This meme is once again being resurrected, and is a great example of how fake news is generated. Taco Bell was NOT voted “Best Mexican restaurant.” This comes from a survey about brand equity, which lets companies see how their brand is doing with consumers.
▪️The original meme dates back to 2018, when news articles picked up on the annual Harris Poll results. This is a survey on brand identification, not some effort to discover the best restaurants. The 2018 link no longer works, but here’s the 2021 poll:
https://theharrispoll.com/briefs/the-harris-poll-announces-this-years-brands-of-the-year-2021/
▪️Respondents weren’t voting on their favorite Mexican restaurant, they were answering online questions about thousands of brands across hundreds of categories (i.e. cars, travel, insurance, tech, media, restaurants, etc.)
▪️In the Mexican restaurant category, there were only 6 options: Taco Bell, Chipotle, Moe's Southwest Grill, Qdoba, Baja Fresh & Del Taco. The chains were judged on three qualities: familiarity, quality & future consideration. Taco Bell prevailed, but Moe’s & Chipotle also won in recent years.
▪️Taco Bell was awarded “brand of the year” in the Mexican restaurant category, it was the first time it won the award in 30 years. The winner of the “burger restaurant” brand of the year category was Wendy’s, yet no one would equate that with “Wendy’s was voted best burger restaurant!”
▪️But media outlets saw an opportunity for click bait, and an easy “look how stupid Americans are” story. Some admitted it wasn’t really a vote of Best Mexican restaurant in the actual article, but since no one reads articles the headlines won, turned into memes, and fake news was born.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/taco-bell-america-apos-no-192600054.html
▪️Far from this being an example of what happens “when you don’t vote”, it’s a pretty apt comparison. You’re forced to choose among a small number of options that you probably don’t really like, the winner gets undue recognition and is declared the representative of the entire country.
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
