Instagrammers are staging fake camping pictures, and this account is calling them out
Instagram is riddled with literally thousands of spectacular photos of tents in precarious spots in far-flung places.
The photos are enough to induce envy even for seasoned travelers, but have any of us ever thought to question whether these perilous campsites were actually slept in?
One woman is calling BS on travel bloggers one Instagram post at a time through a rather hilarious and aptly-named Instagram account entitled @youdidnotsleepthere. Let's be real: the likelihood of anyone actually sleeping on a terrifying precipice is pretty slim.
Luisa Jeffery from Portland, Oregon, started the account after a 21-day trip in the Grand Canyon. She said a friend on the trip suggested they set up a poler tent in a few crazy locations "just for the photos".
She says she'd never realised that was "a thing" until then. She says she's a huge fan of the @youdidnoteatthat and @youdidnotskatethat accounts and used them as inspiration to start hers.
When she first started posting, she says she hunted down a bunch of Instagram photographers and scrolled through their feeds to get photos. Now her account has around 36.2K followers, she gets tagged in and sent too many photos, many of which she can't post.
While many people find her posts truly hilarious, she also faced some backlash when she first began posting.
"I always took down photos if people asked me to, but not without calling them out first," she says.
But, now photographers reach out to her and ask to be featured. "Pretty much a guarantee that they won't be. Some have asked me not to post photos. A request I respect," she says.
Ultimately though, Jeffery feels that the majority of photos posted by travel bloggers on Instagram are staged.
"I wouldn't have started the account if I didn't feel like the whole thing was a joke," she says. "There is just such a lack of transparency and honesty about people's lives on Instagram. And it's so tired."
"People need to get off their phones and find inspiration outside of Instagram. Ironic 'cause here I am driving through eastern Idaho with my head down typing this," she continues.
She could very well have a point, though.
Topics Instagram
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
