【Saigon Sunset】

The Saigon Sunsetconcept is simple: a Twitter account that posts random restaurants from around the world.

That's it. Random restaurants, random places, random photos posted by users. And yet, I'd argue it's the best thing going on Twitter right now. It's an account called @_restaurant_bot and before I get too deep into it, please enjoy a few posts.

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Look at those beauties. A beautiful burger and beer and beach. A train set and pastries. A guy just hanging out on a folding chair. Things that make you hungry and things that make you wonder what the hell is going on. It's all fantastic.

Oh look, a dog in the bottom right.

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There's a simple reason to love this account and it effectively amounts to: yes or no. Would you eat there or would you not? For the record, most of my answers are hell yes, let's go.

But there are other amazing things about this account, too. It's a strange reminder of how vast the world is. How in a historical district of Uzbekistan, not far from Turkmenistan, there is, apparently, a train-themed eatery with a truly stunning selection of soft drinks that I will likely never visit. But it's strangely nice to know it's there? Like I'm sure some kid loves Grill Bar in Uzbekistan.

The scope of the account allows for endless surprises. The pictures and restaurants are scraped from Google. The results are often decidedly unaesthetic and not curated at all. After all, the pictures are from people who visited, not owners or pro photographers. But that gives you a real glimpse into what the place is like. The people you might see, the bad lighting, the view from a random stool.

That's a fine enough bar in Cork, Ireland. I've always wanted to go there. Probably because I grew up loving Roy Keane.Mmmm, wings.

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A restaurant...on an unnamed road in Cuba...with aerial photos for some reason. Sick.

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Yes, would absolutely house a burger from this place on...Avenue du Rock'n'Roll !!!!! in Luxembourg.

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There's also a bit of escapism in this account. You're transported to a meal somewhere for like...half a second. But it's a nice injection of whimsy and randomness in a timeline filled with COVID, tired memes, politics, the crawling climate crisis, and that one person from college you can't quite unfollow even though you want to unfollow them.

And, of course, there's just some plain bonkers shit, like a vest with Cars characters at a Slovakian restaurant that looks like a home.

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Joe Schoech, who goes by @On3ness on Twitter, created the bot and described via DM why he thinks people like @_restaurant_bot, which has racked up more than 35,000 followers. (Note: some punctuation was edited for clarity.)

"Obviously people like, and are very interested in, food," Schoech wrote. "Restaurants are culture, not just the food, but the architecture, the people, their haircuts. Not sure if landscape is culture but it's compelling nonetheless. Most of the cultural things we see online are curated and this isn't so. You see different stuff than you usually would, which ends up producing an extremely different vibe."

Schoech added: "One becomes maybe more of an explorer than a consumer idk; also you get to just see some weird, funny shit, too."

Schoech works as a software developer so building a bot was well within his abilities when he found himself "bored as shit in the middle of the pandemic winter."

The bot chooses a random country, then a random city, then pulls up the same data you'd see on Google Maps, including user-sourced photos. Schoech said the rapid growth for the account began in April when it shot up about 800 followers. In May it rose roughly 2,300. Since then, he said, it's been gaining about 5,000 to 8,000 followers per month.

The account functions as a respite. A place for randomness. And, but of course, a place to see McDonald's locations across the globe.

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And also, but of course, an Ivory Coast joint with a Bentley, a fantastic looking stew, and a leather loafer.

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In a flood of all the worst things on your timeline, there's this bot, doing its thing, mashing together places and pictures and plopping it onto your timeline.

"I like bots, they're funny, weird, oddly artful," Schoech wrote. "Their total lack of emotion, ideology, and I guess just basic being,makes them soothing and interesting in contrast to the Twitter forever war."

Absolutely yes would go there, holy hell, look at the view. How far is? Oh, well, OK...Google doesn't even have flight directions to Vanuatu.

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Sometimes Twitter can be so insular, so consuming, especially for us who live on it. But there's so much more. "Twitter isn't real life," as the pundits like to say.

The restaurant bot is a reminder that there's a big world out there, with good food and good views. And awful food, too, and clueless men staring into cameras. And lots of Subways. So many freaking Subways.

But at least we know somewhere out there, someone is getting a bite to eat.