Restaurants, cafes, and stores sometimes run birthday promotions to make their customers feel special. It’s a small way to celebrate their big day. It also slightly helps retain their loyalty! However, sometimes, other companies' goodwill can be easy to take advantage of… if someone is ever inclined to do so.
TikToker and digital creator Noah Wille, aka @itsnoahgraham, revealed his “kind of terrible” life hack which meant that he could get free food all year round. His video went so viral that some fast food chains even responded to him in the comments. However, there was a serious reason why Noah initially used the hack in the first place. Scroll down for the full video and the internet’s reaction to it.
Bored Panda reached out to Noah, and he was kind enough to share his thoughts on the viral video and how the internet couldn’t decide if he was a hero or a villain. He also had some stellar advice for new content creators who are getting started just now. You'll find our interview with him as you read on.
TikTok content creator Noah went viral after revealing how he used to get free food throughout the year
Image credits: itsnoahgraham
"Okay, life hack that's also kind of terrible. Once upon a time, I made this fake email account that I still use. I get free food or dessert from a restaurant every single day. I made this fake email and I found a list of a bunch of restaurants that offered birthday freebies. So I put them all in here and I put my birthday on each website for a different day of the year."
Image credits: itsnoahgraham
Image credits: itsnoahgraham
"So I have 365 days of free food. Tomorrow, I have a free meal from Benihana's. I really hope I'm not the only person who is crazy enough to do this. I'm really that person who went through it and signed up for 365 different restaurants with a different birthday for each one so I could get free [stuff]. Well worth it. It is well worth it."
Image credits: itsnoahgraham
You can watch Noah's divisive video in full right over here
"I had everything from people asking me for the spreadsheet to straight-up letters sent to my parents' house threatening me"
Image credits: Liam Truong / unsplash (not the actual photo)
Noah told Bored Panda that it's been a while since he thought about the video. He gave us some context and shared his take on why it went viral and what the response had been like way back in August 2020.
"We were living in a time when Covid was ending and people were struggling; including myself. I originally had this idea to save some money on my grocery bill, and I think that there were a lot of people who needed the same," he told us via email.
"Social media is also built on this idea of engagement, content that performs well on these platforms tends to be a bit divisive. Psychologically, I think people have some kind of innate need to share their opinions online, they want to be heard. This is exactly what happened in this video, for a moment the internet couldn’t decide if I was a hero or a villain," he said that it's very visible in the comments.
"I had everything from people asking me for the spreadsheet to straight-up letters sent to my parents' house threatening me. This was truly the first moment I realized the power of social media."
Noah had first started posting content on TikTok back in college. It was a fun activity to do with a friend after class. "I woke up one day with 30,000 followers and a few viral videos. From there, I kept posting, collaborating with other content creators, working with brands, and I really found a passion for creating and uploading content. It was something I could do that wasn’t only fun, but could help me pay for school."
We were curious about what advice Noah would give content creators who are starting out but not quite sure of what path to take. "I think most creators, or people who would like to be creators, think way too much about being perfect. In my experience, audiences resonate with authenticity. My best advice to get started is to just GO FOR IT!!" he urged.
"The longer you think about who you want to be on social media or what kind of content you’d like to post, the less content you make. You’ll find a natural flow in your content and strategy after starting, and your audience will start telling you what they’d like to see. Since the time of my viral video years ago, I’ve helped hundreds of creators and brands alike grow their social media, and the one thing that always keeps them from growing? Fear of starting," Noah said.
"I started posting content while I was in college working on a Neurobiology degree, and here I am today working in digital marketing and incredibly happy. You never know where your social media journey might lead you. Just take the leap!"
Noah has 127.3k followers on his @itsnoahgraham TikTok account and has amassed a jaw-dropping 7.3 million likes across all of his clips. The video about his free food life hacks got nearly 250k likes and was viewed a whopping 1.1 million times.
The video was incredibly polarizing and people had very strong opinions about it
Image credits: Polina Tankilevitch / pexels (not the actual photo)
A representative of the American fast food chain Arby’s even responded to the video, jokingly asking when Noah’s “Arby’s birthday” was.
People were both fascinated and appalled by the content creator’s 45-second-long clip. Some folks thought that his idea was absolutely brilliant. Some even commended him on using a spreadsheet to keep all the data neat and orderly.
A few viewers even noted that this is something that is legitimately useful for people who are dealing with food scarcity. A free meal can be lifesaving when every penny counts and you can barely put food on the table.
However, there is another side to this coin. Other viewers thought that it was unfair to take advantage of promo systems like this. If people were to start doing this en masse, then the restaurants might cancel their birthday policies due to a lack of trust in their customers.
An easy way to get around this life hack is simply to ask for the person’s ID to verify that it is, indeed, their birthday!
Not to mention that many restaurants’ promo policies will probably have changed in the years since Noah filmed the video. Some of them may even have updated theirs after the clip had gone viral.
So it’s very likely that this same life hack wouldn’t work today. And it’s not something that we’d recommend trying if you value fairness and earn enough to put food on the table. However, if you don’t have food security… well, you have to do what you have to do to survive.
However, there are other ways to ensure you get the assistance you need without low-key scamming and spamming fast food restaurants. There are plenty of charities that would be happy to lend a helping hand to anyone in need. However, that means setting your pride aside and accepting what’s offered.
The TikToker previously told BuzzFeed the reason why he’d started applying this food hack in the first place.
“A few years ago when I was in high school, I had started my own nonprofit organization to help the homeless community in central Iowa," he said back in 2020.
The idea behind the organization was to fundraise money and put together care packages. These would help the homeless out for a few weeks.
However, when Noah eventually moved to Los Angeles, he himself ended up in a situation where he lacked food security. He’d moved to the city without his parents’ support.
Noah wanted to avoid going deeper into debt, so he had to find a way to get food. One day, the idea for the birthday promo life hack simply popped into his head.
“I would say the spreadsheet took me about three weeks to make and sign up for everything, but in the end, the effort has been totally worth it.”
The clip was so popular that even fast food chain Arby's left a comment
Here's how some TikTok users reacted when they saw the video
