We regret interrupting Urbanism Week to bring you some unfortunate news: Steve Pisonero has made himself Tulsa’s main character once again.
“We are growing the PisosTulsa community with another group that focuses on the rising homeless epidemic in Tulsa,” Pisonero rather halfheartedly posted this week in the other Facebook page in which he’s an admin, Piso’sTulsa Food Review. “Those of you who have a passion about this subject, would like to contribute content or just love our community are encouraged to join” [sic]
Setting aside for a moment the sickening—though unoriginal—idea of crowdsourcing content about people living without shelter, it may be helpful to revisit Steve Pisonero’s long, mostly annoying history as one of Tulsa’s foremost trolls.
Pisonero is, for better and mostly worse, probably the city’s most prominent purveyor of food criticism, in addition to being a California transplant and restaurateur. Piso’sTulsa Food Review has grown to over 132,000 members over 13 years and boy are they active. Just as Meta and the other big tech companies have steadily captured eyeballs away from traditional media over the last 20 or so years, Pisonero’s suburban libertarian everyman approach to evaluation has pushed the discerning food critic to extinction, and in so doing, served as free marketing for him and his business.
While Piso’sTulsa occasionally produces sincere, quality recommendations and even unusual, sublime short stories, more often you’ll find frothy comments ranging from ragebait to right-wing dogwhistling to discourse over whether or not diners are obligated to tip service staff.
Pisonero’s new group is currently titled PisosTulsa - The Homeless Blight and it’s already attracted over 3,700 members, though it’s unclear how many of them joined recently. The group history shows that the group was created on March 4, 2023 and underwent a series of name changes before becoming PisosTulsa - The Homeless Blight on June 29.
“The focus of this group is to bring awareness to Tulsa's rising homeless epidemic,” reads the About section of the new group. “Members are encouraged to post news and opinions relating to the city's homeless scourge .” [sic]
Facebook, of course, has been designed to maximize free-range contempt, and so using it to “bring awareness” to the issue of homelessness in Tulsa is like bringing a can full of gasoline to your announcement that there’s a fire. Much like the food group, Pisonero’s new group has already invited a wide range of opinions on the subject, from the helpful to the hateful.
Notably though, Pisonero’s own posts so far have been about as lazy and unhelpful as the average post in his food group.
In one post Pisonero passive-aggressively captioned “Just a normal month in midtown!” we see a series of photos of people who appear to be living on sidewalks alongside makeshift shelters, shopping carts and trash. Another post, also from Pisonero, is composed of photos that mostly show the interior of a car as it pulls up alongside a Tulsa Police car as officers address somebody on a sidewalk. While sad to see, scenes like these are certainly not remarkable.
Backlash to the announcement of the new group has been swift. “The fuck is wrong with you Steve,” reads one post in the new group. “He wants the hate, he wants the traction, he wants the engagement,” foodie influencer Tarra Quinn said in a video about Pisonero that she posted shortly after the new group appeared. Denizens of the Tulsa subreddit focused on the Tulsa Farmers Market, which lists Pisonero as a vendor on its website. “He should not be at the market,” said one Reddit user in a thread discussing the new group.
This isn’t the first time Pisonero’s efforts at online communication have gone awry. Astute observers will remember that the new Facebook group was previously called PisosTulsa – Libtards, Right Wing Nut Jobs and Fence-Sitters, a name that spoke to the group’s aspiration of facilitating political discussion and didn’t last long. And from scouring the Wayback Machine, he appears to have tried to launch a website in 2022, pisostulsa.com, in a possible attempt to capitalize on the engagement from the food group.
"While it [again, sic] we are still ramping up, the goal of Pisostulsa.com is simple,” a March 2022 Instagram post from the account pisostulsa reads. “It is to become a one stop shop for everything Tulsa. Whether you are new to Tulsa, considering moving to Green Country, or have lived here your whole life, I want PisosTulsa.com to be your primary resource for restaurants, entertainment, history, and things to do."
Since the start of Pisonero’s food group in August 2013, chasing engagement at all costs seems to be his modus operandi, and over the years Pisonero has demonstrated that he understands the mechanics of trolling behavior.
“They give me so much engagement. I get so many positive reviews, I don’t get a lot of engagement but when I get a negative review, I get a ton of engagement,” Pisonero said in a video posted to TikTok last year. “Those people do nothing but build me up because I use them as a tool to do that.”
What conclusion are we to draw here? Maybe our time would be better directed toward mutual aid or direct action, though it probably doesn’t hurt to shout down a particularly notable troll from time to time as well.
