Finally Someone is Calling BS On Those Ridiculous Camping Photos.
Instagram is filled with thousands of gorgeous and unbelievable photos of tents in precarious spots in far away and impossible places.
The photos are enough to cause envy even for experienced 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 face someone actually sleeping in such dangerous places is quite 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 realized that this 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.
“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.
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.”
