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It's easy to get duped by a real-looking social media prank. Metro Times admits it fell for an April Fools post on Facebook about a Mexican restaurant moving into the Ferndale space long occupied by the now-shuttered Como's Pizza.
On Monday morning, the publication wrote:
A new Mexican restaurant called El Tontos Cocina Autentica and Cerveceria is in the works in the former Como's space in Ferndale.
Not too many details are available at this time, but a small temporary sign hangs outside restaurant and a Facebook page is live. The restaurant writes on the page that it's a "brewery/restaurant bringing our hand-crafted food and Mexican Farmhouse ales to our new home of Ferndale, Michigan.
Two hours later, the weekly confesses:
We might have fallen for an elaborate April Fools Day joke. Ferndale's city manager says no plans have been shared with the city for the Como’s site to date. In Spanish, "Tonto" means... fool.
The prankster confirmed late Monday morning : "This was a lot of fun but it’s time to come clean. THIS IS NOT REAL."
But as Tim Forster points out in Eater Detroit: "To be fair to Metro Times, there wasn’t anything wildly ridiculous about the El Tontos page and its posts that screamed 'joke' — and the page began posting well before April 1."
