To quickly bring you up to speed, a customer left a bad review on the Facebook of The Chocolate Lab, a chocolatier in downtown Bethlehem.

These things happen from time to time. The owner then responded to the review by calling the customer’s kids “rotten” as evidenced by the picture above.

Then, shit went to shit.

(Owner Arlene) Brockel said she regrets calling the children rotten but she was very upset and shocked by the bad review. “All I ask is keep an eye on your children,” Brockel said. “I did not say that to their face, I wrote it on the review. I apologize for my review. Should I have used a different word for my review? Yes, and I apologize. Why this has gotten so out of control? I have no idea.” Facebook users from all over the country have been inundating Chocolate Lab’s Facebook page with bad reviews. But Brockel says she’s got more new Facebook likes than negative reviews. Source: The Express-Times

Firstly, yes, local newspapers are now resorting to writing stories that only we would touch even like six months ago. But, hey, I dig it.

More importantly, Chocolate Lab’s Facebook Page reviews went from something like 4+ stars to 2.5 in a matter of hours because people began piling on the chocolatey bandwagon faster than they can complain about Musikfest booking Boston for the 17th time.

Now, I’m all for letting a business owner know that they were in the wrong. And, to be fair, Brockel has apologized online, but, have you seen the internet? No one cares.

Check out some of these reviews.

A living hell? Jesus.

Do we really want her to go out of business? Yikes!

Well, I guess that one is kinda fair.

This next dude has the right idea…

Now, if you haven’t ever been to Chocolate Lab, is it “ethical” to rate the business a one star just because of something you read on the internet?

Is it? I’m asking you because I have no idea. I mean, you can do whatever you want on the internet, that’s what makes it great.

But, what makes it kinda scary is the fact that making one misstep, and, in this case not exactly the best choice of misstep, you can have a lot of headaches.

What’s also kind of amazing to me is how fucking pissed off we all got over this. I should have opened up a pitchfork shop on Main Street in Bethlehem after all of this went viral. My buddy could have given out some torches. It would have been a grand ole time.

And, while this is completely idealistic, imagine if we reacted with this type of passion for something that actually matters, like going to a locally owned store in droves and buying a bunch of stuff.

I’m not saying this store in particular, I’m just saying any of them. What if, one day per week, we picked some store that we loved and we all wrote awesome reviews about it and gave them 5 stars (or 4 if, you know, they aren’t like the “best” store ever, but you don’t hate them)?

Sure, this may be a little bit sappy, but, holy hell we get mad about stuff that isn’t that important. I mean, please, keep doing it because people love reading it and we’re going to write about it, but, wahooo this is such a crazy situation.

Never forget #ChocolateLabFiasco