It’s fair to say that things online things aren’t always what they seem. From editing selfies to make ourselves seem more attractive on social media, to creating embellished profiles on dating websites, everyone wants to present a perfect and often airbrushed image of themselves.
Internet first impressions can often be deceiving. From turning up to meet a date who doesn’t quite look like they did on their Tinder profile, to buying a product that doesn’t quite match up to its description, the world wide web has made it so easy for people to be catfished in all areas of life.
Don’t just take our word for it though… we surveyed 2,000 people across the UK on their attitudes on perception versus reality online. We found that 72% of people thought that people look different in photos on the internet to what they do in real life, and that 50% of people have never uploaded a photo of themselves that isn’t edited, highlighting that what you see online isn’t always what you get in person.

The Experiment…
The results of our survey got us thinking; are online consumers even more trusting than we thought?
We decided to run an experiment to investigate just how much trust car buyers place on what they see when online shopping for a used car. We did this by advertising toy cars for sale online, posing as the real thing.
How We Did It…
We ordered four toy model cars of some of the nation’s favourite motors.
We then went out to a car park with a photographer and positioned the cars cleverly on top of a wall to make them appear the same size as the real cars surrounding them when photographed.
After a few minutes spent perfecting the best angles, we took a few shots zooming in on the toy cars, opening their doors and positioning them to look just like real cars.
By blurring out the background slightly to distort the size of the surrounding cars, the toy cars look almost like their real-life counterparts in the final shots.
We then added the descriptions and uploaded the adverts of the cars for sale and waited for responses.
The Results…
Interested buyers made enquiries and some even made offers.
As you can see from the video, it was easy for us to fool buyers into thinking that they were buying a real car, by using just a few clever editing tips and tricks.
When it comes to buying a used car, remember that what you see isn’t always what you get. Photographs can often be deceiving, so make sure you do your research and ask the seller any questions that you have.
Take a look at the video above to see just how easy it was for us to trick people into thinking our toy cars were real cars for sale.