SoPo wrote: Fri Feb 17, 2023 4:53 am
To be honest, when I first read this post, I thought about how if this note was left on the Omaha Food Lovers Facebook page, you would have been chastised and maligned for posting such a comment and not going to management to voice your concerns instead. I know that OFL is highly revered on this forum since Stacy Winters is a semi-regular guest on Grow Omaha. But that's why I stopped visiting the OFL group because of all the fervor about how every post about a business must be positive. Negative reviews only create instant hatred to commenters. You will commonly see a hundred posts about how a restaurant is "life-changing" and "awesome", but if you dare say that a restaurant is "meh", holy hellfire will descend on you. I sincerely believe that these "always positive" reviews on OFL are what's causing these big runs on restaurants, Church's Chicken, Crumbl Cookie and others have such massive business for months after opening. Everyone keeps glowingly reviewing these places, and saying that a cooking isn't good enough to be priced at $5 will get you instantly slaughtered by OFL admins and other posters.
Personally, I want people's HONEST and RAW opinion.
I was acquainted with a guy that ran a fairly popular and very active Facebook foodie group and I was jokingly giving him shìt about how they delete all of the negative posts and comments. He said he got a lot of advice and did some research as he was getting the group going and the consensus was to allow positive posts and comments only. Otherwise, the group rapidly degenerates into an incessant bìtchfest and that will hinder its growth. That degeneration seems to be especially true with foodie groups. I can see the wisdom in that as, back when I was still on Facebook, I can think of several groups where all anyone did was complain about this or that. Negative experiences seem to be much more motivating than positive experiences when it comes to posting online. A lot of people shy away from direct confrontation. So, they're much more likely to complain about a negative experience online than to ask to speak with the manager in-person. It doesn't help that we now label anyone we see complaining in-person as a "Karen," record them without their consent, and then post it online to be laughed at by the masses. Given that I wouldn't complain in-person either. Funny enough, on Facebook someone usually just goes and creates a duplicate group and adds the word "Uncensored" to the name. There's probably an "Omaha Food Lovers Uncensored" group started by someone that had one too many complaints deleted.
That said, I also think there's this toxic positivity that's common in online forums where nobody is allowed to complain about anything. At best you can lightly complain, but only if you temper it with a lot of praise too. It comes from a good place. The mods don't want the forum descending into nothing but complaints and negativity (who wants to be a part of that?). I see it a lot with professional food critics. They only seem to write positive reviews. At worst, they'll write a lukewarm review. You'll rarely see a professional review published that just trashes a restaurant due to a horrible experience. Think of it as the food critic version of, "If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all." It's very prevalent in online forums too where any complaints are removed or the post is flooded with comments chastising them for complaining (or for complaining online instead of speaking with the business owner). They don't want to hear about the places you don't like only the places you do like. About the best you can get away with is, "It's not for me, but you should definitely give it a try!" I liken that style of moderation to those avid church-goers who mainly do church-sponsored activities, send their kids to church schools or homeschool them, primarily consume church-approved media, and all of their friends are from church. They don't live in reality. They live in a little church bubble. Sometimes mods are (knowingly or unknowingly) trying to make their forum a little bubble too.
Sure, some people are just negative and, as previously noted, are only motivated to post when they have a bad experience. You quickly figure out who those people are and to take their complaint
du jour with a grain of salt. Also, a lot of complaints are oddly specific. Like, the entire restaurant is the worst restaurant ever because they forget my request for no onions. It's absurd to make the leap from a minor mistake to a restaurant being horrible as a result. I quickly dismiss those types of posts. I've never not patronized a business because one or two people were ranting about it as I don't consider that a consensus on how good or bad the business is. There's certainly restaurants I enjoy that it seems like everyone else hates.
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