Is it Cola? Or Diet? Or maybe, Other? Never in my life has this existential, quintessentially American question been answered for me. Every single soft drink I’ve ever received from a fast food restaurant has come with an undifferentiated lid, none of whose plastic buttons have been punched. From a very young age, the powers that be would ask me to consult my inner rational actor to conclude what waited at the intake end of the straw. Being a very reasonable young child, I endeavored to please said powers by according my choice of tab with whatever flavor blend I had requested of the cashier. Were I to choose incorrectly, I would dutifully punch the correct tab to supersede my previous mistake.

I have long enjoyed fast food. It seemed appropriate then, when I decided to come to Northwestern, that the default 24/7 campus eating establishment was Burger King. Many questions in life become more nuanced during college, and my dialogue with fast food packaging was no exception. Rather than simply posing a question, my cup or sandwich wrapper now offered glib commentary, from fragments like: “Go for it. Tons of ice. No ice. Do your thing. One napkin or two. Whatever you need. No wrongs. Just rights. The right to have things just how you like ‘em,” to tropes like, “You’re special and you deserve a special sandwich.” Being hungry, this punditocracy by garbage made me smile; being over-analytic, it made me think.

Upon reflection, I found myself unsettled by the reductionist, almost childish tone of the branding scheme. The meticulously contrived spontaneity meant to suggest chumminess, the little faux-schematic diagrams of a burger on a bun felt fake. It seemed acceptable to waste a few napkins wiping my fingers, but could I honestly do no wrong in stuffing my face with a triple layer bacon cheeseburger and jumbo fries? Like any satisfied customer, I normally would not bother with the implications of my actions beyond the reflexive, “This meal is a heart-attack in a bag, lol,” mea culpa. The fry pod, however, begged the question.

On the one hand, there was the issue of personal responsibility. This summer, I exchanged small talk at a beachside burger shack with a middle-aged gentleman. He said he’d been able to eat anything he wanted without gaining weight until the age of 30, and urged me to enjoy my own magical metabolism while it lasted; I regularly take his suggestion. Nevertheless, I do theoretically understand the zero-sum balance between six-piece chicken fingers and six-pack abs. I know there is something improper, in the scope of human evolution, about consuming as many calories in fifteen minutes as there are years separating the birth of Jesus and the modern day. And I know that my future self could well be screaming at me for eating so many fats, salts and chemical preservatives.

On the other hand, there are the questions of social responsibility. Just as I can purchase stock in some wondrous biotech research firm, I can purchase a share of participation in a fast-food business: For one crumpled ten-dollar fiat bill, I can assume one meal’s worth of complicity in the enterprise. Seeing only the final good, I don’t really know what methods I’m blessing and enabling. Deforestation? Factory farming? Labor abuse? Obesity? Like designating a soda choice, my inner rational actor demands that I punch the correct button. Sometimes I have the sinking suspicion that I should press all of them, and maybe others I haven’t heard of.

More than any discrete problems of technology or conservation, what bothered me most about the pep-talk coming from my placemat was the equation of my eating habits with my expression of self. Choosing the level of ice in my cup was allegedly determinative of my self-actualization. Given that there were “no wrongs,” I stood absolved from reproach for abject gluttony. Furthermore, I enjoyed by dint of my purchase “just rights” to consume and discard. Alongside my right to free expression and my right security of my home was appended, apparently, my right to a fish sandwich. It felt like a corrosion of principle, or an inexorable race to the bottom governed by logical laws.

Fortunately, I have the luxury of choice. I continue to enjoy eating at the BK Lounge every once in a while; I never do it out of economic necessity. Perverse as it may be, I like having personal responsibility for deciding whether or not I want to take an anti-cardio workout at two a.m. Additionally, I enjoy the singular cultural role of BK in life at Northwestern as a neon-lit intersection of our late-night lives. It is a fixed point of convenience, whose 80s soundtrack suggests the confidence of the Reagan administration and satisfaction that never ends. It is a gateway to Evanston and Chicago, where the tortured architecture of the Crown Center and Blue Light phones give way to high-rise apartments and speeding taxis. It is an enabler that withholds judgment while we make the exhilarating and frightening choices of adulthood. And it is in some sense an adviser that asks us questions about ourselves if we look at it long enough. I wouldn’t want it any other way.