", which is an odd thing to say when you look at the family being happy in the animation. The reason it translates this way is partly that google translate sucks, but also because they didn't use the Kanji "幸せな時間". Instead, they used "しあわせな時間".

"幸せな時間" and "しあわせな時間" literally mean "the time spent with you was a joy" - which is just so aaaaw lovely. However, because they used the hiragana for luck instead of the kanji google translate had a little bitchfit and flipped the grammar. Making it "not a special, happy time."

All of this is apparently irrelevant to people's harsh reactions, though. It seems that the tweet when it left the borders of Japan, ended up in front of really bitter people who don't like things like the nuclear family, eating McDonald's, or really cute kids. The combination set people off, and that reaction, in turn, set even more people off, and now the question 'why is Twitter melting down over this tweet' ensures another round of people passing the tweet around. Take notes, this is how you keep going viral. Did McDonald's actually plan his? If they did, that's really smart and please can someone get me an internship at an ad agency in Japan, I need to learn this voodoo.

The moral of the story is don't use Google Translate, or me for that matter, as a source of what something says in Japanese. Also, nuclear families are fine and adorable, but we seldom see them in advertising these days, so this blew up just because of that. Just because you (Twitter-tweeps) are lonely and sad doesn't mean the rest of us are or want to be. This is adorable and now I want to drag my parents to McDonald's.