You know who's great at getting people to believe all the shit they tell them while still carrying on heinous deeds? Major multinational corporations, that's who. Even I, the master of all villainy, could learn a thing or two from those guys, especially these nine, who have really taken evil PR to new levels.
McDonald's
What they get right: Think back to when you were four years old. Where did you want to eat all day, every day? That's right. Under those big yellow arches. So many impressionable children have been sucked in to the vortex McDonald's fat and sodium that it's almost magical. And, as a bonus, creepy clown mascot! (And creepy purple monstrosity mascot and creepy perverted burglar mascot.)
What needs work: It's great public relations, but really, McDonald's did you have to go and start your own huge charity for kids? That ain't evil, man.
What they get right: In addition to creating web applications that invade just about every portion of users' personal lives, from their phone messages to their website ads and stats to their travel, Google has also created the greatest database of private personal interests in history. Every search anyone types into their search engine is recorded and logged somewhere, and forever attached to that user. It's a blackmail goldmine.
What needs work: The company is far too kind to its employees. Gourmet food? On-site recreation? Come on, Google. Much more of that and our henchmen are going to expect to be treated like human beings or something.
Volkswagen
What they get right: Taking a car basically created by Hitler and making it trendy? Ballsy.
What needs work: Their unshakable connection to hippie-stink takes away a lot of their evil viability.
Apple
What they get right: They've littered the whole globe with tiny little portable machines designed to pump sound into people's ears. Loads of potential there. Also, they're great at childishly assaulting their competition while still seeming to keep the high ground. It's like a bully that quotes Proust while beating kids up.
What needs work: They've done a great job of setting the groundwork, but it's time to set the plan into action, Apple! Start pumping secret messages of anarchy into peoples' ears already, guys!
AIG
What they get right: Despite completely mismanaging themselves, greedily grabbing cash hand over fist and showing no concern for their clients, they managed to convince the government to give them billions of dollars. That's the dream, folks.
What needs work: Why only rely on one government? It's time to pick up, move to France, and start the whole thing over, AIG. That racket's just too beautiful not to try again.
RJ Reynolds
What they get right: Continuing to sell cigarettes that are known to cause cancer while trying to excuse it by making half-assed anti-smoking ads? That's slimy with a capital S. And brilliant.
What needs work: Cigarettes are great and all, but why not develop something that kills people more quickly? Like, maybe a little stick that sends thousands of tiny man-eating gorillas down someone's throat?
Walmart
What they get right: They have a beautiful vicious cycle in place. Walmart comes in, undercuts everyone, and makes all the businesses close. So everyone has to get jobs at Walmart. Then, Walmart pays their employees so little that they can't possibly buy things anywhere else. Genius.
What needs work: It's hard to find fault in their evil plot, but maybe they could occasionally poison someone or something, you know, for the hell of it.
Newscorp
What they get right: The company that owns the Fox networks and several right-wing newspapers manages to constantly criticize our trash culture while simultaneously contributing to it more than just about anyone else. Obviously, this is a plan to confuse the populace into submission.
What needs work: Couldn't you guys get a better spokesman for your world takeover plot than Bill O'Reilly?
Blizzard
What they get right: World of Warcraft was and remains the finest evil plot ever concocted. It makes people inert, suggestible and unproductive.
What needs work: Not a thing.
