As the famous Coachella music festival comes to an end so do all the flower crown, pink-washed filtered Instagram photos courtesy of the hordes of Instagrammers that attended the two-week-long event. Among those flexing on the gram was a London-based vlogger Byron Denton, who managed to take some epic shots without ever even flying across the pond.
No Denton didn't move to California, his Coachella 'photoshoot' was just the second installment of his fake Instagram prank to see how easily people could be fooled with some photoshop magic. "The first time I faked a luxurious lifestyle on Instagram, I was shocked by the response and how easy it could be to fake an entire life online," he told Bored Panda, "so, with this in mind and a high demand for a part two I decided to go for it, this time a little bigger! It dawned on me that everyone who is seen to be ‘successful’ on Instagram attends the festival Coachella at some point in their life. As it was the time of year where everyone was heading to the desert for a weekend of music and fashion, I decided it would be a great time to go along too... well with the help of photoshop of course!"
Vlogger Byron Denton made a buzz on the internet after he faked a luxurious lifestyle on Instagram – and now he’s back with a new prank
Earlier this year Denton wanted to see just how easy it was to fool people on social media if all you had was some editing skills instead of thousands of dollars. Turns out it was easier than the vlogger thought, which he revealed in his video “how I faked being a rich b*tch on instagram for a week.” Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, well shame on them. For the Instagrammers Superbowl, the Coachella music festival in the Coachella Valley of California, the vlogger decided it was the perfect time to see if people on the internet were as gullible two times around.
As you can imagine the task was harder to pull off the second time. He revealed people had even become skeptical of trips he did take, “Ever since I made the first video my Instagram is constantly flooded with comments of people trying to say my photos are all fake. I recently went on a trip to Rome and all the comments on the photos of me beside the famous landmarks are suggesting that it’s not real and that it’s all photoshopped! I guess its kind of annoying however I did sign up for it! It also meant this time I had to pay such close attention to detail when photoshopping myself at the festival!” he wrote.
He knew he had to bring his A game for the second attempt and even got some help from his mom, but kept tight-lipped about the experiment from everyone else. “I needed some advice when it came to editing the images (she’s [his mom] a graphic designer so a lot more handy with photoshop than me). I didn’t tell anyone else which lead to a lot of my friends messaging me or commenting on my Instagram posts in shock that I was actually ‘at Coachella’. My cousin even went as far as to FaceTime me and ask how the festival was, to her surprise I answered the call whilst sat in my bedroom which was probably a little disappointing for her!”
More eyes on his page led to more hiccups said Denton, “Midway through the week of faking being in LA I had a Shawn Mendes concert in London and lets just say quite a lot of people noticed me, took photos and also questioned how I was in LA on my Instagram but in the O2 watching Shawn Mendes! Super embarrassing!” This didn’t help with the conspiracies about him he already had floating around, “There were specific group chats made of people trying to debunk the entire thing, I think the fact there had been images circulating the internet of me at a concert the day I was supposed to be at Coachella didn’t really help the situation but aside from that I think I did a pretty good job at fooling a lot of people, especially my friends and family!”
Surprisingly enough for Denton, his California-based followers were the most easily fooled. “The most unexpected response to this whole thing has got to be from other YouTubers who truly believed I was at the music festival. I feel like a lot of YouTubers and people in the industry know what happens behind the scenes of everything on social media so can call out others for photoshopping and facetuning things pretty quickly, however, I think I went pretty undetected!”
Denton said that while he had to be more cautious this time around, he thinks he actually ended up fooling more people using the lessons he learned from his last video. “I learned this time around not to over think what I was posting, I think last time I was trying so hard not to get caught out that I was oversharing and over posting which looked unnatural.” Whatever the method was it worked. In terms of likes and comments across his Instagram page, the vlogger said, “These photos did SO much better! The highest amount of likes I got in the other video was around 12,000 this time my photo at Coachella got 10,000 likes in 3 hours and is continuing to go up!”
Watch his full video here
“The last thing I want to share about this whole experience is how easy it really is to fake a lifestyle online. I am no photoshop genius, I don’t have masses of experience in how social media works which means just about anyone with a mobile phone can portray a life that may not always be real. I think it’s easy to compare yourself and what you have to what everyone else is showing but hopefully from this you can see not to believe everything put on social media.”