In the age of Instagram, viral food trends and travel influencers, hidden gems don’t exist anymore, and a city’s ‘best-kept secret’ restaurant is often plastered all over social media.
For locals, this can be infuriating. In Barcelona, we’ve seen residents arm themselves with water guns to chase tourists away, and in Greece, thousands flocked together in protest.
Londoners, however, have taken a different approach: they’re catfishing tourists.
That’s right, locals are luring unsuspecting tourists away from their favourite spots, with glowing, exaggerated reviews for places they’d never actually recommend.
It all started after a Redditor took to the London forum to complain that the Black Pig sandwich shop in Borough Market had been ‘ruined by influencers’.
The poster described it as ‘easily the best sandwich in London’ and was ‘livid’ to discover a queue of over 200 people’ after the shop had gone viral on Instagram and TikTok.
User Greenawayer responded: ‘This is why …