This online ‘life faking service’ lets you buy ready-made photo packages to post as your own
Including the ‘Look At My Holiday and Cry’ package
We’ve all been there. Endlessly scrolling through your friends’ social media pics and working yourself up into a frenzy.
Why aren’t my holidays that beautiful? Why do I always look like an overweight bridge troll in my selfies? Why won’t my ungrateful cat stop scratching me and sit still for just ONE cute animal pic?!
Well now there’s a new online ‘life faking service’ called Lifefaker that sells ready-made photo packages you can post as your own. Why didn’t we think of this?
The pre-packaged snaps include the ‘Look At My Holiday and Cry’ package, the ‘I Found Love and Babies’ package, and the ‘My Weekend Was Amazing Thanks’ package.
But, as you might have guessed by now, the site is actually a parody website. It’s all the work of mental health start-up Sanctus and is designed to raise awareness around the behaviours on social media that can damage our mental health.
James Routledge, founder of Sanctus, said about the initiative: “With Lifefaker.com, our goal was to use parody to highlight some of those unhealthy behaviours we all know exist on social media. As we become more aware of them ourselves, it can be easier to change them too.
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“Whilst it’s unfair to blame social media completely for poor mental health, there’s a clear link and we only need to look inwards to know there have likely been times when we’ve either been mindlessly scrolling, we’ve felt ourselves comparing ourselves to others or a social media post has triggered something for us.
“Our intention is that we all become more aware of our mental health in general, that we hear the message that we all have mental health just like we have physical health.”
According to one study, Instagram is the worst app for your mental health
And this site comes just as researchers from the Royal Society for Public Health found that Instagram was the worst social media app for young people’s mental health.
Shirley Cramer CBE, the Chief Executive of the RSPH, said: “Social media has been described as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, and is now so entrenched in the lives of young people that it is no longer possible to ignore it when talking about young people’s mental health issues.”
(Images: Unsplash / Getty)
