In this age of social media and constant sharing, everybody knows that not everything is as it seems.


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Carolyn Stritch, a 32-year-old travel blogger from the UK, stunned her 190k followers by revealing that she tricked them to prove a point. “I wanted my fictional narrative to challenge the way I portray myself online and the effects of this portrayal,” Carolyn wrote in her blog post.

“I came up with a story: my FaceApped perfect self, who’s ten years younger than I am, flies off to Disneyland for the day, and somehow manages to photograph herself all alone in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.” So she manipulated two images, captioned them with a fictional narrative, and presented them as real-life. She shared an idyllic light picture of herself in bed announcing about the trip and the next day, she posted a pic in Disneyland, where she stood alone in front of the Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. And people believed.

The blogger explained that Instagram is a place to escape from reality and to show your “perfect self”. “Nobody wants to see me in my pajamas, with my explosive morning hair, hunched over my laptop on the sofa. That’s how I spend most of my days. You want to see my books, my windows, my travel photography, same as I want to see the best bits of your daily lives.”

Even though she believes, that showing your best self is not a bad thing, she thinks that there is a line. “In this project, I crossed that line, went way, way over it so I could work backwards and figure out how far I can reasonably go and still make work that’s both responsible and good.”

“I believe in Instagram as a tool for good.” And what do you think about this project?

More info: Instagram | theslowtraveler.net

Carolyn Stritch is a 32-year-old travel blogger from the UK

A few days ago she stunned her 190k followers by revealing that she tricked them to prove a point

Firstly she shared an image, announcing that she’s going to Disneyland to celebrate her 22nd birthday

A day later, she shared this stunning image of herself all alone in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. And people believed it

Then, a few days later, she revealed that it was all fake and just a project

“I came up with a story: my FaceApped perfect self, who’s ten years younger than I am, flies off to Disneyland for the day, and somehow manages to photograph herself all alone in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle”

“I wanted my fictional narrative to challenge the way I portray myself online and the effects of this portrayal”

“Nobody wants to see me in my pajamas, with my explosive morning hair, hunched over my laptop on the sofa. That’s how I spend most of my days”

“You want to see my books, my windows, my travel photography, same as I want to see the best bits of your daily lives”

What do you think about her project?