Local restaurant Shalooby’s attracts IU football fans from across the country to enjoy a post-game meal.
But this “beloved” eatery does not exist. It’s an internet hoax.
IU adjunct Jeff LaFave is the person behind the joke. He saw Shalooby’s in an article filled with AI-generated images and false Bloomington factoids. Soon, he posted on his X account, BTown Moose.
“I started daydreaming about it, made a photoshop of it in the old Cafe Pizzeria building,” LaFave said. “Just for a one off joke I didn’t think would go very far.”
But far did it go. LaFave’s creation went viral in a matter of hours. Fellow X users reposted the photoshopped image and dubbed it as the best place to get a soggy sandwich.
IU fans wrote “Shalooby’s” across the windshields of their cars. They also wrote it on signs that could be seen on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff show, which attracted a huge crowd outside Memorial Stadium last week before the IU-Nebraska game.
Shalooby’s even has its own website that LaFave had no part in making.
“It just kind of made me feel like I was trapped in a Twilight Zone episode,” LaFave said. “I told a joke so good everyone else wanted to tell it, and it was out of my hands.”
LaFave enjoys watching the joke take a life of its own and hopes that maybe it will one day become a reality.