A Directory for...Broken McDonalds Ice Cream Machines?
written by Frey Chu
A Directory for...Broken McDonalds Ice Cream Machines?
This is your reminder that directories can be fun, successful, a little hilarious and lead to unexpected (massive) opportunities.
I found mcbroken.com today and it's a directory where you can check if your local McDonald's has a broken ice cream machine.
If you know, you know.
But if you don't know...this is became a viral meme after so many people started sharing how consistently inconsistent McDonald's ice cream machines are (and whether they're working or not).
Rashiq, the creator of this directory, built this in late 2020 where a viral tweet sent this directory 200k unique visitors at it's peak.
What's also funny is that the people at McDonald's loved it.
Almost 5 years later, it's still getting 11k monthly visitors.
It's become so well-known, that it even has a branded tag in ahrefs!
And check this out, they got a backlink from Wendy's!
Wait a minute...did Wendy's hire this guy to build a directory for their nuggs?
Yup, they did indeed. It's been confirmed:
Btw, to learn how he built this, he explains it in this viral tweet.
If there's one thing I'm excited to be able to build using AI tools & agents, it's stuff like this.
It's 1AM PST on Sunday, June 8th (6 hours before releasing this) as I type this and I can't stop going down the rabbit hole of hilariously weird directory niches where I'm thinking "this is so dumb, it might actually work."
Boring niches are great, but this is just a reminder to have fun while building stuff online.
