No Show: How Social Networks Create Events That Will Never Happen

“In May of 2016, I noticed that a few friends marked themselves as going to an event created on Facebook that didn’t seem real. The public event page was titled “Fred Durst LIVE at Rose’s Department Store” and was set in the rural North Carolina town of Morganton. Local news began covering the event as the public could not tell if the 90’s rap rock band would actually play the chain discount store.

I decided to attend the event, meeting the man who created it and photographing the individuals who showed up. I spent the following several months photographing from Atlanta, GA to Chicago, IL at as many fake Facebook events as I could,” Eric says in his introduction to the project.

“The photographs document this social media phenomenon while giving an example to the ways in which the public is receiving its information. This project points to the larger issue of one way social media is changing social opinion, actions, trust, and modes of deception,” he explains.

When asked about the conceptuality behind these pictures, Eric replies: “I wanted to create this series to show a specific example of how manipulative social media is. Because our online experience is curated based off of previous actions, the notion of credibility seems to be less important than the fulfilling onslaught of self affirming content that we see everyday.”