This was published 4 years ago
YouTube influencer fakes Bali holiday with photo shoot in an IKEA
By Lorna Thornber
Natalia Taylor's 'Bali holiday' shots were actually taken in a local IKEA.Credit: Instagram/@natalia__taylor
Most of us know Instagram isn't a mirror to real life but that didn't stop one woman convincing her followers she'd holidayed in Bali when she'd just been down the road to IKEA.
Natalia Taylor posted three sets of pictures to the social media site, claiming they were taken in Bali - shots of her "talking" on a phone, sitting at a dressing table and on a wooden lounger, posing with a bottle of wine and sitting in a bathtub in a dressing gown. In all but the bathtub photos, she is wearing the same tight, pink mini-dress.
The photos were geotagged to Bali, Indonesia to make her followers think that that's where she was.
Revealing the prank on her YouTube channel, the US-based influencer said "I went on a luxury dream vacation to Bali. Only problem is, I was actually at IKEA the entire time".
With its innumerable photo opps, Bali, she said, was perfect "to totally fake an influencer vacation and totally lie to all of my followers".
Taylor staged a photoshoot at a branch of the homeware store close to her home to see if it would be possible for her to fake an entire holiday by posting false photos and Instagram stories.
"The point of this video is to see if you really can fake it until you make it," she said.
Taylor left small clues for her followers, telling photographer Ally Amadeo to leave some of the IKEA tags in the frame to see if any were "a little too smart for this challenge".
Many, it seems, were not.
"She's really out living her best life," one Instagram user said in response to the first set of photos.
"Our Bali princess," said another.
"Welcome to my country Nat! Enjoy!," an Indonesian user said.
Said Taylor: "Immediately people started buying it - including my close friends."
Some eagle-eyed users were not fooled, however.
"I know this is an IKEA!!! I see the price tag. Ive seen this exact furniture there," one person wrote.
People began to get more suspicious after Taylor posted the second set of photos, with one user commenting: "Y does the 1st photo look like it was shot in ikea."
Another said: "This is fake, it has to be for a video!".
Taylor, herself, was surprised so many were fooled.
"Maybe it's just me but it seems, like, painfully obvious that I'm not in Bali. I'm not even posting any of the iconic Bali photos of me on the beach or in exotic locations and I'm getting away with it. That's insane."
Taylor thought the third set of photos were the most obviously fake, but said a few minutes after posting that "no one is questioning it. All of the comments are people asking me to come visit them in their home country. Am I jerk for doing this? I feel like a jerk. Why do I feel like a bad person? This was supposed to be an experiment."
She concludes by saying "I think this video has a lesson, doesn't it? It has a lesson. Don't trust everything you see on the internet. Sometimes people want to lie about who they are as a person, and it's not hard to do apparently. So I have to say this prank on my Instagram followers... was a success."
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