Unusual Activity Alert: Buffalo Wild Wings and Beans
What do you get when you cross the power of people with the power of the internet? Well, that is a large and loaded question and deserves discourse at length, with research, varying viewpoints, and time to reflect and repose.
But we’re in the fast-service business on this blog post, so what do you get when you combine the power of people with the power of the internet? If there’s an extra dash of immaturity and “of the time” groupthink - in which the group is obsessed with being seen/noticed, disregarding consequences/other people, and doing something stupid just for laughs/likes - then we get chaos. People powered chaos.
Such is the case with the tale of Buffalo Wild Wings and Beans.
Say What?
The internet is meme-city, baby, get on the bus! Next stop, meme-central, where things are just lol-worthy anymore, they are full-on, aging-millennial-confounding adfhadkf (that’s how they laugh now, yes, they).
Memes are popular. Everyone is on their phone or computer, and memes are popular. And like those objects we’ve reviewed in Me, You, and Meme Reviews (Three Wolf Moon Shirt 1, 2; Bic for Her Pens 1, 2), when people find a hot new meme, they share the ever-living daylights out of it, double down on it’s fun and stupidity, and make it even more present.
That’s what’s happening to a Buffalo Wild Wings in San Jose, California, a warped version meme Reviews.
Only it doesn’t start as reviews. Me, You, and Meme Review products are famed for their knee-slapping, absurdist reviews, which are almost always left by those who haven’t bought the product. So the review isn’t helpful in the sense that it informs a prospective buyer on whether they’d like it, but hey, a free laugh is nice, too! These reviews aren’t great, but they aren’t the worst.
This is. This is the worst. This is people making other people’s lives worse, for jokes and comedy and content. This is this:
So what’s the hubbub there, eh? Kinda odd that there are a bunch of these beans-related reviews. They don’t sound super real, and huh, strangely enough, they’ve all been left by reviewers with only ONE review to their names. THIS one.
But hang on, we already covered this. Sure, the fake reviews are bad, but is this hurting anyone? Surely you can tell they aren’t trustworthy. So what’s the hubbub?
Well, for one thing, this business’s star rating has plummeted anywhere that keeps track. That has to affect people’s perceptions and may determine whether or not they pay a visit.
But also this:
Yeah, if you want that number, you’re going to have to dig it up yourself, I’m not giving it out for free (and it honestly won’t be that difficult). But holy hot damn. Even if only one out of every hundred who liked/shared/subscribed this post actually called asking for beans, that’s still a whole lot of jokesters tying up your line and testing your staff’s patience. Just one prank call (or telemarketer or scammer or robocall) is too many, and the people of this one BWW have been on the receiving end of a lot more than one or two calls.
As best as I can tell, this meme took flight around February 2020, if not before, as that is the date of the earliest beans review I’ve found. And that is an important point. After all, if everybody is on the internet, good players and bad, then it doesn’t take forever for a review site to notice that something is afoot.
Similar to the Four Seasons Landscaping review bombing, or the weaponized reviews aimed at Robinhood, these beans reviews are anomalies. A whole LOT of a anomalies, hence, action like this from Yelp:
Yelp knows what’s up. Someone has to be the police on stuff like this, and it has to be those in power. If not them, then the riotous proletariat will destroy everything that powerful Yelp (or Google or whoever) has worked so hard to build.
Hopefully this isn’t a trend or a sign of things to come. Jokes and memes are one thing, but this borders on harassment (like many pranks or stunts do), and really- who would really want beans from Buffalo Wild Wings? Wing me up, Scotty!
