Coachella might be one of the most-Instagrammed festival in all the Valencia-filtered land, but how do you know all that glossy photogenic goodness is real?
Apparently, you don’t. As YouTuber Gabbie Hanna successfully fooled her 3.8 million Instagram followers into thinking she’d spent Easter frolicking around the California desert for the second weekend of the annual music festival.
In fact, she’d simply dressed up in classic festival garb (think brightly coloured wigs and vivid co-ords), posed in an empty field and hired the help of a tech expert with “witchcraft”-worthy photoshop skills.
Over the weekend, Hanna posted a collection of images claiming to be at the festival, one of which shows her reclining in a field in front of its famous ferris wheel while in another it looks as if she's standing in front of the main stage.
The 28-year-old revealed her duplicitous actions in a YouTube video posted on Tuesday, explaining that she’d been inspired by other vloggers who had also successfully faked trips to show people just how easy it is to lie on social media.
“Social media, for the most part is just a very curated and manipulated version of reality,” she told her 6.5 million subscribers.
Hanna added that she has “nothing against” Coachella per se but that as an introvert, she hasn’t ever felt a desire to go. She explained that friends of hers who go to the festival often spend weeks preparing their outfits and lose “thousands of dollars” by splashing out on hair, makeup, hotels and alcohol for the weekend.
“It feels like a lot of work for something you’re enjoying, and I’m not saying it’s an unenjoyable experience [...] but there’s a lot of people who go to Coachella that do not enjoy the experience just because they’re going for Instagram pictures. That to me feels stressful.”
Hanna apologised to any followers who might’ve felt “duped” by her actions, but urged them to think of it “like an April Fools... three weeks late.”
“Just don’t base your life off of the few posts a week from your favourite influencer living this glamorous, amazing, colourful, saturated, hip, trendy, amazing life,” Hanna continued.
“Because the whole time I was living my best life at Coachella, I was really, uh, for the most part, sitting in this editing chair.”
This year, Coachella was headlined by Ariana Grande, Tame Impala and Childish Gambino.
