Vlogger Natalia Taylor faked an Indonesian holiday at her local Ikea, fooling her 300k Instagram followers. The American influencer posted the pictures to social media on February 7th, claiming to be staying in a luxury Balinese Airbnb.
Taylor revealed that the photos were in fact taken in the Swedish franchise’s tropic model rooms on Youtube a week later. The video has amassed over 1.5 million views.
Who needs a tropical holiday when you have Swedish meatballs and a labyrinth of flatpack furniture?
In the video Taylor told viewers that Bali “is the perfect place to totally fake an influencer vacation and totally lie to all of my followers”.
“The point of this video is to see if you really can fake it until you make it,” she said.
The pictures gained mixed reactions from her fans; some weren’t convinced while others totally bought it. Dead giveaways include the very obvious price tags in background of most photos.
Taylor ends her confession by saying, “I think this video has a lesson, doesn’t it? It has a lesson. Don’t trust everything you see on the internet. Sometimes people want to lie about who they are as a person, and it’s not hard to do apparently. So I have to say this prank on my Instagram followers… was a success.”
Taylor isn’t the first influencer to fake content in order to raise awareness about the frailty of social media. Last year, fellow YouTuber Gabbie Hanna faked a trip to Coachella to make a similar statement about social media sharing. Unlike Taylor, Hanna enlisted the help of a professional photo editor and the results could fool anyone.
Check out Taylor’s Ikea photoshoot below:
