There's something suspect about food accounts for local dc restaurants having 100k followers...

Maybe I've been in DC too long, but one of these accounts also seem to treat places like The Raven or Wonderland Ballroom like some secret dive bar lol.

That's definitely George Santos on the right, but you know he lies about it.

Lol the garbage influencers ride on the coat trails of actual critics. I love reading emails of people looking to do a "Collab" involving thousands of dollars of free food and alcohol in exchange for two posts on a shit IG account

One rule of thumb is that you can't trust the "influencers" who aren't at least a little thick, because that's how you know they're actually tasting the food and not just pocketing the bribes.

Yeah, I legit couldn't tell if they were trolling or not when they described Wonderland as a hidden gem, or if they just don't get uptown much.

Oh gods no.

Nah, Americans just be fat. Gotta divide average number of likes of the last 10 posts by the number of followers they have. You end up with shit like 0.05% follower engagement rate, and at that point it's fucking hilarious that these people don't realize they should be paying dinner plus an exorbitant fee for risking our brand on such a shit page

Maybe I'm old but "influencer" is just the dumbest shit.

There are companies out there that will let you try out a tool to see what percentage of followers might be "organic" or bought thru an Instagram follower farm.

I'd guess almost all local food influencers that have 100K+ followers are suspect. Maybe Tom Siestma (Sp?).

Lol...Wonderland and Raven a secret dive bar if you were a traveler into DC from afar and reading a free travel guide.

> Lol...Wonderland and Raven a secret dive bar if you were a traveler into DC from afar and reading a free travel guide.

Given that I imagine some nonzero number of folks who follow these accounts are suburbanites or new enough to DC to essentially be tourists... I guess it works! I just find it amusing

I thought they were suspect and then I read a little about the culture of requesting mad comps (couple hundred dollars of food and drinks the "influencer" might have a friend eat or dump in a trash can outside the restaurant) and sometimes not even doing a review or posting a random photo.

Even calling restaurants before they open and hassling them for a first review.

And some have the audacity to think they should be noticed as a celebrity.

"Influencers" be the modern grifters.

I think the City Paper had an article a couple years ago where local restaurateurs basically said there were no noticeable increases in patronage due to influencer posts.

Then there are those bars/restaurants/etc. that decorate for the gram. I remember when La Vie on the Wharf had people going there to post. Just wild.

The DC metro area is millions of people, not to mention people travel to DC for food and drink. Plenty to knock but not weird that there'd be a sizable audience.

Influencers are cancer.

What people don’t understand is that an instagram follower costs about $0.02 cents. You could make a new account, pay some company $250 bucks, and have 10,000 followers the next day. It costs almost nothing.

I really struggle with the fact that social media influencers can be pretty useful for certain things, but at the same time I hate what they do so much.

I’m old. But it’s also the dumbest shit.

idk about the Instagram scene but i swear every local DC wannabe influencer on TikTok that shows up in my feed treats the most basic places as “hidden gems.”

Exactly, which is one of the reasons those tools are created.

It's a fine line though. I've seen vloggers who are quite rotund, and everything they eat is delicious to them.

For a while now I just treat Yelp and IG as a brainstorming list, still need to vet through reviews because even at risk of sounding like an elitist, a lot of people don't really know what they're talking about.

I'm not a food critic but am very familiar on certain select genres. I often see places that I know are crap pop up on local influencer pages.

It's made worse because I personally know one local food influencer and the motivation was just to get free food.

What's a foodie anyway, people who like good tasting food?

It’s pretty ridiculous. There’s a reason why actual publications don’t let their reviewers accept free stuff.

Yeah but are you living social old? Makes me wonder where the mid-20s of today go to socialize. I feel like every week for me, it was a LS or BYT event.

For the good ones, they have a specific niche and “influencer” is just a catch-all term. In this case, they’re food critics. They’re just employed by themselves instead of e.g. a newspaper

This is the worst thing I have ever read in my entire life.

The fact that it's not just a thing but that many "influencers" make big money doing this crap is even worse. Then again, I generally hate social media and don't really get the appeal of following random people who post low-quality garbage.

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I hate it but what I think I hate even more is when your college friends become influencers and try to sell stuff to you 🤮

The only social media thing I like right now is "defluencing" i.e the people that say "x, y, and z are overhyped and not worth your money"

No different then reddit. Paid followers/upvoters/downvoters and postings.

Must just be old

>The “panoramic”—he hates the word pandemic—seemed like it was never going to end.

OK, two sentences in and I already want to punch this guy.

>There was the roof-top Super Soaker bash where a boozed-up crowd sprayed water and Champagne guns. Nicki Night with Minaj tunes and twerking. Cuffing-season mixers with speed dating and onsite matchmakers. Each event was bigger than the last, sold out, and typically enough to cover a couple months’ rent. He dated someone he’d met in his TikTok comments. A Michelin-starred restaurant invited him to its $155 cocktail “experience,” fully comped. Clubs were giving him free tables and bottle service with half-­naked girls blasting sparklers and waving lit-up drinks in the district signs. Royalty, baby.

Do people actually like doing this shit? Or do they just pretend to themselves that they do because this is what they assume "living life" actually means?

Independent marketing is nothing new, it’s just that they invented a fun new term for it

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I have two main issues with influencers:

1)The free food. I just can't get not paying a business because you're going to make a post about them. If you were truly about the food and giving your followers an honest opinion of a restaurant you would try to be as unbiased as possible. Getting free meals cannot make you unbiased.

2. Influencer "reviews have no real substance. Everything is a "vibe", every dish ever is "so good". Really Out of 200 restaurants you've reviewed you haven't found a shit one? Like not even a dish you haven't liked? So this leads me back to issue 1. They suggest to people that they spend their hard-earned money at places that may not be genuinely good. One of the influencers featured in this article reviewed a restaurant I worked at. I knew the food wasn't good but when their review came out it was all about "the vibe and this restaurant is so good for date night." I'm sorry but the restaurant I was working at would have ruined my date night.

"Influencers" are hurting the food scene and not giving proper due to actual great restaurants. If every restaurant is good, no restaurant can be outstanding. By the way I am not old I am 25. I am just someone who genuinely cares about restaurants, hospitality, and DC having an overall good scene that we can be proud of.

Actual publications still reimburse critics for dining expenses, which still influences their opinion. Most people enjoy things more when they are free.