Participating in the dating scene is already hard enough. And still, businesses keep finding ways to make it even worse.
For instance, this restaurant came up with a catfishing scheme to get people to come to eat at their establishments, which many people fell for. Now they are starting to talk about it on the internet. And we all know that when the internet is infuriated, it's not good news for the target of it.
More info: TikTok
This woman turned to TikTok to share a story about how she was catfished by a restaurant that orchestrated a fake date just to get customers, and people online are fuming
Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)
"I was just stood up on a date and it was the most humiliating experience ever. Storytime!"
"Met this guy on a dating app. And he immediately asked me out on a date to a specific restaurant. He confirmed day off. I get to the restaurant and see that he's nowhere to be found. So, I reached out, no response."
"I checked the app and noticed that he unmatched me."
"At that point, I was a little confused, and I was kind of pissed because I was already dressed and I got all the way there. And because I had put in so much effort, I thought I might as well just have a meal, while I am in the building."
Image credits: @paretay
"And it wasn't until I got home and I was scrolling Facebook and I saw a very similar story from a girl, that same restaurant, who also got stood up"
"She found out that there are restaurants now posing as people on dating apps, just so you go to their business. And once you get stood up, they know that probably 9 times out of 10 you're going to buy something from them."
"And that just blew my mind. The fact that we have stooped this low..."
Image credits: @paretay
"Sirens - jail time, jail for all the people at the restaurant thinking they're marketing geniuses"
"You are not, no girl boss town, you are just ruining a girl's mental self-esteem. I can't even believe, I'm gonna insert the screenshots below so you can see, but what a wild ride, right?"
Image credits: @paretay
Watch the video here
The video was posted by a TikTok user who goes by @paretay or just Taylor. On her account, the creator posts various videos usually relating to her life. On TikTok, Taylor has 22K followers and over 5M likes.
In the video, Taylor told a story about how a restaurant orchestrated a fake date to get her to their establishment. She also said that she read a story about another woman falling victim to the same trick. And we found out that there are even more victims of this trick out there.
The restaurants that take part in this scam are called food diggers. It is a pun on the phrase “gold digger.” These establishments tend to partner with bot apps. And these partnerships let them create bots on dating apps to lure people to their restaurants. There people, just like Taylor, get stood up, and so, order food on their own. Essentially, the restaurants are exploiting people who are looking for love and/or fun.
However, the food digger term can also be applied to other kinds of opportunists. People who go on dates with new people just to get a free meal can also be called by this name. In this case, the term directly correlates with the gold digger term, because people go on dates not because they like a person, but just because they want to get something from them - food.
But today’s topic is not about them. It is about food-digging restaurants that lure people with catfishing tactics.
Image credits: Yogas Design (not the actual photo)
Netizens first heard about the restaurant food-digging phenomenon when people from India started posting online that it was happening in their country. And the number of people who shared that they were victims of this scheme started to grow. Just think about how many more people were scammed and either didn’t realize it or didn’t share online!
Due to these restaurants' scammy tactics, some people worry that dating apps are no longer a good place to meet people. Being stood up on a date can damage a person's self-esteem, as it feels humiliating. There’s always a risk of meeting a shady person from a dating app, but now there’s also a risk of becoming a victim of a restaurant scheme. And when there are too many risks, the desire to use the app might notably decline.
Coming back to the comments under the original video, let's just say that a lot of people there demanded to know the name of the restaurant. And for good reason! People don't want to contribute to such manipulative businesses. Others, just as we discussed above, feared that it's time to go off the apps, because it seems that everyone is coming up with new ways to trick people there. Some even shared that the same thing happened to them. Lastly, a few folks decided to share their ideas of how people should handle these situations if they find themselves in them.
Folks online were terrified of the restaurant's new scheme and demanded to know the name of it, so they could avoid it
