Dutch Girl Fakes Five-Week-Long Vacation To The Far East On Facebook!


Zilla van den Born, a Dutch girl, recently told her friends and family members about her exciting five-week-long vacation to South East Asia. As expected of any modern-day youngster who decides to go traveling, her friends and family members watched, liked, and commented on the pictures she uploaded to Facebook that showed her having a great time. She posted authentic-looking images of herself scuba diving in a tropical sea and sitting with a monk, as well as a photo that showed her hotel room. All the while, her family members and friends commented and liked on her posts. The only problem? She hadn’t gone anywhere.

According to GapYear, all the images posted on to her Facebook were from her home city of Amsterdam. The only person who knew about her actual whereabouts was her boyfriend. The picture of her scuba diving was actually from her own swimming pool – photoshopped with a few fish in the background. There were a lot of other photoshopped images too in the album of her “trip” to the Far East. Some showed her dining in an Asian restaurant (which was actually in Amsterdam itself). She also regularly Skyped with her parents (at odd times of the day) since she was so far away!

Fake facebook updates
An example of an original image taken in The Netherlands alongside the faked image posted on to Facebook

Why did Zilla do this? Well, it was a part of her university project. The project dealt with how a person’s Facebook posts are not a true representation of their actual life.

“I did this to show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media, and that we create an online world which reality can no longer meet.” she told Dutch media persons.

She added, “My goal was to prove how common and easy it is to distort reality. Everybody knows that pictures of models are manipulated. But we often overlook the fact that we manipulate reality also in our own lives.”

The Inquisitr previously reported about a similar video that vent viral. The video too showed the reality behind envy-invoking Facebook updates that people share nowadays.

Have you ever faked a Facebook status update?

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