An Instagram influencer and YouTube personality took it upon herself to teach her followers a very important lesson: don't believe everything you see on the Internet. Natalia Taylor, who has more than 300,000 followers on Instagram and close to two million subscribers on YouTube, tricked her followers into believing she was enjoying a lavish vacation in Bali when she was actually filming at a much less touristy location, a local Ikea store.
Taylor tricked her fans
Taylor went to a nearby Ikea store and used some very specific camera angles to pull off the prank. She shared a series of images of herself in what appeared to be a fancy villa or hotel, popping champagne and lounging in the bath.
"The queen has arrived. #Bali," she captioned one photo. Taylor's followers fell for her practical joke and the pictures racked up thousands of likes and comments from them. "She really out here living her best life," wrote one user, while another commented, "This place looks so beautiful. "
Why did she do it?
A few days after posting the pictures on Instagram, Taylor revealed the truth in a YouTube video titled "I FAKED a vacation at IKEA," which shows her getting photographed at a local Ikea store in Los Angeles.
She said that the reason why she fooled fans into believing she was in Bali was to demonstrate how often Influencers fake details about their life to score free products and social media status.
"It's been said life on the internet isn't always what it seems, especially in today's day and age when it's so easy to pretend to be anyone you want to be," Taylor says in the video. "So many influencers nowadays have actually been caught in the act of pretending to be at a particular destination when they really weren't and it's either Photoshop or it's not even them."
The YouTube video has already amassed more than a million views and 48,000 likes. Watch the full video below:
