Lucy, Chipotle, and the Chaos of a Spicy Story

Welcome to another edition of This is the Internet, Here There be Monsters. And just like Dr. Frankenstein, sometimes we don’t even realize that we’re creating something diabolical and destructive (in all fairness to “the monster” though, we failed him).

Today, the monster goes by the name of “Lucy,” the supposed general manager or whatever of a Chipotle in Fort Myers. Lucy is a harlot, a cheat, an adultress, we’re led to believe.

How was the monster created in this story?

Well, let’s look at what happened after a harmless tweet called attention to a relatively harmless review (said review seen above):

I’m leaving that pic juiced to its full size so you can see the reviews.

That one from Jessiika F? That seems to have been the catalyst for this whole thing.

We could honestly almost chalk this up as the beginnings of a Meme Review, which we at Review Party Dot Com classify as follows: Someone writes a review that is funny, whether intentional or not; attention is drawn to the review and copycat and one-up reviews follow; more people pile on to the joke, it spreads on social media, it takes on a life of its own. See the Three Wolf Moon Shirt (part one, two), Bic for Her Pens (one, two), or Haribo Gummy Bears (one, two, Three?, FOUR?!)

And look, we love comedy, we love jokes. We have a comedy podcast about reviews, after all. But we also value reviews that inform a potential buyer, and these meme reviews don’t always help in that area. We know this, and so does Yelp. That’s why they have tools in place. Tools we’ve discussed before.

Because from time to time, we wily internet-dwellers might find it funny to harass a Buffalo Wild Wings to ask if they have beans, because we saw it on Twitter or Instagram. Or there are times where a business will be in the news (right or wrong, political or not), and we’ll use the review section more as a public posting board where we simply air grievances. Maybe it’s the Yelp page of an attorney representing an accused murderer or a business that employed a criminal years before they committed a crime. Or maybe you just don’t like what a movie is about, so you review bomb it.

To say we’ve written about stuff like this already is a bit of an understatement. But here we are again, so let’s have fun(?) with it?

Look, Yelp is pretty hip. They gotta have their rules, but they’re online, people, they SEE what’s happening. That’s why they needed to step in with this:

TLDR; the jig is up, bubs. Stop goofing because it’s goofing things up around here.

And that’s fair! Reviews are a commodity, and if the well is slowly being poisoned with meaningless jokes, the star count drops, fewer people go to the business, fewer people trust the reviews, fewer people use Yelp, fewer businesses buy ads on Yelp (yeah, that does matter), and then we don’t know WHERE to spend our money.

BUT. At least for a little while we can enjoy the laughs.

So there is the saga of Lucy. She gets around more than the Beach Boys. Or something.

Will these reviews stand the test of time? In some cases, maybe. But Yelp is probably going to wipe those written by the reviewers with only a review or two to their names. Less credibility, you see. More likely you did it for the lulz.

And have we learned anything? Not really. The internet is still the same old internet.