Originally published at: Woman tricked by TikTok video drags family to a North Carolina town thinking it'll look like the Swiss Alps | Boing Boing
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She’s a bit naive and did it the hard way, perhaps, but I think you could also say that Ms. Garcia did what I wish more people would do: take a wild claim from The Internet, and actually check its veracity.
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IDK pick up ANY F’ING NC travel guide/magazine/rentalrag/topomap and see for yourself?
People are stupid.
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If she’d been smart, she’d have kept driving until she hit Helen, Georgia. Still not quite the snow-capped mountains of the alps, but they do boast their own little alpine village. Spent a few days there one summer about ten years ago, it was quite nice.
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I’m wondering if she knows about Google street view or Apple Maps?
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This really illustrates why a well rounded education and media literacy is important. 
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They appear to have several gas stations in Gastonia so name checks out!
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An honest mistake was made that day.
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Or just keeping going West. Gastonia isn’t particularly deep into the mountainous part of the state. But once you start hitting the Ashville/Hendersonville area there’s snow caps, mountain passes and quaint mountain top villages a plenty.
Think there’s a bunch of “Alpine Villages” and Bavarian nonsense all over thanks to the large German immigrant community. Same band of mountains Helen is in.
Or 30 seconds of Google. You have to have really ignored the search results when you went looking for directions to think a city in the Charlotte Metro Area is going to be some fairytale shit.
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“When are they (the mountains) going to start back up?”
I’m guessing she’s never actually seen mountains considering you can see them from some distance away.
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Well there are some mountains, or peaks at least, in/near Gastonia.
But it’s a sort of a dregs of the Appalachians situation. I don’t think you’re even in the foothills by that point.
If you’re driving through the area you can see them from pretty far off, and if you’re coming from the right direction. They’ll pretty much be the first mountains to pop up on the horizon.
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Nice year, they’ll try that nice Greenland place that Eric the Red posts about.
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When I was a kid I was really excited we were going to visit the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania.
They did not look like I was led to believe. . .
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That’s part of media literacy. Checking a source’s facts. Don’t rely on just one tiktok/story.
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I’m mostly thinking that if you type “Gastonia, NC” into Google Maps photos and information about Gastonia will come up. That you need to bypass to get directions.
The level of not paying attention involved is vast. Nobody was “tricked”.
It’s more odd that this is anything worth covering. It’s the same level of doing it wrong as walking into a NYC subway and expecting a sandwich shop.
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At one point there actually was a Subway in the NYC subway.
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Is it a prank, or just promoting tourism?
I mean, I see all sorts of ads about NYC, but hardly any of them mention all of the crime! Isn’t there space on an I 
NY T-shirt to have a footnote, like “*Caution, You may get mugged or raped, or run into a Trump”?
Sincerely, Emily Litella
im not with any of the naysayers here.
they were already on a road trip, they live in the very unsnowy florida, and someone saw a post on tiktok that caused them to drive a whole hour - gasp - out of their way
good on them and their sense of adventure. good on them for enjoying themselves. more people should take harmless chances on seeing something cool. also good on her family for enjoying the ride and not shutting her down with “but, mom…”
add to that, instead of feeling ashamed or dumb she was like here’s this funny thing that happened
we need more people like that
(edit: fixed post that wasn’t meant to be directed at anyone in particular)
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