We’d all love to go on a five week holiday travelling around Asia, wouldn’t we? Well, university student Zilla van den Born was lucky enough to go on one for her course recently. Well, that’s not strictly true… She kind of pretended to go. With the aid of a few well-placed lies, the internet, a camera and – all importantly – Photoshop, she faked the entire trip…
And fooled everyone!
The 25 year-old never left her hometown of Amsterdam for the month and a bit, but instead squirreled herself away, doctoring photos.
She went full tilt at the prank, going so far as to get her family to drop her off at the airport. As soon as they left, she caught a tram immediately back to her student home. And got straight onto Facebook.
Zilla says this about the stunt: “I did this to show people that we filter and manipulate what we show on social media – we create an ideal world online which reality can no longer meet. My goal was to prove how common and easy it is for people to distort reality. Everyone knows that pictures of models are manipulated, but we often overlook the fact that we manipulate reality also in our own lives.”
Everyone fell for it. And hey – why wouldn’t you?!
A lot of photos Zilla could just take from the internet and doctor, adding in herself with ease.
But some required a little imagination. She’d travel all over Amsterdam to get a good background or shot.
Not a bad beach for a Dutch city that isn’t by the sea!
In total, she spent 42 days hiding away for the project. Now that’s dedication!
But we think it was worth it. She makes a great point about how we really are and how we attempt to show ourselves on things like Facebook…
What a great idea!
