Prankster Shares How His Fake Restaurant Became the Number One Spot in London on TripAdvisor
Prankster Oobah Butler who is also a freelance writer for Vice, performed a brilliant prank in which he created a fake restaurant named for the shed in his backyard and submitted it to TripAdvisor to be reviewed. Butler, who had been paid in the past to write restaurant reviews, created just the right amount of chatter to literally get the phones ringing. Because The Shed at Dulwich was always booked, the wish to reserve a table became more even desirable and the restaurant to the top of TripAdvisor's charts as the number one rated restaurant in London. After eight months of this charade, Butler recruited some friends to help make The Shed at Dulwich a reality for one night before revealing his secret. Legendary prankster Joey Skaggs would be proud.
The Shed at Dulwich was the number one rated restaurant in London, with foodies, celebrities and bloggers trying to get a table. The main obstacle for them, however, was that it didn't exist. Over the course of 8 months VICE's Oobah Butler used an assault of fake reviews to get his 'restaurant' to the hallowed top spot on TripAdvisor.
Documentary I've been working on w/ @VICE about Shed is dropping shortly. Witness the night it opened, a meeting with a PR, the whole thing + stuff like this pic.twitter.com/67GY0J99QP
- Oobah Butler (@Oobahs) January 16, 2018
After the prank was revealed, Butler appeared on Good Morning Britain where he was gently admonished by host Susanna Reid for perpetuating fake news.
A post shared by @oobahs on Dec 25, 2017 at 9:46am PST
A post shared by @oobahs on Dec 6, 2017 at 8:36am PST
Thanks Michael Lyons!