Seems a little Vietnamese restaurant in Los Angeles got fed up with something that is an everyday occurrence in restaurants everywhere: people making reservations and not showing up. Instead of just giving that empty table to walk-in guests, as every busy restaurant with happy customers would do, they decided that internet shaming on Twitter would teach a valuable lesson to all those inconsiderate people who actually have a life outside of eating dinner.  An added bonus to this strategy is the side benefit of never having those people spend money with them ever again.

Below that post was a couple of tweets that named names. And, of course, they got tremendous support, reservation no-shows stopped immediately, and life was beautiful.

Okay, not that. The other thing.

And the love continued. Not sure if @hurricane13 plans to call those reservations in, or book them online.

The power of suggestion by @AMSTS worked, because then there was this:

And, of course, the table turns:

Truth: If you make a reservation and don’t show, you’re a jerk. They’re extending the courtesy of holding a table for you, so the least you can do is let them know if your plans change. It’s called common courtesy, which seems to be increasingly uncommon these days. HOWEVER, we’ve been the lucky beneficiary of a no-show before, and will happily take your table if you’re too inconsiderate to take 15 seconds to cancel your reservation.

For the record, we’ve never had to wait for a table for more than 5 minutes past our reservation time, because the places we frequent know how to handle reservations, no-shows, and walk-in customers. Based on the response that @redmedicinela received, we’re guessing they won’t have to figure that out any time soon.

We could tell you all about the play, who had their hands on the ball, and the ruling on the field, but if you watch NFL football, or know someone who does, you already know. Instead, we’ll show you how this played out on Twitter.

Ain’t that the truth.

In addition to mass quantities of beer, we recommend soothing the pain of watching all the bad calls made by amateur refs this season with a little bit of NFL Replacement Ref.  Just as official as the ones on the field:

Why are we even mentioning this at all?

Because we tried, unsuccessfully, to post a comment to their blog. In a post titled, “Are you a Twitter Faker?” they said “The number of people buying fake followers on Twitter to look more legitmate is a growing problem.” (sic)

We typed up a nice comment, decrypted the captcha, clicked the submit button, and their blog said, “You did not submit a valid comment.” How the H-E-double hockey sticks does their blog know whether our comment is valid or not? Pretty judgmental piece of software, if you ask us.

Here’s what we said:

People have been buying followers as far back as 2009. Maybe even before that. This problem started as soon as businesses joined twitter. Many “social media gurus” who have been on twitter since the beginning have a high number a followers because they used automated tools to gain them very quickly. Some promised to follow everyone who followed them, using the hashtag #teamfollowback, while others simply created thousands of accounts and followed themselves. Others used Twitter Trains, Twitter Pyramids, and other such schemes. You’d be surprised, if you look into their twitter history, to find out how many of these movers and shakers bought followers in one fashion or another.

Once people realize (will they ever?) that it’s not the number of followers, but the amount of interaction you share with your “tweeps” that makes for a successful twitter account, these twitter follower buying services will dry up and go away.

Yeah, right. It will never happen.

They have an app on their website you can use to see how many fake followers you have. NEWS FLASH: Everyone has fake followers. We’re guessing that legitimate accounts that are active on twitter probably have a higher percentage of fake followers than the less active accounts. This is because bots follow a lot of people, just to gain the automatic follow-back. If you use their tool and find that you have 10%, 20% or more fake followers, you can freak out, or recognize that it’s just the nature of the beast. Stop focusing on the numbers and start interacting with the people who have signed on to listen to what you have to say.

There you go. Was this a valid comment? Let us know what you think by leaving a valid comment in the comments.

That scene pales in comparison to the public humiliation the editor of the Western Mail must feel after this faux pas:

Perhaps it’s a UK vs USA thing. British Prime Minister David Cameron was a little confused about this one, too. He signed off on text messages with LOL, until told it meant “Laugh Out Loud.”

Now that everyone has a smart phone, our parents and grandparents are texting, often with hilarious results. Save them, and yourself, some grief, and share this link to The Largest List of Text Message Shorthand (IM, SMS) and Internet Acronyms Found of the Web.

Strike that – encourage them to text regularly and often. We’d love to read about their antics on Parents Shouldn’t Text.

It’s kind of cool to get a #FF mention, unless it’s like this:

LazyShoutOut (@LzyShtOut) is a service that does the #FF posts for you. If you’ve already set up lists of your buds, it’s just a single click to enable the app to send out tweets for you. And if your lists are really long, it will just keep pumping out the tweets, and filling your timeline, with totally insincere recommendations.

Some of us think this misses the “social” part of social media.

If one of your best friends was having a party, would you send a wind-up doll in your place? If you have a networking event on your agenda, would you send a mp3 player as your proxy? If the answer to either question is a resounding “Yes!”, this is the perfect app to show everyone how little you really care.