So long story short, got into a rabbit hole of this page. They’re saying they’re an award winning austin restaurant but all of their pictures are fake/AI I’m pretty sure. I’m wondering if anyone else has seen this? It’s no where I can find online and there’s no website or place to make reservations. What’s y’all’s take? Lol
by soph0216
28 Comments
This has to be fake omg
Not to be problematic but my guy tommy is holding the glass with the classic 6 finger grip haha
If there is a real six-fingered bartender named “Tommy Kollins” in Austin I’ll eat my shoe
Honestly a decent gag, but as others have pointed out six-fingered barkeep Tom Kollins is an obvious giveaway. As is the Chili Con Carnival, which is a rip from South Park.
As an Uber eats driver, my first visit to a “ghost restaurant” or “virtual restaurant” was like a dystopian nightmare made real, and this gave me ghost restaurant vibes at first, but yeah, the 6 fingers gave it away 😆
For those that don’t know, there are now buildings with like 5 kitchens running at once, selling food on apps under multiple names, and delivery drivers come inside, enter a code and a locker opens containing the food, ready for delivery. It’s like something out of a Cyberpunk/sci-fi movie. Even regular restaurants do this now too, selling under multiple names. It allows them to appear in more searches on the food apps.
Lol based on the finger count giveaway, this does appear to be a feed full of AI-generated pictures. The question is – why is someone running a page for a fake restaurant? What do they gain?
Texas chili doesn’t have beans liberal
These AIs GOTTA get better at the fingers. It’s always the fingers
It’s 100% fake and Ai.
[Roe doesn’t have a membrane like this](https://www.instagram.com/p/CqKT2eeA_Cr/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=) and the cheft award isn’t a real thing.
I went on a deep dive about this last week when my partner sent me their insta and said we had reservations to go 😂😂😂
I am helping run a page like this. We first used it for a festival. The AI helps generate images or improve images that we may not have been able to get i.e “Guy holding beer in front of this” etc.
It’s been going on quite some time. Whoever is doing this one is bad
2 pea burgers topped with asparagus please
I fucking totally fell for this and messaged them today like “how do I get a reservation” lmao bastards!!!!!
Wow that’s crazy! Great find, thanks for sharing 😁
*With the cost of culinary school Emily gonna be working hard and long hours to pay off her crippling student debt.*
Holly shit hahaha what a jerk
it’s giving class project
That sure is the definition of ethos.
LMAO tommy kollins 🙄
It even has that AI glaze over it.
I especially love the Chili festival that looks like ballpoint art of a bunch of people walking around what could be a garden center in Arizona… not a single image of chili or food in sight. Such a great convivial celebration of chili that everyone forgot to eat
The caption for the “photo” of “Emily Chantilly” is really amazing.
Lol Tommy Kollins has 6 fingers.
It’s 100% AI-generated, and this kind of thing is everywhere now. You just search for certain celebrity names and have [AI-generated videos describing their death](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrHYssJ7uzg&ab_channel=RememberTheStars) even though they are still very much alive. If you listen to that video it’s talking about how Celine Dion just died of a brain aneurysm post surgery but she totally did not.
This is one of the reasons all the tin-foil hat people warned about social media being part of the bootloader for this kind of immersive virtual reality of sorts. Right now, in May 2023, you can open your phone and chat with a person who is not a human being but you can’t tell and see social media posts for restaurants that literally don’t exist. Shit is bonkers.
Pepe Silva
Maybe it’s some sort of performative art, like Meow Wolf/Onega Mart?
It’s an AI test into the Austin social media market. It’s being done by someone who makes way more money than us, for someone’s who’s gonna make way more money than them.
This is the future of marketing
People have been asking what people can get out of making a fake restaurant.
No one seems to have mentioned it, but Oobah Butler made a whole fake top rated restaurant in London in 2017 and did the exact same reservation only thing and finally “opened” in his backyard, and served people microwave dinners.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/434gqw/i-made-my-shed-the-top-rated-restaurant-on-tripadvisor
This is similar to the [Shed at Dulwich](https://youtu.be/bqPARIKHbN8) experiment that a guy from Vice did. It’s a great watch if you haven’t seen it
Poor Tommy has a shit ton of fingers…
Whoever is behind this has a great sense of humor. The food pics look like standard professionally photographed/photoshop enhanced social media stuff and the descriptions are convincing, but then the staff bios with the punny names and strange photos really hit. Also the silly shit about how hard it is to get a reservation at a place that doesn’t exist is clearly a joke that people either get or don’t. The funny thing is that I doubt most people following it realize it’s someone from the service industry/and or someone making meta commentary about the vapid foodie world and how people don’t really pay attention trolling them. I appreciate their commitment to the punchline whatever it ends up being.