Not everything you see on social media is real.
A blogger's proved that by faking a trip to Disneyland on Instagram.
UK blogger Carolyn Stritch, who has 194,000 followers on her account @theslowtraveler, conducted the experiment to show her just how easily a "perfect" life can be faked.
Carolyn began by pretending it was her 22nd birthday. She posted a photo of herself drinking tea in bed, saying she had planned a little treat for herself.
However, Carolyn wasn’t turning 22 – she’s 32. She wasn’t really going to Disneyland. And the face in the photo wasn’t really hers – she used an app to make herself look younger.
The following day, she uploaded a photo in which she appears to be standing in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. Receiving over 18,000 likes, her followers were drawn in. But it was all a trick.
Instead, she was actually relying on some impressive editing skills to fool her followers.
On her blog, Carolyn came clean. She admitted: "I came up with a story: my FaceApped perfect self, who’s ten years younger than I am, flies off to Disneyland for the day, and somehow manages to photograph herself all alone in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle."
According to Carolyn, the idea for the experiment came to her after she downloaded FaceApp and uploaded a heavily-edited selfie to Facebook and nobody noticed, not even her mum.
She then realised how unrealistic social media has become. She claims she now wants to "make work that’s both responsible and good" but admitted:
"Nobody wants to see me in my pyjamas, with my explosive morning hair, hunched over my laptop on the sofa. That’s how I spend most of my days. You want to see my books, my windows, my travel photography, same as I want to see the best bits of your daily lives."
We don't know about that Carolyn. We're for less filters, more pyjamas!
