A Melbourne cafe has been flooded with positive reviews on Facebook and Google after a slew of VCE English students, who were asked to discuss a fictional cafe with a similar name in this week’s final exam, slammed the joint online.
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Calmer Cafe, situated in the northern Melbourne suburb of Aberfeldie, currently boasts a cool 4.9 out of 5 rating on Facebook, with a great many 5-star reviews arriving over the past 24 hours.
But timing of those reviews seems significant: many of the positive ratings emerged after The Age reported on a trollish online onslaught from disgruntled students.
Those young guns were asked to engage with a passage describing a fictional Calmer Coffee; a string of 1-star Google reviews, explicitly referencing the exam’s contents with little mention of the real-world business, appeared online shortly afterwards.
“Don’t ever go here, unless you want burnt coffee and man buns,” said one review, mentioning two key elements of the fictional passage.
“You are responsible for my <35 ATAR,” said another.
Discussing the mad rush of angry teens online, cafe owner Tara Conron told SmartCompany “I’m studying for my own uni exams at the moment, I don’t need this shit.”
In response to the backlash, Conron has also offered VCE students free coffees.
That goodwill – and the backlash to the backlash – appears to have bolstered the cafe’s online ratings. At time of writing, and after 414 Google reviews, Calmer Cafe sits on a cool 4 stars out of 5.
This whole ordeal comes just a year after annoyed NSW HSC students decided harass poet Ellen van Neerven, after her work Mango was used in their final exam.
Don’t do that, folks. And, maybe, just maybe, make room for a coffee in your busy schedule of not abusing poets and cafe owners.
