Ewww!

It's a little thing, but this report about restaurants creating false identities on dating apps to boost sales.

The idea is that they would set up a false date, and when the victim was stood up, they would end up sitting there in the restaurant, and they would order something to eat or drink. 

Really skeevy:

This greasy spoon did her dirty.

In the concrete jungle — where taking a dip in the murky shallows of the dating pool often leaves wannabe lovebirds high and dry — an online dater claims she was catfished by an East Village eatery that posed as a potential suitor on an app in an effort to get her business. 

“I was at the restaurant, thinking I’d been stood up, and ordered a cocktail and a meal for about $45,” Taylor Paré, 33, a vintage fashion curator in Manhattan, told The Post, “only to eventually find out that the restaurant is likely scamming me and other women out of our hard-earned money.”

The singleton shared the disturbing details of her date-night nightmare to a stunned TikTok audience of more than 57,000 viewers.

………

“We’re all out here just trying to have a meal with a cute date, and the restaurants have caught on,” added the brunette. “They’re using it as a tactic to increase their business, which is kind of like as dystopian as it gets.”

………

But after primping for the ill-fated night on the town, Paré waited 15 minutes for her no-show beau to arrive at the joint. 

When she reached for her phone, preparing to message the guy about his tardiness via the dating site, the no-nonsense New Yorker discovered that he’d unmatched with her on the app.

Unfazed by the apparent snubbing, Paré enjoyed her dinner, paid the bill and headed home.

However, several days later, while scrolling through an “Are We Dating the Same Guy”-like Facebook forum — a virtual town square, where scorned whistleblowers share red flags about would-be playboys — she was thunderstruck by the notion that she’d been duped. 

“A girl in the Facebook group recently had a very similar experience at the same restaurant,” Paré said. “I just started putting two and two together, and it seems like way too much of a coincidence for [the restaurant not to be involved].” 

Assuming that this is true, this is nasty.

If it's not true, I feel compelled to quote Mason Williams, "Who needs truth if it's dull."