The Shed shows how willing we are to suspend our disbelief

So where are you eating dinner tonight? A disused garage in Dalston? A dry cleaner’s-cum-speakeasy in Camberwell? How about a fictional shed in Dulwich, raved about by hundreds of fictional people, allegedly serving food based on your mood? The latter, for a short time, became the #1-rated London restaurant on TripAdvisor, thanks to VICE journalist Oobah Butler who, after earning money writing fake reviews for the restaurant reviewing site, decided to take it to its natural conclusion by inventing a fake restaurant, The Shed at Dulwich. After posting sufficient positive comments from fake customers, Butler eventually got The Shed to the top spot — and found himself inundated by hundreds of real requests, from real people, desperate to eat at London’s best restaurant.

How is it possible that in 2017 so many could be so deluded? Pre-internet generations might have been taken in by April Fool spaghetti trees and radio hoax alien invasions. But in our live-streaming, Google Earth and Wikipedia world, where practically everything is knowable, where we can challenge and cast doubt publicly with the tap of a keyboard, the credulity seems incredible.

When it comes to our own experiences, though — rather than the “fake news” we now automatically suspect politicians peddle us — perhaps we’re more willing to suspend our disbelief, in exchange for the gratification promised by an enthusiastic review or perfectly filtered Insta-pic. We spend hundreds of pounds based on pixel images of clothing, fantasising that we are therefore model-esque; thousands based on highlighted photos of infinity pools and a few blocks of text, trusting that scant online information to materialise as our dream holiday. Every time we eat out it’s a leap of faith, whether in a lyrical menu description or technicolour burger photo — salivated over and licked with likes — to match the pleasure conjured up in our imaginations.

London food junkies like me might sneer at TripAdvisor as an irrelevant site that hypes dismal restaurants to the detriment of the genuinely great, thanks to fake paid reviews such as Butler’s, and the misguided opinions of Disgruntled from Tunbridge Wells who’s rude to the waiter and objects to small plates and tipping. But we share the same goal as those would-be Shed customers: we crave the new and undiscovered, hungering after something life-alteringly fantastic. At a time when experience is valued more than possession, the internet creates the illusion that, for TripAdvisor devotee or metropolitan elite food snob, the ultimate hedonistic pleasure — the “best meal in London” — exists.

Even if The Shed were real, it couldn’t live up to that hype.