Enough Already: Social Media and Restaurant Self-Promotion

"Don't believe the hype." I'm quite sure that when Public Enemy had a hit with those lyrics back in the early 90s they most certainly weren't talking about anything I'm going to write about in this blog post. Nonetheless that doesn't mean the phrase doesn't apply to the phenomenon I've seen way too much of lately, relentless restaurant self promotion via Twitter.

As some of you may know I'm a big fan of social media and twitter especially. If you're so inclined you can even follow me via that little link over there on the right.  Twitter serves a great purpose.  It allows easy social interaction and conversation.  It is a source for humor. And it can be used as a cheap and effective way to promote something whether that be a political ideology, a specific candidate, a blog (ahem), or yes even a business.  I don't find anything wrong at all with any of this, but I'm a believer in the concept of everything in moderation (bacon excluded) but it seems as of late some restaurants aren't subscribers to this philosophy. 

I believe it's one thing for a restaurant to use twitter to interact with customers (Pizzology, Boogie Burger, Scotty's Brewhouse) and to promote special events or menu items (The Local), but a more disturbing phenomenon is using the medium to blowup followers' timelines to do nothing but inflate their own hype.  Let me give you an example.  If I eat somewhere and enjoy myself I might tweet and say "@XXXXX I had a nice meal tonight. Looking forward to going back." It would be proper for that restaurant to maybe send me something back saying thanks for coming out or we appreciate your business.  However, what I've seen is one place in particular continuously retweeting without comment EVERY remotely positive thing people say about them.  It's obnoxious and excessive, and having ate there (review to come later) an inaccurate representation of the quality of the experience.  After all I certainly don't see any "My food took forever to come out and you turned my steak to shoe leather" tweets.  I know. I know.  Why don't I just unfollow? That's true I could do that and probably will, but I shouldn't have to.  The point is that if you're making people unfollow you your social media strategy is a big wad of fail.

As you are my readers I have to assume all of you are poor judges of writing talent discerning diners or at least hope to be.  I do my best to give you my honest opinion and go into each restaurant and meal with an open mind. But while I can help be a guide as to where you might best spend your hard earned dollar I'm not trying to make up your mind for you. If you see a restaurant trying so hard it seems like they're almost trying to convince themselves you should probably beware. I mean look what happened to Huey Lewis after he tried to make us believe the heart of rock n roll was still beating.

Ok so this isn't Huey, but it might as well be.