TikToker Blasts Restaurant for Letting Customers Finance Their Meals, Sparking Debate

The TikTok account @millennialchaos went viral after posting a clip that shows a pizzeria allowing Afterpay financing installments for customers who wish to finance their meals. A bearded man in the clip speaks into the camera over a green screen of the ordering page.

"Hi, um, I just wanted to know what stage of Capitalism it is where you'd have to finance your f***ing dinner. This $50 pizza can be yours with only 4 interest free payments of $12.25."

There's a lot to say about this TikTok. Is is true that food prices across America (and many parts of the world) have increased since the pandemic? Yes, absolutely, especially the cost of eggs. In fact, the little orbs of protein are becoming so costly people are just buying their own chickens and building coops for them instead of taking trips to the grocery store.

However, as many commenters who replied to @millennialchaos' post pointed out, buying a $50 pizza pie is hardly considered a necessity and many would argue that this meal is certainly a luxury item. Plus there are various farmer's markets located all across the USA that often carry much more affordable prices for food than other grocery stores.

The USDA has reported that the number of Americans using food banks has increased over the years, possibly in response to the rising cost for groceries.

@millennialchaos' video also sparked another conversation about the nature of Capitalism as an inherently flawed system. The TikToker's caption for the video more than likely played a large part in that as they wrote: "were in the endgame now #anticapitalism #socialism #communism"

Although it's hard to imagine that Gourmet pizza offerings were commonly found in Communist countries, @millenialchaos does bring up a popular topic of conversation from folks who do advocate for Socialism and Communism as a better system of living for individuals.

But the idea that America has a financial system of exploiting portions of its population for profit (like pretty much any civilization ever, yes even Communist ones) has been around for a very long time.

And we're not even talking about slavery or indentured servitude, but just the idea of America as a corporate republic itself. This topic is a big part of our culture, even in movies that don't seem like they make some grand political statement about the state of society. Killing Them Softly is a great example of this. The film opens up with haunting imagery combined with snippets of a hopeful speech from Barack Obama at the height of his initial campaign trail.

While the movie centers on how the fallout of a specific criminal incident is handled, and all of the blunders associated with it, it's clearly correlates with how the US Government doesn't really deal with problems all that differently than a mafia or any crime organization would. Brad Pitt's character sums up the point the movie is trying to make with a final quote: "I'm living in America, and in America, you're on your own. America's not a country. It's just a business. Now f***g pay me."

While this may seem like a brutally harsh outlook on the American Dream, it's not like there isn't truth in it. Of course there's one thing that's valued above all else in America and that's success: folks who otherwise wouldn't have had opportunities to climb social ladders in other nations are able to make their bones as long as they're willing to work their butts off.

But there are a number of people who are finding it harder and harder to realize that dream. And seeing businesses offer folks the option to finance pizza isn't really helping matters either.