Woman Expertly Uses Facebook to Fake an Entire Vacation

Is there nothing some people won’t do to get a good photo for Facebook? Let’s ask Zilla van den Born, who told friends and family that she going to visit South East Asia for five weeks and then did exactly the opposite. She just stayed at home and took pictures.

My first thought is that if you’re not going to go on the actual vacation, you probably shouldn’t post photos because I think we all have enough of those clogging up our newsfeeds. Actually, even if you go on vacation, just post the good photos and not an entire album of your feet in the ocean or like this really cool rock you found. My second though is: Why?

Well, it turns out that van den Born’s lies had a message. She says that her trip was actually a school project meant to showcase how Facebook doesn’t accurately reflect what people are actually doing or how they are living. And that’s why she made up her room to make it look like she was visiting an Asian country and lied to everyone. Good project, I guess?

Here’s what van den Born said to media:

“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.

“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.”

I don’t know if we actually do overlook that in our personal lives, though. I may be wrong, but I think lots of people know that the photos we choose to put on social media aren’t an accident. Even if we’re having a terrible time on vacation, we might put up a fun status and others will like it, though half the time they’re probably not entirely convinced that we’re having that great a week on a Carnival cruise with our parents. But maybe it’s different for others. Maybe this was a needed project for van den Born’s family and friends. And kudos to her boyfriend, who kept the whole thing a secret for the entire fake trip. That’s some dedication.