This Twitter thread explains how Cheesecake Factory became the weirdest restaurant on earth

If you've ever stepped inside a Cheesecake Factory -- a restaurant chain found in America's malls, shopping centers, and suburban landscapes that looks like a pop-up palace built by someone playing Sid Meier's Civilization wrong -- you've probably wondered, "How does this exist?"

Well, this Twitter thread has your answer.

Max Krieger, a Cleveland-based game developer, tweeted a thread explaining the eclectic, bizarre design influences of everyone's favorite high-calorie mall restaurant. The thread caught on, for obvious reasons -- Cheesecake Factory is weird as hell.

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Krieger examines the origin of CF's furniture stylings, which range from Greco-Roman to, uh, The Lord of The Rings.

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For all the far-reaching design influences, however, the quality of Cheesecake Factory's cutlery is decidedly... not good.

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The menu does not strive for consistency or readability so much as it seems to strive for "whatever the opposite of those things are."

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Krieger admits, somewhat sadly, that the food is pretty good. That being said, the restaurant seems to have moved on from their namesake dish: the cheesecake. As Krieger points out -- the dessert is a staple of the menu, but its importance to the restaurant as a whole is more of a sad, old mascot. The Chuck E. Cheese animatronic band of foods.

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As Krieger puts it, Cheesecake Factory -- a mall restaurant with a bizarre menu and too much going on design-wise -- is a pretty solid stand-in for American capitalism.

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In conclusion, Cheesecake Factory is the Donald Trump of restaurants.