According to their own website, Staphmeal is “a new website reporting on the Philadelphia restaurant scene and loads of other fun related stuff. It is an anonymous blog that is guaranteed to stir up a few feathers, piss a few people off and maybe make you chuckle. We are a team of a few former (and current) restaurant employees gone rogue.”
According to their Twitter feed, they claim to report stories we wouldn’t touch, but afterwards claim that they are not journalists. Minutes later, they tweeted about “working on a story.”
It sounds harmless (and could be, depending on who is reading it) but the anonymity of it sticks out to us as a bit scuzzy. Naming someone the worst bartender of the week is one thing, calling that person a douche bag in the post is another. Stuff like this sticks out to us as not only possibly libelous, but also unnecessary and low. There is a big difference to us in someone saying, “This is who I am and this is what I think of your restaurant/business” and someone saying “I won’t tell you who I am, and this guy is a douche bag.”
We’re sure they’ve done their homework on libel cases (one tweet says they got an attorney, so we’re sure they know what they’re doing) but this whole thing just feels kind of dirty to us.
Website is down. Hmm…
This person (or people) deserve none of your/my/our attention. Blogging randomly about the things or people you hate in the world is a right for sure (that’s why yelp lives on) but it isn’t journalism. Let them write about whatever they want, just don’t justify it with your attention. Maybe they’ll wait on one of us soon and it will be earth-shatteringly awesome and enlightening, but in case not, let’s just call it what it is — a hater with a badly designed free blog– and ignore it. L@MT
So their quote of you, totally false?
Ewww. Staph makes me think infection, which makes me not want to talk about food.