22-year-old Zachary Keesee lives in Durham, NC but ever since he was a kid, he’s always enjoyed traveling. He’s been all over his home state, as well as Utah, California, Nevada, Illinois, Arizona, South Carolina, Louisiana, New Mexico, Washington D.C., New York and Puerto Rico, among others. But he’s also branched out and has also been all over Europe, including England, Italy, Greece, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, Czechia, and Switzerland through the years.
Keesee’s posted a lot of his travels on TikTok. But as a joke, he’s recently been mislabeling where he’s been. So he’d show one of his videos from, say, Chernobyl (which he went to when he visited Ukraine a few years ago), and say the footage was from Rock Hill, SC. Or he’d post from when he was in a gondola in Venice and say he was in Raleigh. Just a silly joke, all in fun. No harm done.
Anyway, he recently post a gorgeous video of huge mountains and snow. He said it was Gastonia, NC, but it was actually his footage of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.
@realzacharykeesee Reply to @johnzimmerschied Gastonia, North Carolina. A TRUE gem 💎 #gastonia #northcarolina #switzerland #nc
It got a bunch of views on his TikTok, and one of the people who saw it was Olivia Garcia, of Jupiter, FL.
Garcia, 26, was on a road trip with her family. They happened to be in Charleston, SC when she saw Keesee’s video and she fell for the gag, hook, line, and sinker.
“I’m from south Florida, so the closest thing we have to mountains down here are landfills, which is why I was so excited when I saw the TikTok,” Garcia told The Charlotte Observer. “I had never heard of Gastonia before, but the name sounded like something out of a Disney movie.”
Realizing they were only about an hour from Gastonia, Olivia and her family decided to make a detour to see these “beautiful sights” of Gastonia.
If you’re not familiar with it, Gastonia is, obviously, nothing like a Disney movie. Named for the late U.S. Representative William Gaston (not the Gaston from Disney’s Beauty And The Beast) it’s historically a town known for its textile manufacturing. Nowadays is 99% urban/1% rural, and was ranked by 24/7 Wall St. as one of the 50 worst cities in America to live in, in 2017.
Before Garcia and her family even made it to Gastonia, they knew they weren’t going to see the sights that had been in Keesee’s video. “I realized when we were like 20 minutes out that something wasn’t right,” she said.
Indeed.
Instead of beautiful mountains and snow, they encountered what appeared to be a lower-income part of town, with run-down gas stations and empty strip malls. She posted a video about the whole thing, saying she got “rickrolled by TikTok.”
@itsoliviagarcia
Said Garcia: “I’m sure there’s a nicer part of town, but we didn’t stick around long enough to find out. Moral of the story, don’t believe anything you see on the Internet.”
Keesee discovered that Garcia took the time and effort to visit Gastonia because of his video. He said he wasn’t expecting anyone to take his video seriously, but had spoken with and apologized to Garcia, who wasn’t upset. He said she sounded as if the whole situation was funny.
As for TikiTok, even Keesee says “buyer beware.”
“It’s a great spot to get travel ideas to explore,” he said. “But don’t follow everything you see blindly! Research yourself!”
Gee, ya think? 😉
Feature Photo: Pixabay
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