Faking a Holiday on Social Media

Nowadays in the Society of Simulations, it could be easy to give life to believable fake experiences using tools like Photoshop and Facebook.

Dutch 25-year-old Zilla van den Born made her family, friends and parents believe she went on a trip to Asia, while she was actually at home in Amsterdam, staging a five weeks holiday to Thailand, Cambodia and Laos from behind her desk.

Zilla shared on social media photoshopped snapshots from tropical resorts, diving, beautiful beaches and local tuk-tuks. She took a picture in a swimming pool in Amsterdam, for instance, and later photoshopped it to make it look like she was snorkeling in tropical waters. She photographed aquariums, went to a butterfly garden, visited a Buddhist temple in Amsterdam, bought exotic Asian souvenirs at the market and cooked Thai meals. Then she edited, manipulated and changed all the images to a new truth.

Zilla developped the big lie as a part of a university project, with the aim of revealing how Facebook status and photographs are not accurate indicators of real life.

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

When the girl finally revealed the truth she filmed her family and friends reactions. Needless to say, they were astounded, displaying a range of emotions: shock, incredulity, confusion.

Is it possible to overlook the fact that the holiday was fake as long as it is looks real and gives the desired results?

Story via Metro