Influencer posts hilarious Instagram vs. reality shots to show truth about social media
It's no secret that social media depicts a filtered view of our day-to-day lives. Those perfect vacation photos don't show the time you got lost in a new city or fought with your travel buddy. And those perfect selfies don't indicate how many outtakes there were before someone finally got the photo they wanted to post.
But more recently, there's been a call to bring more reality into the social media world, and to Instagram in particular. Influencer Rianne Meijer, who has more than 397,000 followers on the site, is striving to do just that with her own posts.
To show what happens behind the scenes for an influencer, Meijer has started sharing two images, rather than just one, in many of her posts. The first photo is always the perfectly posed, gorgeous pic we've come to expect on the app. The second photo she posts are outtakes from the same shoots, to show just how much work goes into capturing each picture.
In some photos, for instance, Meijer uses the outtakes to demonstrate just how much difference lighting and angles can make.
Other posts show how helpful it can be to have friends who are dedicated to helping you snap the perfect picture.
And sometimes, Meijer demonstrates just how annoying it is to pose in direct sunlight without a pair of sunglasses.
Meijer, who lives in Amsterdam, told Insider that she wants her outtakes to show viewers the less-perfect side of things.
"I was scrolling through these photos I didn't use after doing a photoshoot for a job in Berlin, and I had the idea to post the pictures I used alongside these shots that I didn't post," Meijer said to Insider. "I thought it was a good message to share."
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She also told the outlet that since sharing the outtakes from her photoshoots, she's gotten the support of "thousands of people" commenting on her posts. "I feel like I've found my voice through this project, and I want to keep building a community around this that builds on the positive message," Meijer told Insider.
Meijer joins a growing trend of social media users determined to add more "real life" into the social media site. The Good Place actor Jameela Jamil is an outspoken critic of airbrushing, for instance, and she uses her platform to promote body acceptance. And parody accounts like Honest Couple show that no picture is as perfect as it might seem online.
It's great to see Meijer using her platform for good. And hopefully, her photos will inspire others to be a little bit more honest in their own posts, too. No one is perfect, despite what you might think after scrolling through Instagram.
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