The Redditor Problem

There’s a peculiar kind of diner that Ottawa restaurants have come to know too well: the Redditor. They’re not after a meal, they’re after material. Their first bite is less about flavour and more about framing — how they’ll spin it into a comment, a complaint, or a condescending “hot take” on the Ottawa subreddit.

The worst part isn’t the nitpicking or the smug certainty — it’s the anonymity. Hidden behind cartoon avatars and nonsense usernames, Redditors feel entitled to lob grenades without consequence. No one knows who they are, so they say things they’d never dare utter if their name or face were attached. It’s the critic without credentials, the customer without accountability.

An anonymous Redditor can tear apart a dish in five words. They can trash a restaurant’s service in a paragraph that feels like a tantrum disguised as a review. And it sticks. The post gets upvoted, skimmed by hundreds, echoed by people who weren’t even there. A night of hard work in a kitchen is reduced to a thread of snide remarks from people who might not even know how to cook pasta at home.

There’s a kind of cowardice in it. The cloak of anonymity means never having to face the chef whose livelihood you’re undermining, never having to look the server in the eye after you’ve written a diatribe about their “tone,” never having to admit that maybe — just maybe — your palate isn’t the ultimate judge of truth. Anonymity gives the illusion of power without responsibility.

Real critics put their names on the line. Real diners give feedback face to face. Redditors? They just vanish into the swarm, faceless and nameless, until the next opportunity to grandstand arrives. And the internet eats it up.

Ottawa doesn’t need more nameless judges, more half-informed opinions shouted from behind avatars. It needs diners willing to engage with food as food — not as content. Because once every meal becomes a post, and every post becomes a pile-on, what’s left isn’t culture. It’s just noise, made by people too afraid to stand behind their own words.