Would you like some wings with that ego stroking? Make big bucks by giving insecure men “the attention they crave”

ThinkProgress has gotten hold of an inadvertently hilarious internal document from the “breastaurant” chain Twin Peaks that provides an interesting glimpse into what those who run the company may actually think of the customers who pay their salaries.

Twin Peaks, as ThinkProgress writer Tara Culp-Ressler notes, is essentially Hooters on steroids, and the chain has been spreading like ebola; in 2013, it was the fastest-growing restaurant chain in the US. It also seems to be quite popular with Biker gangs; the gigantic biker shootout last weekend took place at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas.

The document — which the company insists was never distributed to employees — was leaked to ThinkProgress by an anonymous Twin Peaks employee. And it’s kind of a doozy, describing the company’s “target” demographic essentially as a bunch of insecure narcissistic manchildren desperate for attention from young women with gigantic bazongas who are required to smile and put up with their bullshit.

According to the document, the restaurant wants to target guys “who love to have their ego stroked by beautiful girls,” and promises to provide an environment “that feeds their ego with the attention they crave.” They describe their typical customer as someone who likes “attention from beautiful girls and being recognized in front of the guys,” as well as someone who doesn’t want to be asked what he’s thinking. 

If you leave out the bits about the “beautiful girls,” this strategy sounds an awful lot like the ego-stroking approach of some of the more influential figures in the Men’s Rights and GamerGate movement: pander to insecure men’s fantasies of victimization, tell them that they’re right to hate and fear feminists and women at large, and assure them that the nasty comments they go around leaving on every site that doesn’t ban them are actually a noble form of human rights activism. As GamerGatey YouTubers and Men’s “Human Rights” activists alike have learned, pandering to angry dudes can be a surprisingly lucrative money-raising strategy (at least in the short term).

Like the patrons of Twin Peaks, MRAs seem to especially like getting this kind of validation from women — hence the absurd popularity of Karen “GirlWritesWhat” Straughan’s sophomoric and soporific YouTube videos; hence the enthusiastic embrace of the female-fronted Honey Badgers as free speech martyrs by GamerGaters and others, who have happily sent along $30,000 in donations for a lawsuit against the Calgary Expo that seems highly unlikely to go anywhere, if it even happens at all.

I’ll have more on the Honey Badgers in a bit. In the meantime, I would like to remind you, my readers, my big handsome readers, how totally cool you are and would you like some wings with that?

Er, no, I meant that I would like to remind you that my Spite the Honey Badgers fund raiser is, last I checked, only  $39,529 short of its completely reasonable goal of $40,000, which is what all the economists I consulted* told me would be the amount of money I would need to make the Honey Badgers really annoyed.

Click here to donate. You don’t need a Pay Pal account. All you need to have is a little bit of money and a desire to Spite the Honey Badgers.

Thanks, hon. I’ll be right back with that giant mound of nachos.

NOTE: “All the economists I consulted” add up to zero. I did not actually consult any economists. Also, you’re not getting any nachos.

CORRECTION: I originally wrote that the Tara Culp-Ressler piece was on Talking Points Memo; it was on Think Progress.