I know that we’re always told be be critical when it comes to social media posts, but it can be so easy to get sucked into the lives of influencers.
They just seem to have it all and their lives are impossibly perfect.
One influencer has come forward and admitted that not everything you see on Instagram is the truth. The reason why she did it is actually really interesting.
Gabbie Hanna is a musician and Instagram influencer.
She currently has 3.8 MILLION followers on Instagram and has released a number of singles on Spotify and other music platforms. Check out “Out Loud” if you’re looking for a new bop.
If you follow Gabbie at all, then you know that she recently went to Coachella.
Coachella, of course, is one of the biggest music festivals in the world and has spawned the flower crown aesthetic that we’ve come to associate with summer festivals. Oh, and there’s a Ferris wheel.
Except… Gabbie actually never went to Coachella.
Before you start unfollowing Gabbie and hating on her, hear us out. She actually had a pretty cool reason why she decided to do this and her experiment says a lot about social media.
Gabbie said she got the idea to fake a trip to Coachella after seeing other influencers pull similar stunts.
You may recall how one influencer recently faked a trip to Disneyland. Gabbie wanted to see for herself if it was possible for her to do the same thing with Coachella.
For her Instagram photos, Gabbie had her friends take pictures of her around California.
These photos were then photoshopped and edited to put Gabbie right in the heart of Coachella.
Gabbie even had her friend help her make DIY Coachella wrist bands for the photos.
She really covered all her bases with this one, folks.
To keep things looking realistic, Gabbie also had her friends who were actually at Coachella send her footage from the festival.
She then shared this footage through her Instagram stories. Clever!
She also enlisted the use of her friend’s house to look like a cool AirBnB.
And even though she’d been vocally anti-Coachella in the past, she managed to cover up why she decided to go after all pretty well.
“SO excited to play dress up and enjoy the culture & live music!” She wrote on Instagram.
Her first Instagram post on the subject read, “Welp- i’m at coachella and i’m just as shocked as you… BUT HAPPY TO BE HERE!”
She thanked her friend for “talking [her] into it.”
Gabbie continued her thanks to her friend’s mom, “for finding this BOMB AIR B&B WHAT UP VICKI HOW U DOIN GURL. stay tuned for all my outfits i tried way too hard on and messy stories no one asked for <3"
Gabbie later edited all her faked Coachella Instagram post captions to reveal what she’d done.
She added, “OOPS i faked it all! go check out the video on how i pretended to go to coachella up now!” and made sure to tag the master of Photoshop behind it all, @kellansworld.
Gabbie pointed out that a lot of influencers are doing practically the same thing.
“I know people who double up their outfits on the first weekend and take photos so they can pretend to go to both weekends,” she said in her vlog . “So what I’m doing is not that far from reality.”
In many ways, this fake trip to Coachella almost looks as tiring as going to the actual festival.
But Gabbie has an important reason why she did this experiment.
To be fair, Gabbie said she did feel bad for duping her fans but she wanted to prove an important point.
She said she did this because she wanted to show people, “how easy it is to fake things on social media.”
She went on to say that so much of what we see on Instagram has been manipulated or faked, so she wanted her fans to remember not to compare themselves to these idealistic photos.
This is actually such an important message and cool experiment, Gabbie!
