A Texas college student says her “worst nightmare came to life” after a fake social media post claimed she was an Olive Garden waitress arrested for throwing breadsticks at customers.
The made-up story said a 26-year-old server in St. Louis hurled a basket of breadsticks at a couple who didn’t leave a tip, yelling, “Unlimited breadsticks doesn’t mean unlimited free labor!” It spread fast online, complete with a tearful mugshot of a young blonde woman — the only real part of the story.
The woman in the photo, identified as Davis, isn’t a waitress and doesn’t work for Olive Garden. The viral post was created by a Facebook page called “Pure Videos,” which has more than 1.7 million followers. According to Chron, most of the page’s posts are fake. As of Sunday, the post featuring Davis’ mugshot had been deleted or made private.
Even though the post didn’t name her and claimed to be about someone in another state, people tracked Davis down online. She says she’s been harassed and humiliated. “People are disgusting out there — and scary,” she told Chron.
Davis explained that her mugshot came from an unrelated arrest in August after a night of drinking. She was charged with public intoxication. “I was still very hurt and angry and I just don’t know,” she said, referring to her mother’s death just weeks before the incident. “I guess at the time I thought I was OK and then I started drinking, whatever, went to jail, and that was really embarrassing itself.”
The embarrassment turned into something far worse once her photo was used to fuel a viral lie. Even though the original post disappeared, copies have popped up across Facebook and X. Only X has labeled it as false. “It’s still there and more content is being created, more things are being said, and I just feel overlooked and unseen and unheard,” Davis said.
Meta, which owns Facebook, stopped using third-party fact-checking services in the U.S. back in April. Since then, posts like this one — often called “rage bait” — have exploded across the platform. These fake stories are designed to get emotional reactions and boost engagement.
Even Olive Garden jumped in to clear things up, commenting on one of the fake posts to set the record straight. “This person does not work for Olive Garden, and the incident described never occurred,” the restaurant said, according to Chron. “The page that originally shared this false story has posted similar hoaxes involving multiple brands.” Despite that, some users still accused the restaurant of covering it up.
It’s unclear exactly when or why the original post was deleted, but for Davis, the damage was already done. What started as a made-up story for clicks became a real-life nightmare for someone who had nothing to do with it.