I encourage you to browse a social media platform you frequent for the next 10 minutes and I guarantee you will find at least one article, news story, or viral medium of content plastered somewhere as you scroll by. With the convenience of having a free-speech platform where any and all things can be posted, shared, and archived within sections, it's easy to make a story spread like wildfire without little to no effort. Too often we will see news stories, viral tweets, shocking scandals, NSFW photo leaks, political agenda propaganda, celebrity outbursts, and so much more spam our feeds on a daily basis.
Let me provide you with an example:
Yesterday in my local news for the Central Penn area, there was a post being shared around on Facebook by the locals in my town, and our neighboring towns about a Lebanon Valley College student who had a horrifying experience with a down-town food establishment known as Just Wing It, located in Annville, PA. The individual made a personal status update describing what happened that night.
The individual involved was identified as Ricky Bugg Jr, a student at LVC.
His sister made a detailed post describing what happened at the scene.
She goes on to say that his brother had placed his order and was paying for it, when the manager of the establishment came out to the area and told them, "I own three restaurants and I don't need your n-----s money." They take their money back but the manager returns for an additional verbal exchange. The brother claims that the manager said, "Trump's President now so I can say what I want. You n-----s need to go."
His post continues to describe what transpires afterwards. She said Bugg was angry and flipped over several chairs and left to gather friends for support to which they were then greeted by the police after the manager had called them over.
Instantly this story blows up with hundreds of people sharing her post, including myself. So you have the entire student body and administration of LVC looking into this matter. The general public of the college town, as well as our neighboring towns, and the internet are also chiming in, sharing this news story, and spitting back and forth if they support Ricky Bugg Jr or Just Wing It.
As time went on more speculations and witnesses come forward with new information.
Several people proceeded to say that Just Wing It has always provided excellent service and treated them with respect any time they attended their restaurant. While others claim that the manager under fire for this situation has had similar situations come up in the past.
Several articles and infographics were being shared like wildfire at this point which caused Just Wing It to shut down their Facebook page due to harassment. This viral post not only blasted the restaurant but the other restaurants owned by the family as well. The brother of the manager runs The Samler who made a public post confirming the actions of the manager at Just Wing It and presented an apology for the actions at that establishment.
Police made further investigation to see what Bugg had to say from his perspective as well as the restaurant. It was believed that Bugg was unsatisfied with the service and began to cause a
The next day on Facebook new updates surfaced saying that what transpired happened but for an alternate reason than what was originally mentioned. According to several news outlets and LVC locals, the reason why Bugg and his friend were kicked out of the establishment was due to Bugg being visibly intoxicated, disrespectful, and belligerent. The staff refused to serve him additional alcohol and gave him the food he ordered to help him calm down and sober up.
If you want full details and reports on what happened, you may do your research. I just wanted to provide a quick summary showcasing the initial information as well as the additional information that was posted last night & this morning.
Let's acknowledge that news stories like this are posted as soon as something happens. Often they contain facts mixed with opinion as well as opposing perspectives, lack of context, and a general abundance of misinformation or key elements missing or being removed completely.
Myself and many others saw and shared the initial post of the sister talking about what her brother and his friend experienced at Just Wing It. None of us stopped to consider the validation of her recalling of the event. We simply saw an angry sister whose brother had a bad experience with a racial slur and as a local community, we rallied up to support their family which turned into much more than expected such as online harassment to a public establishment as well as boycotting the restaurant. Many of us felt deeply bothered by a manager of a restaurant acting so immaturely and disrespectfully to a patron to the point where our post-sharing, our words, and in some cases actions, may have dire consequences to the reputation and performance of Just Wing It.
We did not consider that perhaps his sister left out certain details, or maybe she wrote the situation the way she interpreted it. It's possible that her brother left out details out of embarrassment, anger, etc... when something personal happens to us, it's easy for us to retell the story in a way that makes us look like the good guy and victim. Several of my friends said that there are two sides to every story, which the other side of the story eventually came out.
At that point it was already too late. Thousands of people shared the stories so much that even major media outlets were covering the story and it is still in circulation at this moment but starting to die down.
As mentioned, we shared these posts and threw up our pitch forks in anger about how could a cool restaurant be so ignorant and insensitive to the very students that support their business on the daily! And while we know racism is a big issue in the US, we never really felt it on a personal level here in our own neighborhoods! We were looking at one perspective of the situation without really acknowledge or questioning the other side, which was unfair.
Discussions among my friends revealed to me the other perspectives of the situation, allowing me to come to a level-headed assessment. I think we an all agree that it was a very poor decision for the manager to pull out the racial slurs at a paying customer, despite the customers poor behavior. However, we can all agree that a violent & disrespectful customer does not belong in the restaurant ruining the other patrons experiences. Going out to eat should be a pleasant and relaxing experience.
The restaurant had every right to deny Bugg alcohol and request that he leaves the premises, but I firmly agree that the restaurant is in the wrong for what the manager said to him. It was unnecessary and I hope that Just Wing It and Bugg can shake hands and move on.
I think this whole situation is a perfect example of a news story going viral, mixed opinions and details being tossed around without any TRUE credible sources. As well as the viewers jumping the gun on sharing content without really fact-checking or comprehending what they are sharing and what kind of consequences it has on the people affected.
I'm sure all parties involved received a lot of backlash from people on opposite sides, as well as an abundant amount of support from people on their sides. At first I was strongly supportive of Bugg and 100% against Just Wing It to the point where I was going to refuse to ever go there and was also telling my friends not to go there. But as I learned more about the situation, I'm honestly neutral. Both people are at fault for different things. I will probably never go to Just Wing It just because it left a sour taste in my mouth. I don't want to give my money to a business who will throw racial slurs out without any hesitation. I hope that the owners of the restaurant will take some sort of action against the manager or employees responsible for what happened. I don't know if they should necessarily be fired, but there should definitely be some form of meeting that emphasizes the importance of avoiding discrimination in the work place both internally and externally. It's so unprofessional and I'm curious so see how this pans out over time.
Will the business resume sales as normal, will sales decline dramatically, or will they just see a small decline that will pick back up. If anything, bad exposure is good exposure. I've had several friends say that they've never even heard of the place and now want to go because of the variety of wing flavors they have. Sure the story about the racial slur bothered them, but not enough for them to say no to good food. Maybe the restaurant will benefit from this. Although, I imagine the LVC community took a hard personal offense to this and none of them will be supporting the establishment anymore unless they stand on a neutral zone like I do now.
The importance of this blog is to encourage myself and you to take news stories with a grain of salt until some time has passed and credible information is released and verified. Believing things based off of viral news that pop out stories like pez candies is not good enough and is really damaging to tasteful journalism. I'm not sure if this blog is helpful or harmful but I felt compelled to talk about it.
From now on, I'm going to do my best to look into things from multiple perspectives before sharing and spreading something that could potentially be false, altered, exaggerated, etc... I really encourage you to do the same so that we can make the internet great again lmao.
A ton of people were throwing Trump into this because the manager mentioned him in his reasoning for being such a dick to the student. It has nothing to do with Trump. Every time a President is sworn into office, violent outbreaks pop up everywhere and then they die down and we all resume our sheep lives.
Be kind to one another.
Thank you for reading.
