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Youtuber exposes social media lie by staging Bali holiday in IKEA

Natalia Taylor instagram bali trick
Natalia tricked people into thinking she had gone to Bali. Photo: natalia__taylor

A Youtuber has exposed how easy it is for influencers to lie on social media by fooling her followers into thinking she was on holidays when she actually never left the country.

American influencer, Natalia Taylor, recently told fans that she had travelled to Bali when in fact she was never in Indonesia at all - instead she staged a bunch of holiday snaps at her local IKEA store, revealing her prank in a YouTube clip.

“Don’t trust everything you see on the internet,” she said in the 13-minute video, explaining how she tricked everyone into thinking she was on holiday.

“The queen has arrived #bali,” her first post was captioned, followed by subsequent images of her sipping wine and lying in a bathtub in her robe, all the while tagging her location as in Bali.

And she had her 313K followers completely fooled.

“She really out her living her best life,” was one comment on the images.

“I’m in Bali too,” another excited follower wrote.

Natalia claims she did it as an experiment, to see whether people would believe she was “actually on this influencer vacation”, because she says these days “it’s so easy to pretend to be anyone you want to be”.

In reality, what she really did was take a ‘trusted’ photographer to her local IKEA store to stage the photoshoot, even leaving a few of the IKEA price tags in the photos as clues.

Then she went a step further by posting photos to her Instagram stories using photos and footage from the internet - like a snap out of a plane window or arriving at Bali’s Denpasar Airport.

Youtuber Natalia Taylor instagram lie
Natalia exposed her trick on Youtube. Photo: Youtube/Natalia Taylor

“It seems painfully obvious that I’m not in Bali. I’m not even posting any of the iconic Bali photos of me on the beach or in exotic locations and I’m getting away with it. That’s insane.”

Watch her reveal the trick below:

Bloggers reveal Instagram vs Reality

Body-positive advocate and blogger Sara Puhto is also focused on trying to show the world that you shouldn’t believe everything you see on social media.

Taking to Instagram, the young woman from Finland regularly shares side-by-side images to prove how much of a difference angles and posture can make in photos posted to social media.

In one post, Sara wore the same bikini in two side-by-side images. In the picture on the left, she stood in a natural stance that she deemed “Reality.” On the right, she stood tall with her back arched and her arms raised in a pose she called “Instagram.”

Sarah Puhto poses in a black bikini
Sara Puhto regularly posts side-by-side photos showing the difference between Instagram and reality. Photo: Instagram

“I was scrolling through my old photos and came across these photos where I was trying to take one of those sandy bum pics. I posted the right one back in January, but the left is the reality behind that photo,” she wrote in the accompanying caption.

“I still sometimes get a slight pang of sadness and jealousy when I see all the big beautiful bums on Instagram and wish I could magically have what they have,” she continued.

“Because sometimes I feel like all my booty gains are gone when I take photos where it looks smaller, but then I remember that I shouldn’t compare my body to theirs. I have a great booty and so do they! It’s all about posing/angles and nobody looks like that all the time.”

Sara went on to say that although there’s nothing wrong with posting a photo of yourself that’s taken from a great angle or is deceptive, you should keep in mind that other people are doing the same.

“Just remember that when you’re scrolling through social media and see all the posed bums that you too have a great bum and that nobody looks like that 24/7,” she wrote.

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