BANGKOK — A former flight attendant exposed for photoshopping herself into amazing locations inspired the internet Thursday to escalate its ridicule with its own backlash of memes.
@Ticha_ek had more than 134,000 followers on Instagram when sharp-eyed netizens noticed photos of her awash in the Northern Lights, at Chichen Itza and with footballer Lionel Messi were actually just images pulled from the Internet with her pasted in.
Update: Flight Attendant Bullied Over Pics Gets Last Laugh
Many quickly heaped scorn on the air hostess for touting her wanderlust lifestyle with photo captions (also plagiarized) such as, “You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.”
Thursday’s top trending Twitter hashtag was #ticha_ek. People have pointed out many of the photos used were copyrighted by photographers, sometimes with identifying watermarks removed.
Being an air hostess is held up as a dream job for many young women in Thailand, and now many are loving to hate the unidentified woman for making up her too-good-to-be-true life.
Others were inspired by her audacity to go even further by taking the idea to new heights.
https://twitter.com/mayday_maydoy/status/806702034883751936
A graduate student travels the world in his gown.
https://twitter.com/shercrushh/status/806834301513781248
@Ticha_ek wasn’t the only one to enjoy some much-needed fresh air.
‘Northern Lights.jpg’ says this post by Drama-Addict page.
Marketers were quick exploit the opportunity. In this image, Ing On rice milk shower cream got on the bandwagon to tout its shower products being “as cool as getting to see the Northern Lights.”
The Department of Intellectual Property even joined the fray, warning that reproducing or editing copyrighted material is illegal with an image of a hot pot, which in Thai is an idiom for being caught red-handed.
‘I already went there 555555555555’
‘I don’t have a husband, so I can go be single anywhere.’
Popular satire page Pim Thai Mai Dai features fugitive abbot Dhammachayo mocking @Ticha_ek’s images. / Photo: Pim Thai Mai Dai / Facebook
#ลูกตาล #ticha_ek = #อ้ายมีเหตุผล เวอร์ชั่นผู้หญิง #เที่ยวรอบโลกฟรีมีอยู่จริง #thailand pic.twitter.com/WA5pHAQwcl
Advertisement— Jamajajingja (@RayaJaja) December 7, 2016
The photo which started it all. @Ticha_ek’s northern lights photo was one of the first ones where netizens spotted that the background was pulled from Google.
