Instagram influencers pranking the internet:
@natalia_taylorIf you’re a massive fan of social media, you probably know by now that not everything you see online is real.
But sometimes, it’s easy to get tricked!
American influencer Natalia Taylor has delivered a powerful lesson on not believing everything you see on the internet.
She fooled her fans into thinking she was on holiday in Bali when, in fact, she never travelled to Indonesia.
She was in fact at her local Ikea store.
Natalia, who has hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, posted a series of pictures from what looked like a hotel room and tagged herself as being on the Indonesian island of Bali.
Her followers posted comments and even shared their experiences of travelling, suggesting destinations that she should visit next.
However what they didn’t know, is that she actually hadn’t left the US and all the photos were taken in display rooms at the furniture store.
She explained in a video she wanted to prank her Instagram followers “to see if they’ll believe I’m actually on this influencer vacation”.
@natalia_taylorGeorge Mason
@georgemasonNatalia isn’t the only Instagram pranker to fool her followers.
Last year 21-year-old vlogger George Mason used his photo editing skills to trick his followers into thinking he went on an eight day holiday across five European countries.
He eventually revealed the prank in a YouTube video titled: “I faked going on holiday for a whole week”.
He said it was worrying to see how easily people believed he was actually on holiday.
Here he is pretending to be in Amsterdam on the right when really he’s in the UK.
Gabbie Hanna
@gabbiehannaVlogger Gabbie Hanna managed to convince her followers she’d gone to the popular Coachella music festival in California but she hadn’t even left LA.
She posted a photo of herself against a photoshopped desert backdrop and said she had never received as many tags and reposts as she did with the fake post.
After she revealed the post wasn’t true, she said “looks and appearances are important when it comes to branding and your social presenc… just know that those things aren’t always as attainable as they seem.”
Byron Denton
@tbhbyron19 year-old Byron Denton wanted to see how easy it would be to fake a luxury lifestyle.
All it took was some clever photo editing to make it look like he was jetsetting when he was in fact sitting on a sofa back home.
He received thousands of likes on his posts and talked about people’s obsession with celebrities.
Carolyn Stritch
@theslowtravelerCarolyn, also known as the Slow Traveller, regularly posts on Instagram about her life and has her own blog.
One day though she thought she would pretend she was at Disneyland Paris to see what reaction she got she she edited herself into a photo of the famous theme park.
She wanted to highlight how social media can make people want a different life to the one they have.