A Texas student is opening up about her “worst nightmare come true” after a fake social media post claiming she worked as a waitress at Olive Garden and was arrested after throwing breadsticks at customers went viral.
A dramatic story of a 26-year-old Olive Garden waitress in St. Louis, Missouri, who allegedly threw a basket of breadsticks at a couple after they tipped her and yelled at her, “Unlimited breadsticks doesn’t mean unlimited free labor!” It recently took off on social media.
While it’s an incredible story, none of it is real, except for the teary-eyed mugshot of a young blonde woman that was shared alongside her.
Megan Ashlee Davis, a student from College Station in Texas, says the backlash she’s received over the fake story featuring her real mugshot is ruining her life.
“It’s probably like my worst nightmare coming true,” Davis told Chron. “People are making very inappropriate comments or AI-generated things with my mugshot.”
The Facebook account “Pure Videos” created the fake post and shared it with its 1.7 million followers. Most of the posts on the page are works of fiction, according to Chron. It appeared that the post showing Davis’ mugshot had been deleted or made private as of Sunday.
Although the post did not include Davis’ name and the false story took place hundreds of miles away, people were still able to track her down and harass her online.
“People are disgusting and scary,” he said.
Davis’ mugshot stems from a night of drinking in August, where she was arrested for public intoxication. She is currently a working college student and a few weeks before her arrest, her mother died, she told Chron.
“I was still very hurt and angry and I just don’t know,” Davis said of the night of her arrest. “I think at the time I thought it was okay and then I started drinking whatever, went to jail, and that was really embarrassing.”
Although the original post appeared to have been deleted, copies of it have appeared on countless accounts on both Facebook and X. The post has only been verified on X, not Facebook.
“This person does not work for Olive Garden and the incident described never occurred,” Olive Garden said in response to the online hoax. (Getty)
“It’s still there and more content is being created, more things are being said, and I feel ignored, unseen and unheard,” she said.
Earlier this year, in April, Meta, which owns Facebook, stopped using third-party fact-checking in the United States, meaning Facebook stopped penalizing fake news. Since then, similar “rage bait” posts with false stories have spread across the platform like wildfire.
Meanwhile, Olive Garden even tried to intervene, commenting on one of the fake posts that Davis is not an employee of them, according to Chron.
“This person does not work for Olive Garden and the incident described never occurred. The page that originally shared this false story has posted similar hoaxes involving multiple brands,” the restaurant chain wrote, although other commenters quickly urged them to “try it.”
It was not immediately clear when or why the post that included Davis’ mugshot was removed.
TMC Media, which owns Pure Videos on Facebook, did not immediately respond to messages sent by The Independent.