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One of the key factors to sharing your Coachella experience is great outfits and even better photographs – everything carefully planned ‘for the gram’.
In an effort to make a statement about the allure of social media’s faux reality, YouTuber Gabbie Hanna – who also boasts close to four million Instagram followers – created a “fake” Coachella experience that many of her followers wholeheartedly believed.
READ MORE: This is a small number of times that celebrity women have been photoshopped without them knowing
Gabbie created three different ‘Coachella looks’ for three days at the festival to take pictures with, except she was not at Coachella but superimposed her photos at the festival in Palm Springs with the help of her Photoshop-genius friend.
See if you can tell that she wasn’t actually there:
Gabbie is known to not be a fan of the Coachella festival, which concluded on 21 April, so her followers were surprised she was ‘there’ but most of them bought it. She admitted it took a lot of effort to pull of this stunt but wanted to make a clear point: social media is not real.
In a YouTube video she created to show how she pulled this off, she says: “So much of this is photo manipulation and setting things up to look a certain way and it’s okay, it doesn’t make you cool or any less cool.
But her “I Faked Going To Coachella...” project, as she admits herself, is not a new idea and she’s right.
In an elaborate stunt, Vice journalist Oobah Butler has created a series of fake reviews and businesses, even managing to fake his was into Paris Fashion Week as a luxury designer called Georgio Peviani. In his report for Vice he details how he gained access to influential fashion buyers, Vivienne Westwood’s high security fashion show and Alexa Chang’s A-lister party in his three-day scam.
Gabbie is also right about the people creating not-so-true realities of themselves on social media. Think Bow Wow and his first private jet faux pas or Shay Mitchell’s contentious trip to China or even fake influencers pretending to have secured brand sponsorships – which proves Gabbie’s point.
These are just a few examples of social media dupes ‘for the culture’.
Remember the Kardashians being called out for editing their bodies on Instagram pictures.
Even Queen Bey herself was accused of this in this picture, for allegedly editing her inner thighs:
U.S. actress Bella Thorne was also called out for allegedly claiming her coat was faux fur when it was, according to a Buzzfeed article, made from rabbit.
The Atlantic also published a report on the phenomenon of influencers who post fake sponsored content “to seem cool”. The article lists accounts from business owners and young influencers who share accounts of ‘influencers’ who have staged fake sponsored content and businesses who have had their products promoted by influencers for free.
A 19-year-old lifestyle influencer tells the publication that having sponsored content is “street cred” in the influencer world.
READ MORE: Why everyone should be worried about the rise of deep fakes
Gabbie says the point of her whole spectacle is to let you know that: “Social media for the most part is very curated and manipulated version of reality so just don’t base your life off of the few posts a week from your favourite influencer living this glamourous, amazing, colourful, saturated, hip, trendy amazing life.”
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