“I often think about our duty to warn. Mostly because, when we’ve neglected to, it’s ended up being a shitshow.”

Thrillist has a fascinating piece from James Beard Award-winning food writer Kevin Alexander about how his rating of a small Portland, Oregon restaurant, Stanich’s, as Thrillist’s best burger in America inadvertently contributed to the restaurant’s closure five months later, as Stanich’s was overrun by one-off “burger tourists.”

“Ever since we won this thing, people were going on the internet telling me how to cook a burger, telling me how screwed up we were, and frankly, that’s why I don’t go on the internet. It’s been the worst thing that’s ever happened to us. Tim McGraw came by and there was a five-hour wait and I couldn’t wait on him,” Steve Stanich told The Oregonian.

Alexander felt absolutely horrible about this. After the restaurant’s closure, wracked with guilt, he worked up the nerve to call Stanich and then went to find a time to visit him.

Have you ever had to make a phone call you’ve absolutely dreaded? Have you ever had acute stress dreams relating to that phone call for weeks, and found yourself visualizing scenarios in which it would go poorly while absentmindedly preparing your children’s dinner? Have you ever stared at an elderly woman with weepy eyes and arthritic hips walking her dog down your street and felt irrational pangs of jealousy because you knew she didn’t have to make a stressful phone call that day?

Alexander also talked to other restaurant critics who spoke to him about “what responsibility we have to preserve the places we write about and direct crowds of eager food tourists to experience.” Best-of lists can go viral, and high ratings from national sites can completely overwhelm small local restaurants — not so much new restaurants that court this kind of fame but “old joints, the analog restaurants operating in today’s digital world.”

If there was one main negative takeaway from the raging fires of food tourist culture and the lists fanning the flames, it was that the people crowding the restaurant were one time customers. They were there to check off a thing on a list, and put it on Instagram. They weren’t invested in the restaurant’s success, but instead in having a public facing opinion of a well known place. In other words, they had nothing to lose except money and the restaurant had nothing to gain except money, and that made the entire situation feel both precarious and a little gross.

Williamson is left wondering:

How do I do this better? Is there a way to celebrate a place without the possibility of destroying it? Or is this just what we are now — a horde with a checklist and a camera phone, intent on self-producing the destruction of anything left that feels real, one Instagram story at a time?

Smart writing on how it's not just tech platforms and far-off real estate developers that commoditize culture, but individual people making individual decisions too https://t.co/vjZCLLS8LQ

— Victor Luckerson (@VLuck) November 16, 2018

This article is ostensibly about a burger joint in Portland but it's really about the kind of ethical accountability journalists on all beats need to be doing all the time. https://t.co/U56BZatnnF

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) November 16, 2018

I loved reading this soul searching piece by @KAlexander03 about how he accidentally forced his favorite burger place to close down. But it’s really about how we frame personal responsibility, the times we live in, and the Internet’s demands on journalism. https://t.co/VpnW7kzaCg

— Brian Koppelman (@briankoppelman) November 16, 2018

every time i travel to a new city i visit yelp/thrillist/local media to try and find the restaurants i *have* to go to. i do it because i love food and my vacations are 90% about eating 4000 calories a day, but i still feel… bad, about this

— libby watson (@libbycwatson) November 16, 2018

The ethical considerations of culture journalism go so far beyond swag and gifts.

— your friend Helen (@hels) November 16, 2018