Photo: vimeo / zvdborn
The perfect illusion
For a university project, Zilla van de Born wanted to prove that social networks are more like a fictitious than a real world. This project has succeeded in an impressive way!
Snorkel trips, temple visits, exotic food and much more - this is how beautiful holidays can be! Via Facebook, Dutchman Zilla van de Born keeps her friends and family at home up to date. She posts photos, uploads videos, writes postcards and e-mails what she experiences in her Asia vacation. But wait, why is the postcard a Dutch stamp?
But even this little faux pas is not noticed by family and friends. For five weeks, they believe that Zilla is on an Asian vacation. In reality, the student is in her apartment in Amsterdam the whole time. But why the whole thing? Zilla van de Born studies graphic design. Your pretended holiday serves a university project. With this Zilla would like to show that much that is disseminated in social networks, does not correspond to reality and a lot of us is fooled. "We all know that models and stars are retouched on photos. But we also often overlook the fact that we manipulate the reality of our own lives almost every day, " says the 25-year-old on the Dutch program RTL Late Night.
Zilla van de Born has planned everything exactly for the perfect illusion. With the help of Photoshop she works on photos with a tropical backdrop, white sand beaches and even pretends a snorkeling trip! For the necessary holiday tan Zilla goes regularly to the solarium. So that her story does not flare up even during Skype conversations, she decorates her apartment over and over again and reports due to the time shift mostly at night.
With their hide-and-seek game, Zilla van de Born would probably have been able to go on forever, because nobody drew suspicion. But after five weeks, she clarifies her family and friends about the fake holiday. These react very differently. From absolute perplexity over loud laughter to an angry grandma, everything is there.
On the video portal Vimeo Zilla shows how she created the perfect illusion. In these two videos you can see how she staged her snorkeling trip using Photoshop and how her friends and family reacted to the fake holiday:
