A Fake TikTok Duped A Woman Into A Road Trip & She Was So Mad When She Didn't See Mountains
The mountains were real, but the location was wrong 😑
A Florida woman just learned that she shouldn't believe everything people post on social media, especially without researching it first.
Olivia Garcia says she went on a major road trip to a scenic spot that someone had tagged as North Carolina on TikTok, only to discover when she got there that the location had been tagged wrong.
Garcia says she was on a road trip from Florida and decided to take a detour to Gastonia, North Carolina, after seeing a TikTok post by a man named Zachary Keesee.
In the post, Keesee is seen in front of a beautiful landscape full of mountains and snow, which he labelled as Gastonia.
But when Garcia showed up in Gastonia, she saw nothing but old buildings, gas stations, and not a mountain in sight, according to her TikTok. "I just got Rickrolled by TikTok," says the caption of the now-viral post.
@itsoliviagarcia I just got rickrolled by TikTok 🙃 #gastonia #rickroll
She later discovered that the destination was actually all the way across the pond, in none other than Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.
During an interview with the Charlotte Observer, Garcia said she realized something was wrong after about 20 minutes of driving without spotting any mountains. The rest, she says were just “'run-down gas stations."
Keesee, the TikTok Rickroller, has more than 76,000 followers on the social media platform.
Though he lives in North Carolina, Keesee often jokingly posts videos of his travels abroad while labelling them with names of towns and cities located in the U.S. state.
In one of his videos, he wrote, "Check out the new Bass Pro Shops at Concord Mills Mall, near Charlotte!" with a background of the Duomo Di Milano instead.
@realzacharykeesee Reply to @elisaschlaufer you’re telling im not in Gastonia right now??? #northcarolina #nc #gastonia #charlotte #switzerland
But not everyone can spot these fakes at a glance, and many TikTokers got heated about Keesee's misleading posts in the comments.
Despite the backlash, he's very well aware of people's love-hate relationship with his sarcasm.
“I’m sorry if they don’t understand the humor I intended with the videos," he said, according to The Herald Sun.
"But hey, you can’t trust everything you see on the internet. Always research!”
Before you get going, check out our Responsible Travel Guide so you can be informed, be safe, be smart, and most of all, be respectful on your adventure.