No more pints, chit-chat and good people: How the Schoonerati ruined proper pubs

The nation's living room needs protecting from influencers — before it's too late

- GEORGE SHEALY

“Manchester has fallen,” reads a tweet that has been viewed more than a million times.

In the video attached, a man who goes by the name Schooner Scorer (@schoonerscorer) downs a two-thirds pint, the glass size known as a schooner, and gasps a half-arsed review to a cameraman. Believe it or not, this is the shtick that's earned him hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers (350,000 and counting) and millions of views.

"This is why I never want to move to London," reads one reaction. The association stings, but it's true: Schooner and his fellow influencers are a blight on the London pub scene, and time is running out to stop them.

At some point after the pandemic, what you might call the Schoonerati arrived (think the glitterati, if the glitterati thought talking about the head on a pint was sexy), descending on the capital with a simple goal: to turn the pub into content. From there grew an internet subculture that gave us viral hate-hits such as the TikTok video of "pints, chit-chat and good people", a seemingly innocuous clip of a group of people drinking pints outside The Blue Posts in Soho, and another of "London pub culture". Under this header, every video is a carbon copy of the other: Gen Zs flock to London boozers, dressed to the nines in vintage garms and designer streetwear, and film themselves doing pub things, in the pub. Soho bears the brunt.