A YouTube personality has successfully pulled the wool over the eyes of nearly four million followers in a bid to prove a point about the nature of social media.
Gabbie Hanna, an influencer with more than 3.8 million followers on Instagram and six million on YouTube, managed to Photoshop her way into the second weekend of Coachella -- a huge music and arts festival held in California's Colorado desert.
"Going to Coachella for most people, at least in LA, is weeks of preparation, thousands of dollars into outfits, hair, makeup, weaves, wigs, extensions, hotels, travel, alcohol, food, tickets. It's an investment." she said in the video.
So Gabbie set out to recreate it all, complete with wig changes and fake AirBnB accommodation. In reality, her festival snaps and Instagram photos were staged at a friend's house -- in lieu of a stylish AirBnB -- and on the lawn of a park in a seaside LA community.
After photoshopping Coachella crowds into the backgrounds and tweaking the lighting for that perfect filtered finished, no one appears to have been the wiser.
Coachella is arguably one of the most well-documented music festivals running -- Instagrammed, Snapchatted, vlogged and artistically captured on vintage film cameras -- each year pegged as a groovy get-together for the rich and famous, and the rest of us who can save enough to get there.
But for Hanna, the entire experience of pretending to be there was a reminder social media can be "a very curated and manipulated version of reality".
"I know a lot of people look at people on Instagram and social media and they think 'wow their life is impossibly perfect, that body, that vacation, that car'. So much of it's fake and that's okay I'm not shading anybody who does that on social media because it is a viable career.
"But for an average viewer who is just watching these things and aspiring for these things, just know those things aren't always as attainable as they seem."
"People look at people on Instagram and social media, and they think 'Wow, their life is impossibly perfect'. That body, that vacation, that car - so much of it is fake, and that's okay."
"I'm not shading anybody who does that on social media because it is a viable career, but for an average viewer who's just watching these things and is aspiring for these things, just know that those things aren't always as attainable as they seem."
Continuing she told her Instagram followers to think beyond the feed and realise that most of it isn't actually attainable for anyone, even those in the photo.
Gabbie also apologised to her fans for lying to them for the sake of the video but, she just hoped to raise awareness on how all is as it seems and to remember to be grateful for what you have. It's easy to get sucked into the Instagram comparison hole but it's also important to remember that it's not always a true depiction of someone's life or entire day.
