3 Hole Punch: People are dragging the wrong restaurant online

Here are three new (and short) North Carolina stories, hand-curated for you, the discerning Rabbit Hole reader.

I’m back again with a new edition of the 3 Hole Punch, my attempt to talk about three interesting things I’ve come across recently in North Carolina. A reminder: The first couple of these will be free, and then only for paid subscribers in the coming weeks. The Thursday version of this newsletter will always be open for all. If you’d like to upgrade your subscription and help keep the Rabbit Hole going, mash the button below.

3. Look Both Ways Before You Leave a 1-Star Review

Please don’t be mistakenly cruel to this restaurant in Wilmington because you watched a TikTok, okay?

Folks, if you’re going to leave a bad review for a restaurant online, please consider the following things:

1. Maybe consider telling someone, in person, at the restaurant, that you had a bad experience before you go online and put them on blast.

2. Before you go to Google Reviews or Yelp or wherever to give a restaurant a one-star review in solidarity with someone else who had a bad experience, ask yourself: Have I actually eaten at this restaurant, and did I personally have a bad experience?

3. Could there possibly be, I don’t know, another restaurant with the same name somewhere? And is it possible that I, a person who definitely double-checks things, am giving the appropriate review to the restaurant I ate at and not, say, a similarly named restaurant in ANOTHER COUNTRY?

If you have your own version of the checklist above, good for you. Many people who do not ended up watching the TikTok below. Which, you know, you can watch too if you want. You don’t have to.

@cassmauroIm laughing about this but Paper crane you lost me girly, seriously why were we getting shamed tho #restaurants #kingcity #sushiroll #vaughan

Tiktok failed to load.

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Katie McKiever pointed this story out on Twitter, and here’s the gist: That woman ate at a sushi joint near Toronto named The Paper Crane, and had a real bad time. Then she stepped into the preferred soundstage for ragey TikToks, the front seat of a car. The quick video she made took off, and two million plays later, the restaurant in Ontario got cluster bombed with one-star reviews online. The woman above posted a second TikTok to say, basically: Oh no! I didn’t mean for you all to do that, please stop! Too late! Once the horse is out of the internet barn, you can’t get it back in.

Anyhow, an unsuspecting restaurant in Wilmington, also named The Paper Crane, got caught up in all of this, unexpectedly receiving bad reviews for one reason: It has the same damn name. According to a check of the restaurant’s reviews this morning, it looks like everything has sorted itself out (and even the original poster told her commenters not to be mean to the restaurant in North Carolina). But still! People! Don’t do that! Consider that there are only so many names for restaurants out there, and that maybe you are part of a frenzied online mob that is showing up at the wrong address.

This is not a new phenomenon. Years ago, I wrote how a mild-mannered SEO specialist from Charlotte had claimed the Twitter handle @zimmerman. Then came George Zimmerman. That has largely died down, but another guy from suburban Charlotte who happens to share a name with an extremely right-wing congressman from Colorado has to keep swatting away people who tag him on Twitter by mistake.

Should they change their handles? In cases like that, I tend to agree with the observation from a character from Office Space named Michael Bolton: “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.”

2. Adventure Time!

Last week, I had the privilege of being the speaker for the virtual Lunchtime Discovery series, hosted by NC Museum of Natural Sciences’ SECU Daily Planet Curator Chris Smith and the NC Department of Environmental Quality Office of Environmental Education and Public Affairs staff. The topic? What it means to be a modern-day explorer. You can watch below:

I made references to a bunch of stories I’ve written about North Carolina over the years, including this trip to the state’s most remote spot, and my visit to the North Carolina’s westernmost point. Both of those stories ended up as season 1 episodes of Away Message (and a sad update there: A.D. Patterson, the owner of the westernmost point, died in 2021). Anyone who knows me knows I can drone on forever about anything, so I do hope everyone enjoyed the talk.

Which leads me to two minor bits of business:

1. If you’d like me to come and talk to your group, I probably can! I like talking about North Carolina stuff in person or online. Reply to this email if you’re interested in that.

2. I’m probably going to drop this talk into the Away Message feed soon. Again, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with the podcast long-term, but in the short term, just bear with me as I try some stuff on a fairly erratic schedule.

1. I was gonna recommend some stuff but Tommy did first, so…

Last week seemed like an unusually good week for people writing about super-interesting North Carolina stuff. I was going to recommend stories about the App State version of Ted Lasso and some objectively bad golfers who shot awful scores in a tournament and may have saved their college’s golf team. But! My friend Tommy Tomlinson made those recommendations first. In fact, his entire weekly Top 10 list is worth diving into with both feet, and so I recommend that you read his entire newsletter and subscribe if you haven’t already. It’ll be better than shooting free throws late in a game.

Death to free throws