Laura Maria Motta says she was drinking alone at a New Orleans bar in April 2022 when the bartender flipped his phone around to show her a text he claimed was from his sister: “Do not, under any circumstances, get into a conversation with the guy sitting on your right.” Her takeaway, posted to X, was aimed at other men: “Men, if you are in a position to do this, DO THIS.”
She didn’t linger. “I really took that warning to heart and didn’t stay more than a few minutes,” she told BuzzFeed, adding that being in New Orleans meant “I could just take my drink with me and leave.”
The post took off well past the size of her own following. Motta, a Brooklyn travel editor with roughly 5,100 followers who has worked at Lonely Planet, The Points Guy, and ShermansTravel, now has more than 642,000 likes on it.
One bartender, Barlow Adams, replied that he’d given the same kind of warnings, then banned the men once he ran the bars himself.
The screenshot resurfaced on November 2, 2026, when the account @iamthirtyaf, run by Emerson graduates Chloe Jankowitz and Peter West, reposted it to a new wave of attention. Their caption pushed the idea a step further: absolutely do this, but if the man is “a regular and is a known problem,” maybe stop letting him be a patron at all.
Motta’s own account never described him that way. She didn’t name the bar, the bartender, or the man. The later versions calling him “creepy” or a known regular are words other people put on the story.