A Texas college 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 about 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 shouted, “Unlimited breadsticks doesn't mean unlimited free labor!” recently launched on social media.
While it makes for an incredible story, none of it is real – except the tearful mugshot of a young blonde woman shared alongside it.
Megan Ashlee Davis, a student at 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.”
A Texas woman says her mugshot was used as part of a false “tragedy” story that circulated on social media, causing her to be harassed by online trolls (Pure Videos/Facebook)
The Facebook account “Pure Videos” created the fake post and shared it with its 1.7 million followers. According to Chron, most of the posts on the page are fiction. It appeared that the post containing Davis' mugshot had been deleted or made private as of Sunday.
Even though the post did not include Davis' name and the fake story took place hundreds of miles away, people were still able to track her down and harass her online.
“People are disgusting out there – and scary,” she said.
Davis' mugshot comes from a night out in August where she was arrested for public intoxication. She is currently a working 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 I was doing fine, and then I started drinking whatever, I went to jail, and that in itself was very embarrassing.”
Although the original post appeared to have been deleted, copies of it have appeared on numerous accounts on both Facebook and X. The post has only been checked on X, not Facebook.
“This individual 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 out there and more content is being created, more things are being said, and I just feel overlooked and unseen and unheard,” she said.
Earlier this year, in April, Facebook owner Meta stopped using third-party fact-checking in the US, meaning Facebook stopped penalizing fake news. Since then, similar “rage bait” posts with fake stories have spread like wildfire across the platform.
Meanwhile, Olive Garden even tried to intervene by commenting on one of the false reports that Davis is not employed by them, according to Chron.
“This individual 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, though other commenters quickly urged them to “prove it.”
It was not immediately clear when or why the post with Davis' mugshot was removed.
TMC Media, owner of Pure Videos on Facebook, did not immediately respond to messages from The independent.
