Using the demonstration website of a speech-to-text synthesizer created by AT&T, the amateur producers of Moon Man’s videos programmed a computerized voice to read nonsensical and offensive lyrics of their own, somewhat in the vein of the violent and profane version of physicist Stephen Hawking featured in several 'Family Guy" episodes. At first this was inspired by the long tradition of pop-music parody, from Weird Al Yankovic to the Evolution Control Committee.
That same year, he was also reborn in the United States on the ytmnd board in a joke video from a user named farkle that featured a short, looped video of Mac Tonight with the popular nonsense song “ Chacarron” by reggaeton singer El Chombo playing in the background.Īfter several similar videos were created, fans of the character - since rechristened Moon Man - took him in a different direction. In 2007, however, the fast-food chain brought him back in Southeast Asia.
Mac Tonight faded into obscurity after McDonald’s dumped him in the mid-’90s. The character’s original name was drawn from “Mack the Knife,” the famous number from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “ Threepenny Opera” that became a No. Pepe and Moon Man are both products of the anonymous message boards that generate so many of the humorous and shocking memes that circulate throughout the rest of the internet.Īlso like Pepe, Moon Man is actually a spinoff of an earlier character - Mac Tonight, the weird-looking anthropomorphic moon that McDonald’s created in 1986 to entice baby boomers to eat dinner at its restaurants. Like his younger and more famous cousin Pepe the Nazi Frog, Moon Man has become an avatar of the alt-right, although he didn't start out that way. Being outrageous has become so passé that even Lady Gaga has seemingly hung up the meat dress for good.īut all that was before the emergence of Moon Man, an underground rapper who's acquiring a fast-growing cult following in a way that stands out from other controversial rappers on various levels: he's white, he loves Donald Trump, and he doesn't actually exist. Generally speaking, the music industry and cultural elites have shrugged off the critiques as nothing more than uptight whining from fusty feminists and bluenose Christians.Īs time has gone by, even the general public has become seemingly unshockable. and Miley Cyrus, popular music acts have been accused of degrading women, promoting racism and spreading degeneracy.