LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Once upon a time, a customer complaint meant a phone call, maybe to a manager, and – if things got spicy – a strongly worded letter. Today? It’s a public post blasted into a local Facebook group with 50,000 to 100,000 members, many of whom have never even set foot inside the business but are more than happy to weigh in on the controversy.
A single bad interaction with one employee can quickly morph into: “This place is awful,” “Never going back,” and “I heard they do this all the time.” Facts are optional but pitchforks are encouraged. No hearing. No appeal. Just bad vibes.
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So the post spreads, comments multiply, and suddenly a small business is being tried and convicted by people who were bored on their lunch break.
Community Facebook pages: the new court of public opinion.
Michigan community pages are especially powerful because they’re local, familiar, and built on trust – which is exactly why the fallout is worse when things go wrong. A complaint that might have stayed minor instead gets shared, screenshot, reposted, and embellished. Often, the post comes from someone no one knows, with no real way to verify whether the story is even true.
But regardless of whether the complaint is exaggerated – or a flat out lie – the reputation hit sticks. Google ratings can drop. Yelp reviews look horrible. Facebook reviews pile on. Potential customers scroll, see chaos, and quietly move on.
When online outrage misses the target.
According to the New York Post, in Staten Island recently, esthetician Eman Masoud posted (and later deleted) a TikTok boasting that she refused to help an elderly Jewish couple at a parking kiosk unless they said “Free Palestine.” The backlash was swift and, in many ways, deserved. But the fallout didn’t stop with her. A completely unrelated business with a similar name was mistakenly swept up in the outrage, pummeled with one-star reviews and accusations over something it had nothing to do with. It’s a textbook example of how online anger – especially uninformed, knee-jerk outrage – can torch both the guilty and the innocent once a digital mob gets moving.
When criticism turns into harassment.
Sometimes, it goes far beyond reviews though like in the case of Jenn Carpenter, owner of Deadtime Stories Books & Gifts in Lansing, Michigan. Carpenter, an indie bookseller and a former true-crime podcaster, found herself living a real-life nightmare after she made a snarky social media post about how gross it is that the new Barnes and Noble in town is trying to mimic the indie bookstore vibe instead of just making use of the millions of advantages they already have over the little guy. The post set off an obsessive individual.
The person’s posts against Carpenter escalated into harassment across multiple accounts by a woman who Carpenter hasn’t named publicly. Her behavior also included attempted hacks of Carpenter’s email and social media, fake applications through her business websites, and threats.
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Police intervention didn’t even stop it after they told the woman to “knock it off.” A judge eventually granted a personal protection order (PPO) barring the individual from contacting – or even posting about – Carpenter.
This wasn’t just a bad review. This appears to be someone trying to destroy a business and its owner under the cover of online grievance culture.
The cost nobody budgets for.
Small businesses expect competition and overhead. What they don’t expect are digital mobs, customers trying to ruin them over one bad experience, or strangers torching their reputation for sport. Yet here we are – where a single post can undo years of hard work, community goodwill, and trust. Everyone has seen it happen.
The takeaway is simple: online criticism isn’t just feedback anymore. In the wrong hands, it’s a weapon – and Michigan small businesses are learning that lesson the hard way. In the age of Facebook, Yelp, and community groups larger than some small towns, it doesn’t take much to light the match against a business just trying to survive.
