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If you’re a baseball fan, you might have heard about a recent event allegedly involving Houston Astros player Jose Altuve. Depending on where one finds this story, it goes something like this: Altuve visited the Louis Vuitton store at a mall in Houston, Texas, in order to buy a bag for his wife. However, after arriving at the store, the staff apparently didn’t recognize him. And so, they began ignoring him, eventually outright refusing to offer him any help whatsoever.
As the story goes, Louis Vuitton issued an apology, and Altuve was able to shop at the store once more.
So, the question is, is this story real? Is even a single part of it real?
Seriously, Did Any Of This Really Happen?
Uh, no.
It’s unclear where this story started, but one of the earliest accounts of the event can be traced to a site called “Sports Top News” on Aug. 1. The story has several notable traits of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content and contains multiple factual inaccuracies. For example, it claims that the incident caused fans to support messages of support under the hashtag #RespectAltuve. In reality, that hashtag hasn’t been used on X/Twitter since 2022.
But is this based on any actual incident? It does not appear to be the case. While many TikTok users have covered this story, and some purport to feature video of it happening, all available video is either from unrelated incidents or appears to be generated by AI.
However, that hasn’t stopped internet users from jumping on the story. Multiple accounts have posted the story itself as fact. Some have simply shared their dismayed reactions to the supposed refusal of service.
@davedisci.storiesJose Altuve entering a Houston LV store has caused significant backlash on the company with people calling this profiling. Many believe Jose Altuve was denied the ability to purchase due to race. However, its important to note, no significant peices of evidence of this has been found. #lv #houston
This Isn’t The First Time
Fake stories about celebrities getting turned away from luxury destinations, only to get their revenge by going public with what happened, aren’t new on the internet.
For example, earlier in the week, there was another, eerily similar story about a celebrity going to Louis Vuitton in plainclothes to buy something for his wife, only to get rejected. This time, the celeb was NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, and the story garnered a fair bit of attention on Facebook. This story, too, appears to have been fabricated.
That said, the luxury retailer has previously been accused of discrimination, with one lawsuit alleging that certain frequent shoppers, who were Black, received bans from the store for questionable reasons.
In short, stories like these are yet another reminder to not believe everything that you read on the internet—a message that is getting more and more relevant in the era of artificial intelligence.
BroBible reached out to Altuve’s agent via email and to Louis Vuitton via email.
