It feels more and more that people go to cool places just to prove they have as many resources as their peers.
Travel and social media is just an extension of "keeping up with the Jones's" but on a personal identity level- only at the cost of whatever destruction you are willing to put our planet through, be it that new camera you bought, or the jet fuel you paid to burn.
I couldn't help but feel guilty on the way to my last international trip- the homeless do less damage to the planet than I do.
It's nothing new; Ray Davies wrote a song about it fifty years ago! Only the front-facing camera didn't exist, so it was called "People Take Pictures of Each Other" rather than "People Take Selfies."
Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". It is for some a way to portray that you're not materialistic, but still dunk on all the poors and other outgroup members while blowing thousands of dollars on what is ultimately a luxury. The sub-category of "travel as wasteful mating signal & ritual" deserves another novel on top of this.
It didn't help that for several years (though it has thankfully tapered off) there was a constant stream of "lifestyle" articles proclaiming that mass tourism "experiences" to capture some photo-totem were the scientifically confirmed path to happiness.
It's a meme to make fun of Americans in "flyover countries" for not having passports. People who have only lived in the place they were born are made fun of for not being traveled, and therefore not cultured.
Is it a surprise then that more and more people want to travel in order to signal that they aren't an uncultured, passport-less hillbilly? The key thing to note here is that someone who does not have any regard for their environment and other people will be the same whether they're in Kansas or in Paris. Often, they'll be even worse, since it's not home that they're trashing up.
Flyover suburbanite here: I never understood travel culture, but I've seen it contribute to depression in my friends and neighbors because they somehow have been convinced that a meaningful life requires global travel, but find it difficult with mortgages and children. I view travel culture as very toxic as a result.
"I just want to see the world" I hear, a yearning for an experience that, when pursued, might temporarily stifle midlife crises but ruins marriages just as often. I feel so deeply sad for people who don't realize that everything they need is in front of them.
I can see your point but as a passportless 21 year old I can't help but feel I'm missing out on something. I've never really experienced anything outside of the US. It's such an exciting prospect to visit somewhere exotic that looks nothing like the place I've always known, has completely different food, language, animals. Maybe the joy is temporary but it's still joy and I hope if I ever get the chance to travel it's an experience that I'll be able to look back fondly on, or worst case use the knowledge to reflect and come to a conclusion such as yourself.
Don't let anyone or anything stop you from traveling. I once dropped everything and took a 2 month long trip to Colombia. I wanted somewhere close, out of the country, non-Anglo, not in the Caribbean or Central America, which I judged to be too dangerous / touristy at the time. Colombia was safe and interesting. I took Spanish classes and bounced around different cities for a few months.
In the beginning it was about exploration and at the end it was about discovering my priorities in life.
The genesis of the trip came about when I started talking to someone at a language school about taking language classes. He started asking me why, then said, "just go there. You'll never get a better chance than when you're young."
As someone who has travelled some, the tragedy of the modern tourism industry is that it has homogenized so many places that it’s hard to tell them apart. I first noticed it when I took a Caribbean cruise a decade ago. The port areas are dominated by tourist culture instead of local culture, and you’re hard-pressed to tell one from another.
Here in Iceland(1), shops downtown are regularly being replaced by copies of the same gift shop you’ll find everywhere in the world, and there is active discussion about coming up with “tourist-friendly” English names for landmarks because the Icelandic ones that have been used for hundreds of years aren’t enticing enough.
The tourism industry has figured out how to give people a good show, but it’s ultimately a shallow experience. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing: like everything else, travel needs welcoming, entry-level experiences. The trouble comes when it gets so prevalent that it starts to warp and destroy the local culture in order to sell more spectacle.
(1) Full disclosure: I first came here as a tourist, and would never have moved here without that initial exposure, so I can’t completely comdemn the tourism industry.
> And that’s not necessarily a bad thing: like everything else, travel needs welcoming, entry-level experiences. The trouble comes when it gets so prevalent that it starts to warp and destroy the local culture in order to sell more spectacle.
Kind of like software development these days, on the web in particular - the "entry-level experience" makes most money, so over time it starts to dominate and push out everything else.
Being passportless in USA isn't a big deal, the USA being such a large country. You can still travel large distances and see many different places. Perhaps it's not exotic enough for some though.
Gawd I don't think I've ever seen something as silly on HN as 'travel depresses you'. You are missing out on something, you should do it, and it wont depress you.
Sure there are people who seem to travel with the intent impress people, but traveling is a character-building in a way that everyone should experience. Its not the kind of spirit-quest that some people make it out to be, but it will give you interesting stuff to think out for years.
I recommend if you feel you're missing out is to travel to parts of the USA that you're not familiar with. If you're a city-folk, visit a rural agriculture town. If you're from a more rural area, visit a heavily populated region like NYC. Visit Chicago. St Lois. Baton Rouge. Austin. Phoenix. Portland. San Francisco. Buffalo. Detroit. Etc.
You are missing it. Not because you are not travelling, but because you are 21 with no real responsibilities and you are not using that time frivolously.
Get a passport, save $5-10k and go slumming in Europe for 6 months. Backpack for clothes. Laptop. Camera. Condoms. If you decide you don't like it in three-four weeks, come back. Otherwise spend time there stretching your money as long as you can until your budget runs out.
> I never understood travel culture, but I've seen it contribute to depression in my friends and neighbors because they somehow have been convinced that a meaningful life requires global travel ... I view travel culture as very toxic
Sure, traveling just to achieve certain bragging rights is superficial and silly, but that doesn't mean travel itself isn't valuable. Similarly, reading books just to say you've read the most or the hardest is silly, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read.
Traveling allows you to viscerally see how people live and value things differently from you. There is much to be gained from it if you do it for the right reasons.
Very very few people “viscerally see how people live and value things differently” when they travel. And they can’t without an order of magnitude more time and money to spend on that travel.
Actually living in a different place will certainly do that, but “travel” almost never will.
> Very very few people “viscerally see how people live and value things differently” when they travel. ... Actually living in a different place will certainly do that, but “travel” almost never will.
Take one extreme case: a typical college grad doing a euro-trip to 10 countries in 14 days. They will certainly not be able to experience those cultures deeply, but compare that person to someone who never went to Europe, never saw their respect for the past, train travel, food cultures, and the high value they place on vacation.
Even consider those young travelers that mostly stay within the confines of their hostel and their group activities, or in a national bar where things appear familiar and comfortable: they are still better off than if they just stayed home and had not seen any of it.
Certainly, 10 days of travel is not much, but it's a lot more than 0 days. For some, those 10 days may be truly meaningful and eye-opening, for others, a familiar party with different scenery. Traveling is generally uncomfortable and different, and the experience can add something to even the most shallow traveler.
(caveat: It happens, although uncommon, that travel can be a detriment. Particularly, when someone goes to a country that is poorer than theirs, and attributes their lack of development to some genetic or racist defect. While this is possible, I do think it's exceedingly rare. When one sees how other people live up close, it's natural to look for the patterns and similarities rather than come up with differences.)
I had a good experience right after college. Went to Germany for 21 days. Stayed with an exchange student I had become friends with senior year in high school and we kept in contact.
We stayed with their family for a week, experiencing the smaller town life, hiking in the black forest and going to the market for fresh bread every morning.
We then rented a vehicle and traveled around the Autobahn visiting many major cities and either staying at a hostel ($20 a night per person plus an amazing breakfast included!), or with a mutual friend of her's whom she had met in college.
There are only a few Universities in Germany so she knew someone is almost all the major cities we stayed at and it was nice to converse with them in their home, trade stories and experience the night life as a local would.
We did go to a few tourist areas which were neat to experience, however most of the fun did come from 'off the beaten path' where you got to interact with locals and see more of the slower, simple life.
One thing that I found astonishing is the amount you can converse/communicate with someone even if you don't speak their language. Granted most people in Germany can understand English well, but with the few broken phrases I learned before going I was able to do quite well when our translator (my friend from high school) would not be with us sometimes.
I much would rather do this, go to one specific country rather than go to 14 countries in 10 days.
Haven't traveled since as work/school/family is now my priority but doing at least one travel to get out of your comfort zone is a good experience I think everyone should get to experience once (if they want to).
Yeah, traveling for a week for a vacation is very different from staying in a place and interacting with the local culture for an extended amount of time.
Nice echo chamber developing here. I couldn't care less about how and why other people travel, but for myself, it has shapen my personality (for the better) more than any other experience or activity in my life (and there are quite some, like weight lifting and climbing). It made me a better person on many levels. Is this selfish pursuit? Obviously, what in life isn't?
But there are many forms of travel. For me, it is and forever will be only backpacking-ish style. Done for example 6 months in India in very remote places. When you come back from such a visit, you are not really the same person inside that left. Or at least I can't imagine not being changed by all the positive and also negative things experienced. 1 week feels like 3 there, 1 month more like 5 years, and after 3 the idea of my life back was just a distant memory of a dream I once had. You can't tell properly others about those 1000s of small and big adventures, they wouldn't understand most of the appeal. Only those with similar experiences would. Photos or videos, even done with full frame equipment, tell only small part of the story.
And these instagrammers/'influencers' (that's a too pretty name for what it usually is, if they travel around like that they are rather 'influenced') ? Well they are for people with sheepish mentality. I would have to have utterly bland life to be interested in some John Doe's life, where he made this or that selfie and consistently follow them. I guess I am too old and experienced for Instagram bandwagon. With all the travel photo I do, I would anyway end up as one of those 'influencers' (at least that's what people tell me when they see my photos and the amount I create)
> Traveling allows you to viscerally see how people live and value things differently from you. There is much to be gained from it if you do it for the right reasons.
Yes, they also have tours to help you 'experience' the life of a local, like going through a favela in Rio. Anedoctal, but from what I've seen it can be really offensive to people on those places, because it works pretty much like a safari.
Why are so many of you people in flyover country always feeling so agrieved about everything? This has nothing to do with putting you down. A bunch of u s urbanites are also annoyed by this phenomena.
I'm from California ;). I'm just saying, urbanites have no one to blame but themselves for the influx of shitty, uncivilized tourists everywhere. After making fun of people for not being traveled and not having a passport, did you really not expect more and more people wanting to travel so that they don't get made fun of or because they really fell for the thought that traveling would make them a better person?
> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking".
The German film-critic Siegfried Kracauer wrote a very interesting essay against tourism as a mass phenomenon in the 1930s or so, just as the phenomenon was about to be born. Really interesting piece, you can find it in an essays book called "The Mass Ornament", and the book itself can be read in here [1] (warning, big PDF)
> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". It is for some a way to portray that you're not materialistic, but still dunk on all the poors and other outgroup members while blowing thousands of dollars on what is ultimately a luxury. The sub-category of "travel as wasteful mating signal & ritual" deserves another novel on top of this.
We are definitely getting to the point where since everyone is doing it, it's not special anymore.
Much like a bachelor's degree used to be something sought by companies. But now, they are considered the baseline.
Absolutely. It seems to have become popular to value "experiences over things" as if that's somehow virtuous and makes you better than materialistic people who just want to accumulate stuff.
It's really just another branch of the same kind of materialism.
The mating signal thing is crazy too. I recently dabbled in dating apps (hopefully, never again). It seems virtually every woman on there is obsessed with travel (has "wanderlust", or wants to visit "30 countries before 30", or "couldn't live without my passport", along with a bunch of photos of them posing in front of familiar stock-photo tourist sites).
It's almost always like this: an obsession with travel itself, rather than a passion for a particular culture or region or language or activity that requires travel. (Which might not really be any better, but I'd identify with it a lot more easily).
What's driving this? Is it covert (or subconscious) signalling that they want a mate with the resources to fund this lifestyle? Or simply a feeling that this is expected of them to seem fun and interesting?
As you said, not nearly enough has been written. I wish a great writer with the requisite knowledge of culture and psychology would dive into this.
They definitely think it automatically makes them fun/interesting, but it also functions as a way to automatically become an expert on something. I like to watch nature documentaries. Someone I knew started bothering me about how I should travel like them and see REAL giraffes, lions etc rather than just watching. Did they know anything about the animals themselves? No, but they’d SEEN them, which they felt made them an authority. Same with the dullards on dating sites who put up photos with impoverished children - it’s a nice way to signal that you tooootally know and care about such things without actually having to do any boring learning. And everyone who travels will jump at the chance to lecture you interminably about “authentic” food and drink...
It boils down to accumulating "experiences" (or selfies) instead of things, but it's really the same. I mean, do you think these people are going to these places, taking only memories, and then cherishing the memories on their own? No, they flaunt it just as someone flaunts a supercar. It's intangible materialism, as silly as that sounds.
If you really want to experience something, don't take any pictures. Just be there. After a while you might not have vivid memories of everything you saw, but you'll still be able to recall the feeling of being there. Talk to other people about it face to face, describe what you felt and what it was like to be there.
I have no photos of a trip my family took to some lake house in Indiana when it was young. I couldn't tell you what the place looked like, but I can still feel the calm and relaxation of being there decades later.
I have no photos of a waterfall I visited with my wife in Grand Teton National Park, but I can still feel the cool air and the mist in the air. Couldn't tell you what it looked like, but I have what matters. And I didn't have to show it to anyone.
The first time I encountered the word was in 1980, reading a 1969 comic book containing the phrase "The Wanderlust begins to rise in my bosom!" Phineas T. Phreak was speaking, and I think he ended up going to Disneyland with two of his friends (with hilarious results).
> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking".
What are you talking about? Travel is status seeking and status displaying. It showed up after WWII.
"I travel" is a polite way of saying "I am rich enough to travel". "I like going to places, seeing new things, meeting the locals and blah blah blah" is a polite way of saying "I'm rich enough to be able to take off work time for going to new places, seeing seeings, meeting the locals and blaj blah blah"
This might be frequently true of travel qua travel, but people also go places for other reasons, like business, meeting & having fun with friends, specific activities that can't be done at home, or just relaxation sans broadcasting it to all their peers and the world.
This just sounds like poor law enforcement to me. Stopping your car on the side of the road is typically legal. Photographing something from public property is legal in the US. What isn't legal is littering, trespassing, and theft. If you were there to damage the lavender because you thought that would be a fun thing to do, that to me is the same as being there because you want to take a selfie. You should be arrested and charged with trespassing. The fact that this isn't happening is a failure of law enforcement, not a failure of social media. (Though my own photographic philosophy is that a picture with people in it is ruined, I realize that not everyone agrees.)
In addition to this, I wonder if the farmers could set up props to discourage photography and sabotage the shots. Ugly banners, balloons, drones with ribbons, blaring offensive music, signs with semi-offensive verbiage. Or boxes of rotten fish to stink up the side of the road.
Thats the equivalent of asking girls to dress unsexily to prevent harrassment/rape. Those farmers have a right to maintain their beautiful and appealing environments without having them messed with by tourists and other idiots.
Why buy lavender if you can just be a photographer/instagrammer and steal them? Pretty fields are what brings potential buyers to their farm in the first place, no?
Have you ever travelled to a farm because its pretty to buy their lavender? If I buy lavender, its because I want lavender, not because the farm is pretty (and Ill probably buy it from a shop and not the farm directly)
The weird thing for me is the people are literally taking a picture of themselves committing a crime. It seems like it would be easy to bring a case against someone doing this?
This is true of the first anecdote about the private property, but the other issues are still issues. We have a few “hot” locations in Colorado, most notably Maroon Bells in leaf season, and the level of general disrespect is shocking: ladders, fights, overcrowded parking, and so on. Sadly I have no idea what a solution is - the land is public and limiting access numbers is exclusionary and easy for the privileged to “hack.” It’s really a challenging cultural and philosophical question: how does one define and perpetuate common decency in an increasingly crowded world? And, going back to the distaste for people “in the shot” and the DIY attempts to make locations less appealing, is anyone entitled to an “unspoiled” view by their own definition? To some extent Christo and Jeanne-Claude explored this concept from an artistic perspective decades ago, but cultural shift doesn’t have a finite end in the way an installation does.
I was in the area the week that the road opened up and went for a sunrise. I was the second person there at 4am, but by 5-6am there were around 30 people there!
I can't even imagine what Maroon Bells is like during high season.
Whenever I see this kinda stuff, I can't help but think of the "Ugly American" trope and how it seems like it's an insanely (and desperate to be) visible minority of the whole world now
We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and values systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals, and with anything like intellectualism, even to the point of not reading books any more, though we are literate. We seem much more comfortable with propagating those values to future generations nonverbally, through a process of being steeped in media. Apparently this actually works to some degree, for police in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV cop shows. When it’s explained to them that they are in a different country, where those rights do not exist, they become outraged. Starsky and Hutch reruns, dubbed into diverse languages, may turn out, in the long run, to be a greater force for human rights than the Declaration of Independence.
A huge, rich, nuclear-tipped culture that propagates its core values through media steepage seems like a bad idea. There is an obvious risk of running astray here. Words are the only immutable medium we have, which is why they are the vehicle of choice for extremely important concepts like the Ten Commandments, the Koran, and the Bill of Rights. Unless the messages conveyed by our media are somehow pegged to a fixed, written set of precepts, they can wander all over the place and possibly dump loads of crap into people’s minds.
Orlando used to have a military installation called McCoy Air Force Base, with long runways from which B-52s could take off and reach Cuba, or just about anywhere else, with loads of nukes. But now McCoy has been scrapped and repurposed. It has been absorbed into Orlando’s civilian airport. The long runways are being used to land 747-loads of tourists from Brazil, Italy, Russia and Japan, so that they can come to Disney World and steep in our media for a while.
To traditional cultures, especially word-based ones such as Islam, this is infinitely more threatening than the B-52s ever were.
> Words are the only immutable medium we have, which is why they are the vehicle of choice for extremely important concepts like the Ten Commandments, the Koran, and the Bill of Rights.
Uh, certainly also maybe perhaps because written words were the only medium at the time? I imagine video and audio recordings will be just as important for future historians as writings have been to our time's historians
For photography abuse, I don't see Americans singled out by anyone--not even the author at Petapixel--as being better or worse than any other group of people.
I honestly expected this article to be another "damn kids, get off my lawn" post, but reading it, I 100% agree with the author and I'm kinda horrified to see some of those scenes.
I'm lucky enough to have been to some of those places in the past (Wanaka, Angkor) and while there were some crowds, it wasn't anything like depicted in the article.
It's the essential conundrum of tourism. The more people that go to a place, the more they ruin what made the place special in the first place.
I live a couple of hours away from Lake Louise, Alberta [1], which is a really famous photography spot because the lake (and nearby Moraine Lake) have beautiful bright blue colors. You've almost certainly seen one of them in Windows wallpapers, /r/EarthPorn, etc.
A few weeks ago, we had a friend from the US visiting, and we decided to take him there. We hadn't been there in about 10 years now, and it was insanely busy even though it was just a random Wednesday. The road from the town of Lake Louise up to the actual lake was a traffic jam the entire way (about 5km), and there was no parking at all anywhere near the lake or in the town. I ended up having to drop my wife and our friend off at the top and drive back down, then down the highway for almost 10 minutes to the "overflow lot" to find anywhere to park (and it was almost totally full too, even though it's huge).
We've talked to some people about it since, and apparently that's just how busy it is all the time now. The amount of over-tourism to some of these Instagram-famous places is getting ridiculous, and (like it goes over in the article) they're just really not able to handle it and it turns into a huge mess of people behaving selfishly because once they're there, they're not leaving without the photos they want.
I spent a week at Lake Louis in winter 2017. There was hardly anyone there, even around the Fairmont! Maybe 5 cars in the huge lot right by the water. Just a few dolts trying to take selfies in the middle of the frozen lake.
Shame that it's usually swamped but it makes sense, it's a beautiful area. Maybe try again in the winter?
I was there in the winter once too (to ski), the blue lake was frozen though, covered in snow, and the entire week the temperatures never exceeded 0 Fahrenheit!
1% of the population is not the world. Stop saying it is.
And the OP is part of the problem, going somewhere to take a photo? Experience life instead.
I get it's their job and hobby but they are no different in the act, they get the journey so they still get life, but don't pretend their set up photos are real. They are fake, they admit they take days to get a good photo, that .1 of a second in time that really doesn't exist creating a culture of people also wanting that fake .1 second of life. They are feeding the beast.
If anything jumping on a floating bit of ice is actually experiencing the world.
Not really sure we have to say don't trespass and the rest is complaints that now there are so many people you can't 'fake' a photo pretending there are not.
I mean this type of photography is a style right? Like the more people do it the more cliched it will get and then it will go out of style right? Every generation wants to do something new.
We need to make it so cringe to behave like this that people will stop doing it naturally to distance themselves from those people. I already look down on people like this myself. People in the West do not utilize societal shaming enough I feel, so much focus on individuality that people are forced to tolerate that some people are terrible humans because otherwise they'll be on the side of NAZIS or whatever for wanting people to be civilized.
I think it's already trending that way, but the effects are slow to arrival.
> People in the West do not utilize societal shaming enough I feel,
Critical point. Only when people start to think about this topic, they'll realize that shaming was invented for a reason, and a great reason: it works. It kept order into civilizations for millennia.
Really that is a very idealized version of social shaming. It sucks and hasn't been focused where there is any actual utility but instead the stupidest fucking most injust things. A young woman has a naked body under her clothes! Shame and forced resignation from pagents regardless of source. The twisted values of shame culture include major "not unless you get caught" fundamentally. To the point of absurdities where in Japan it is shameful to be identified drunk despite getting smashed being the company norm. And that is before getting into the sociopaths behind these social order ideals.
Really fuck social order and fuck social shaming - may they die and stay dead and buried and we have to deal with petty problems instead of this bullshit.
I think [0] posted elsewhere in the thread shows that it's already very clichéd. For the most part the audience doesn't care. As long as there are good looking people in exotic environments, they're satisfied.
I don't think it's going to go away any more than things like magazines or travel shows are going to go away. At best, some subset of the "influencers" will find something else to signal about.
Contrarian opinion: this sounds like a business opportunity to me. I'm pretty sure an enterprising lavender farmer could make a lot more money in season by charging for access to their fields, taking a deposit to cover damage, and selling lavender bunches as props for $20 a pop.
Took my teenage sons to Paris for their first trip abroad last week. Even they were shaking their heads at the ridiculous lengths to which people were going for a selfish pic:
— wearing wedding dresses into the Sacré Cœur and marching past all the no-photo signs to the altar for a fake I-got-married-here pic
— posing unnaturally with rapid-change outfits and accessories in the middle of street traffic on the Pont d’Iéna facing the Eiffel Tower and at l’Arc de Triomphe, ignoring all the honks and drivers and pedestrians alike yelling at them, until a police car stopped and turned on its sirens
— couples dragging strollers with infants and toddlers up to the Mona Lisa to take selfies
— throngs elbowing for position to take a selfie in front of a piece of art—and then moving on without even spending a single moment contemplating or appreciating the artwork
We saw a dozen or more such scenes every day. It was awful.
> wearing wedding dresses into the Sacré Cœur and marching past all the no-photo signs to the altar for a fake I-got-married-here pic
I was hiking to a remote castle recently, 30 min drive + mud roads remote, I got there and saw a parked car (there is no parking spots btw), immediately thought "eh, you got to be lazy to come here by car, half the fun is the walk". Five min later I stumbled upon a couple in suit/wedding dress and two photographers, I think I physically cringed at the sight.
Same thing is happening in Monument Valley Utah/AZ... It's like an entire generation just discovered that the earth has some beautiful areas and they're coming to ruin it all.
Not to dismiss your point, but there was also a generation of people who wanted to mine the grand canyon. I think that as people we still have the same psychological trappings as we did before. But I do think we're becoming more conscious. Certainly, if you asked any of those lavender tramplers about setting of dynamite in that area to unearth copper or whatnot, they'd probably not support such an idea.
I went to what can only be described as an "Instagram trap" earlier this month. It was the Rose Mansion exhibit (?) in NYC, I can only describe it as a mix between a fun house where the rooms are explicitly designed for Instagram and a cut rate wine tour. [0]
I sense a market for a consulting firm that specializes in managing photoshoots at locations like the one in the post explicitly for Instagram.
I feel like the San Francisco ice cream museum is like that. It’s ostensibly a museum about ice cream, but it’s basically just a whole bunch of really weirdly designed rooms that people take selfies in and post all over Instagram, Tinder, Facebook, everywhere. Apparently they made quite a bit of money doing it.
Ive been curious, without knowing how to prove it or not, If social media/instagram is really a significant contributor to over tourism? I guess I have a hard believing its not coincidental.
People have always taken pictures around the world. But recently travel is becoming a lot cheaper, a lot safer, developing countries are developing so they are easier to get to, its easier to get to far corners of the world, chinese are traveling more, americans are pushing off buying homes and having kids until later in life leaving them free to travel. The world is just more populated now too.
Probably something to do with the ubiquity of cameras these days, as well. Anecdatally, I remember when my grandfather bought a Canon A-1 in the late 70s and it was A BIG DEAL. While lots of people had Polaroids and other low-level stuff, this was the equivalent of a prosumer camera, at the time and it was expensive for the time, too.
The slides he took were for his own amusement, and the family’s, just like most other people’s photos. They weren’t shared instantly with the world. That was very much a professional’s conceit.
Now, everyone with a phone has a camera that’s very high resolution and usually internet-connected. The cameras keep getting better (for no good reason that I can tell) while the phone itself remains relatively unchanged. Sure, it can run more apps, so it’s now pretty much a personal computer that incidentally includes a phone,, but because we feel the need to be always connected, we’ve always got a camera.
Consequently, everyone feels the need to overshare every moment of their life, as if they will somehow become important, or that we’ll magically care. It’s too cheap and it’s too easy to spam the world with the beautiful moments that, incidentally, are just like everyone else’s beautiful moments.
My grandfather had a probably almost-unique collection of all 250-plus courthouses of Texas at the time, without competing with anyone to get them, just because he thought it was a neat idea. Now, there are probably hundreds of that collection, produced by ridulously competitive amateurs who want to be Instagram-famous.
I'd agree, it's the ubiquity of digital cameras, plus social media making it normal/expected that people will post photos from a trip.
In the past photos were mainly for your own use and you'd talk to people about your trip. Now photos are how people tell each other about what they're doing and where they are. As social media has become competitive for many people that compounds the effect.
When I was travelling around SE Asia twenty years ago with a film SLR I was a novelty. At a viewpoint most tourists would take one photo with a point and shoot and I'd take perhaps 2 or 3. The rest of the time was spent looking & exploring.
I’m reasonably skeptical about the Instagram theory as well to explain the crowding. And if it is a factor, I’m pretty sure it’s not the only one.
You hit on a lot of them: Reduced cost of travel is certainly one. And, as you say, young professional couples are more likely to be sans children for at least a period.
The somewhat related popularity of some urban areas probably also fuels the experience over stuff meme. If you live in a small Brooklyn apartment, your cost of living may be high but you also aren’t going to accumulate a lot of possessions because you’d have nowhere to put them.
Instagram/Facebook is definitely one of the main contributors for the crowding of specific spots. That particular tree, that particular view of a lake or a mountain, etc.
For tourism, air travel becoming cheaper and the mobile Internet becoming ubiquitous (mainly for booking and review sites/apps) are much more important.
I think it's social media combined with accessibility.
It used to be that you might find a nice secluded place because a family member or friend went there and told you about it or showed you by sending you a physical photo in the mail or showing you a photo album. The exposure might be counted in the tens. It would then be a substantial financial endeavour to go visit that place.
Today, all it takes is one "influencer" to find something new and within a week it's seen by tens of thousands to millions of people, many of whom can afford to visit it if they wish.
I used to think photography was an interesting hobby, not for me, however.
Now, after the proliferation of cheap DSLRs I now think photography is the most obnoxious thing ever. Now ever asshole imagines themselves as a photographer and acts like a dick to get that one picture. I was out with a wannabe photographer friend and watched her climb over a safety barrier and dangerously close to the edge of a cliff in order to take a photo. I was shocked.
As someone who‘s doing photography as a side business - so much this. Actually, let‘s add „I‘ve got a DSLR, so I have to produce good photos“ to the list. In reality though most of them have no sense for the moment or good composition.
And the worst part is: “my $relative has a DSLR and he’d shoot for free, do it for free and you’ll get exposure”.
Interesting comment to read on HN where a lot of people want their software to be free too. :) Just sayin'..
But yeah, I get your point.. its super annoying when people do those things or when they say "you must have a nice camera" instead of complimenting your skills.
Before smartphones were a thing, I used to have a side-gig as semi-professional photographer for metal concerts. Semi-professional means in this case, I had an official accreditation for the venue and the band, experience, equipment and most importantly, professional courtesy an respect, but was working for a not-for-profit heavy metal magazine that just had to cover server costs - all volunteers who happen to be really into the music and wanted to share that and support artists, big and small.
There are some very easy ground rules: You are in the photo pit for the first (usually) 3 songs, no flash, not getting in the way of other photographers, and not disturbing the performance or audience.
This worked out great - as few people were able to capture the concerts, people actually appreciated our work, both in the magazine I wrote for as well as on my personal photography blog. It's a great way to re-live some moments of a great performance, for free.
I stopped doing that after more and more kids with smartphones spent entire concerts on their phones, trying to get front-row selfies, crowd-surfing for the purpose of their friends snapping a picture, kids who somehow got into the pit with a phone and the flash on full power, and of course unprofessional "influencers" who only cared about getting a shot for their Instagram page and their own self-image and brand, not for the reasons I highlighted in the first paragraph.
And here is the end result. This account basically takes Instagram photos of the exact same location/style and groups them together. It’s kind of mind blowing!
this new mindset that you need to spend your money on experiences instead of things is beginning to show its ugly side. I wonder if the carbon and environmental footprint is better or worse than buying goods
Sums up everything I detest about photography and mainly typical instagrammers. You have the same problem where I am in Bali - idiot instagrammers using the farmers rice fields for their selfies, whilst the farmers are breaking their backs.
I wonder how they'd feel if tables were turned - farmers all photographing young people on their laptops in cafes etc.
There's a power imbalance there. You're on holiday, exercising your economic power and generally having a good time.
How would you feel if hoards of Chinese people came over to photograph you in your native environment, say, stuck in traffic on your commute, or late to drop your kids off at school, or while they're standing in your front garden while you're up a ladder trying to clear the guttering?
Why? What happens if I show up in a Chinese photo album?
I think the problem in this subthread started when jwmoz decided the "equivalent" of tourists coming to your fields, trampling your crops, and cutting and taking bunches of produce for themselves was tourists coming to a Starbucks and taking pictures.
There is also an old-fashioned way to put it without reaching into the social justice toolbox: people doing something pleasant gawking at people doing something unpleasant. Imagine a tourist having a minor traffic accident or dropping their backpack into the mud, and locals standing around it taking pictures.
It is less about a global power imbalance and more about a situational one.
That is what I meant (situational). The people you're you're meeting on holiday may well take nice holidays too, but they are not right at that moment :)
A friend of mine is of Ugandan extraction, and she had lunch with her sister in China. She said people were staring through the window watching her and her sister eat.
The reverse situation is not getting stared at by local farmers when you visit a foreign country; but when Chinese tourists visit your country, walk into your private garden, and stare into your house through the windows.
Which is exactly what happens in many countries. In the Netherlands this is a common (and recent) issue with Chinese tourists visiting folkloric villages that have normal people not living there who are not part of the tourism industry as well — like picturesque canal-strewn Giethoorn.
On a recent trip to some more remote areas of Southeast Asia, I had this exact experience.
Since westerners were a rare sight in many of the villages I visited, my friends and I found ourselves constantly being photographed, with the local teens and even older adults alike all posing in selfies with us in the background. I’d say we were photographed roughly 20-30 times per day, for the the month we were there. I’m not kidding.
I’m sure we looked like clowns to them with our height and big noses. I found it hilarious and am glad I brought some amusement to these folks.
Side note: I see every person on this thread thinks they aren’t part of the problem. It’s the other people of course! Tourists complaining about other tourists has a real irony to it. Rich people getting mad they have to share the worlds treasures with a growing population of other rich people. Boo boo. A certain percentage of the population is always going to be assholes, whether they live in a place or are just visiting. Instagram isn’t the root cause to why people suck, this too shall pass.
> Instagram isn’t the root cause to why people suck.
That's even more depressing (if true) than this abomination of "social networks" that we are seeing right now.
But still, even if your point might be true, we should stop giving people easy ways to be degenerates. There should be repercussions or something, but good luck codifying it into a law :)
> this abomination of "social networks" that we are seeing ... we should stop giving people easy ways to be degenerates. There should be repercussions or something, but good luck codifying it into a law
You don't always need laws to stop bad behavior. Influential social shame and scorn are often just as effective.
Instagram, Facebook, and other social media act as behavioural feedback loops.
We're literally talking about behavioural modification here. FB + INSTA may not make people assholes, but they certainly reward certain classes of asshole behaviour.
They're not unique in that, but other asshole-promoting loop systems have been around far longer, so we tend to assume they're how things are rather than questioning them.
Which is why "This too shall pass" may not be a valid assumption.
I also had this experience in Africa. Was in a location where few tourists went, most foreigners were NGO workers and workers in some capacity. Locals would take photographs without even asking. In other parts of Africa, the locals were too poor to have good cameras.
> I see every person on this thread thinks they aren’t part of the problem.
It depends on what problem you're referring to. People going onto private property and damaging locations are a special kind of asshole. They're not regular tourists.
> I wonder how they'd feel if tables were turned - farmers all photographing young people on their laptops in cafes etc.
I wondered if we could get a contest running: for every "influencer" picture, see who can find the most unflattering backstage picture for that set. Maybe once people realized that behind each "young and carefree" photo there's a professional photographer, lights, a mobile wardrobe, a ladder, and hundreds of people doing the same, then the madness would stop.
But then I realised that I just re-invented the paparazzi. And if they haven't changed people's perception of Hollywood glamour, neither will this plan.
> I am disgusted by these people. Absolutely revolted. I understand this is a subjective statement but something inside me recoils at these people,
I understand how many can feel that way, but what if these photographers were genuinely interested in the underlying work. They did put in the effort to travel all the way to a farm to check it out. They took pictures of it in appreciation. Maybe they did not know how to properly respect the people and the place, maybe they should be taught rather than chastised.
Every child knows that you don't do whatever you want on the grounds of other people, in their gardens and homes.
Stop being jerks and just ask people politely if it's ok for them that you take a picture.
Also I don't get how they all need a picture of the same place.
In the end all they do is to deprive themselves from real happiness and the possibility to just enjoy the moment. Their POV changes in the moment they see the world through the lens of their cam and they don't even seem to get this.
I didn't mean to excuse this behavior, what they are doing is certainly not good. My point is only that in their desire to photograph, there must be some level of appreciation for it, and it would be more productive to develop that appreciation than shut everything down.
As a simple example, the next farmer that gets instagram-mobbed, rather than putting up a "No Trespassing" sign, could instead put up a sign at the front of the property asking visitors to "come to the porch, say hello, and learn about farming". Many of the people who trekked all the way out to a farm to photograph it, will likely take the extra few minutes to get a deeper understanding. The farmer will maintain (or improve) her dignity, and maybe the instagramer will learn something new.
I'm just saying there are better potential solutions than mocking and distancing yourself from a group of people, you can bring yourself closer together.
Basically yes. But I would maybe like to be left alone on my beautiful farm without all the people visiting me.
If I'd want to have so much company I'd have opened a store or museum I think.
Where I come from we really had something that was called "privacy" and "intimacy" and when we were at our place it was given to us without struggle.
When I think about massive tourism, satellites in LEO and drones above our heads I see this in decline without a real choice or possibility to avoid it from coming to my little farm.
Of course I'd not want to have to put up signs or even technology to keep people, drones etc. off my grounds but I'd rather do that than being disturbed by strangers (or strange technology) every waking minute.
It's not like one person comes over on a sunny Sunday to ask me about farming but the 1000 people who have the same idea that day or the couple who want's to shoot their love scene in my yard at midnight in the moon light while I just want to fall asleep with the sounds of the crickets and not some fuck-fest.
Don't get me wrong here - I am very open minded. But I value my privacy etc. and I see it being taken away without me having a chance to decide/stop it/whatever. It's not the one person, but the mass of people who care more for their damn picture than respect for nature and people who happen to live there.
> Also I don't get how they all need a picture of the same place.
It's because they don't care about the place, they care that they've been there. This is a problem as old as photography; I remember watching tourists on my daily commute coming to the same spots, day in, day out, and shooting the exact same photos of the exact same buildings from the exact same angles. All I could think of is, "your exact photo is on Flickr already in 10 different copies, why are you doing this?!". The rise of social media (Instagram in particular) only made this worse.
My parents rationalize this by saying that they want to have something to reminisce about once they're too old to travel or even to move around without pains. On the other hand, the photos they take on their travels do not end up on any social media, but in a private collection on a family file server...
I think they are harming themselves by doing this because they can't really enjoy the moment and just "be" there.
I rarely take pictures because I always think "there's already awesome pics of this on the net" and also when I'm back I don't want to overwhelm people who want to see them with a collection of "just 1000 photos of me in front of the Louvre".
Of course I'd love to have a picture of me standing in front of Taj Mahal but in the end it's not so important. The pictures people haven't seen yet are much more interesting (to me), especially places where tourists don't want to be or perspectives they shouldn't see.
E.g. the "Golden Beaches" in Bulgaria. Stay in the tourist zone and you'll have the typical beaches, hotels, bars etc. But the exciting part of the area is when you leave this "paradise" and see the massive destruction tourism, the hotel lobby etc. bring to nature and the people.
Seeing these scenes changed my mind and I realized I'd never want to do "all inclusive" at the places where all people go again.
I think people need more stable personalities so they can break out of their "hive-mind-thinking" and start sensing their environment and enjoying themselves without the constant feedback of "the hive". Behaviour like this reminds me of the Lemmings and the Borg.
Is this a recent phenomenon? I traveled to Valensole two years ago, and haven’t seen anything like this. There were some people taking Instagram shots, of course, myself included, but nothing disrespectful, and certainly nothing like that. What’s even the point of being the “influencer”, are people looking up to it?
> What’s even the point of being the “influencer”, are people looking up to it?
Economically, you might get "famous" enough for small brands to send you free stuff to show in the photos, in the long run they want to win the recognition lottery and get more and more famous. It's very self-referencing
> These are people so obsessed with their own sense of self-importance for the sake of a few instant “likes” on their social media profile that they find it perfectly acceptable to trespass, steal, disrespect the workers and their land – all in the name of “influencing”.
...
>They’d damaged the land. They’d stolen the owner’s products. They’d ruined the fields that had been tended to with hard work for months. But even the farmer’s final attempt to put and end to it wasn’t enough – they wanted more.
Oh, can't wait the day when we are going to look back at "social media" platforms and go: "what the hell were these creatures thinking?"
I really think social media is one of the worst tools for the human psyche ever conceived. It's a net loss for sure.
It's addictive and also messes up with dopamine generation. Not to mention the vanity/envy aspect of it: people comparing to selective representation of other people. It's remarkably insane when you think about it.
Not sure if it has English subtitles, but there is a documentary about a family who works in one of those famous rice terraces tourists fill up for taking photos:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FyPIqCDocxY
So, NZ is on the receiving end of some of this, and here's my opinion:
* Our popular areas are completely overrun during tourist season - I personally think not much fun for tourists or locals (unless a crowd is good e.g. party zones)
* As a local, I can usually find something way better when I travel in NZ that isn't overrun by tourists (e.g. from article, that one lavender farm in France is overrun, but I bet there are plenty nearby that are not).
* I personally love the vibe of the high tourist areas. Generally having tourists is good for nightlife, great for meeting other cultures, and tourists create heaps of economic opportunities (very often in places that would struggle otherwise).
* When travelling overseas, I skip anything "must see" that is in a guide or otherwise recommended (unless you want a tickbox or it is totally off-season). I go to small towns that are in non-tourist areas, and find my own awesome shit.
* When travelling, try to meet locals in a low-density tourist area. You get to see the real country. In reverse, I try to be super welcoming to travellers I meet (I have no problem giving a hitchhiker a room in my home if they pass my sniff test).
* NZ isn't a big country, but there is a huge amount of amazing places to visit everywhere, if you have your own transport and more than a few weeks to travel.
* Try to avoid staying in tourist high density areas. Avoid the easy tourist transport means, avoid the tourist backpackers or hotels.
* Yes, tourists often leave a mess (NZ has a real problem with tourists travelling by vehicle shitting everywhere), but the benefits of tourists really outweigh the downsides IMHO
* I would love NZ to introduce a visa fee per travelling day - that pays for cleaning and pays for free entry to high traffic tourist destinations. We should be striving to attract the high value tourist, and not nickel and dime them once they are here. Tourism can be a Veblen good.
Summary: there are places that are tourist destinations, but there are heaps of places that tourists don't go to that are incredible.
Agreed. I live in a very popular tourist city. A lot of people complain about the tourists, but its big enough that there are lots of places to avoid tourists. Tourists tend to stick to the same playground area in the centre anyway. I wouldn't have ended up here if I had't have come here as a tourist in the first place.
> When travelling overseas, I skip anything "must see" that is in a guide or otherwise recommended (unless you want a tickbox or it is totally off-season). I go to small towns that are in non-tourist areas, and find my own awesome shit.
These things are kind of like Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian: famous for being famous, not for any actual intrinsic qualities they may have.
There are exceptions. For example Venice is VERY touristic, but also for good reasons IMHO.
I was actually in Wanaka last December, and yeah, it's a funny looking tree, but to go out of your way for it? Yeh nah. There were many more memorable/fun aspects of our Wanaka outing.
Wow the last photo of Angor Wat is shocking. I actually feel sick and disgusted by looking at this photo. I travelled South East Asia extensively in 2012 when Instagram was not a thing (yet) and honestly this place was almost empty and one of the most magical things I've ever seen. If I was to go there today and this would be my experience then I would have never gotten the travel bug. What's wrong with these people, honestly the majority of people are just dumb sheep, no self respect, no dignity, no respect for our planet and other living beings. Nobody with a tiny bit of self respect would put themselves into this crowd just for a narcissistic Instagram photo.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadTravel and social media is just an extension of "keeping up with the Jones's" but on a personal identity level- only at the cost of whatever destruction you are willing to put our planet through, be it that new camera you bought, or the jet fuel you paid to burn.
I couldn't help but feel guilty on the way to my last international trip- the homeless do less damage to the planet than I do.
It didn't help that for several years (though it has thankfully tapered off) there was a constant stream of "lifestyle" articles proclaiming that mass tourism "experiences" to capture some photo-totem were the scientifically confirmed path to happiness.
Is it a surprise then that more and more people want to travel in order to signal that they aren't an uncultured, passport-less hillbilly? The key thing to note here is that someone who does not have any regard for their environment and other people will be the same whether they're in Kansas or in Paris. Often, they'll be even worse, since it's not home that they're trashing up.
"I just want to see the world" I hear, a yearning for an experience that, when pursued, might temporarily stifle midlife crises but ruins marriages just as often. I feel so deeply sad for people who don't realize that everything they need is in front of them.
In the beginning it was about exploration and at the end it was about discovering my priorities in life.
The genesis of the trip came about when I started talking to someone at a language school about taking language classes. He started asking me why, then said, "just go there. You'll never get a better chance than when you're young."
He was 100% right.
Here in Iceland(1), shops downtown are regularly being replaced by copies of the same gift shop you’ll find everywhere in the world, and there is active discussion about coming up with “tourist-friendly” English names for landmarks because the Icelandic ones that have been used for hundreds of years aren’t enticing enough.
The tourism industry has figured out how to give people a good show, but it’s ultimately a shallow experience. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing: like everything else, travel needs welcoming, entry-level experiences. The trouble comes when it gets so prevalent that it starts to warp and destroy the local culture in order to sell more spectacle.
(1) Full disclosure: I first came here as a tourist, and would never have moved here without that initial exposure, so I can’t completely comdemn the tourism industry.
Kind of like software development these days, on the web in particular - the "entry-level experience" makes most money, so over time it starts to dominate and push out everything else.
Sure there are people who seem to travel with the intent impress people, but traveling is a character-building in a way that everyone should experience. Its not the kind of spirit-quest that some people make it out to be, but it will give you interesting stuff to think out for years.
Get a passport, save $5-10k and go slumming in Europe for 6 months. Backpack for clothes. Laptop. Camera. Condoms. If you decide you don't like it in three-four weeks, come back. Otherwise spend time there stretching your money as long as you can until your budget runs out.
Sure, traveling just to achieve certain bragging rights is superficial and silly, but that doesn't mean travel itself isn't valuable. Similarly, reading books just to say you've read the most or the hardest is silly, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read.
Traveling allows you to viscerally see how people live and value things differently from you. There is much to be gained from it if you do it for the right reasons.
Actually living in a different place will certainly do that, but “travel” almost never will.
Take one extreme case: a typical college grad doing a euro-trip to 10 countries in 14 days. They will certainly not be able to experience those cultures deeply, but compare that person to someone who never went to Europe, never saw their respect for the past, train travel, food cultures, and the high value they place on vacation.
Even consider those young travelers that mostly stay within the confines of their hostel and their group activities, or in a national bar where things appear familiar and comfortable: they are still better off than if they just stayed home and had not seen any of it.
Certainly, 10 days of travel is not much, but it's a lot more than 0 days. For some, those 10 days may be truly meaningful and eye-opening, for others, a familiar party with different scenery. Traveling is generally uncomfortable and different, and the experience can add something to even the most shallow traveler.
(caveat: It happens, although uncommon, that travel can be a detriment. Particularly, when someone goes to a country that is poorer than theirs, and attributes their lack of development to some genetic or racist defect. While this is possible, I do think it's exceedingly rare. When one sees how other people live up close, it's natural to look for the patterns and similarities rather than come up with differences.)
She had my girlfriend and I stay at her home in a little town Nagold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagold
We stayed with their family for a week, experiencing the smaller town life, hiking in the black forest and going to the market for fresh bread every morning.
We then rented a vehicle and traveled around the Autobahn visiting many major cities and either staying at a hostel ($20 a night per person plus an amazing breakfast included!), or with a mutual friend of her's whom she had met in college.
There are only a few Universities in Germany so she knew someone is almost all the major cities we stayed at and it was nice to converse with them in their home, trade stories and experience the night life as a local would.
We did go to a few tourist areas which were neat to experience, however most of the fun did come from 'off the beaten path' where you got to interact with locals and see more of the slower, simple life.
One thing that I found astonishing is the amount you can converse/communicate with someone even if you don't speak their language. Granted most people in Germany can understand English well, but with the few broken phrases I learned before going I was able to do quite well when our translator (my friend from high school) would not be with us sometimes.
I much would rather do this, go to one specific country rather than go to 14 countries in 10 days.
Haven't traveled since as work/school/family is now my priority but doing at least one travel to get out of your comfort zone is a good experience I think everyone should get to experience once (if they want to).
But there are many forms of travel. For me, it is and forever will be only backpacking-ish style. Done for example 6 months in India in very remote places. When you come back from such a visit, you are not really the same person inside that left. Or at least I can't imagine not being changed by all the positive and also negative things experienced. 1 week feels like 3 there, 1 month more like 5 years, and after 3 the idea of my life back was just a distant memory of a dream I once had. You can't tell properly others about those 1000s of small and big adventures, they wouldn't understand most of the appeal. Only those with similar experiences would. Photos or videos, even done with full frame equipment, tell only small part of the story.
And these instagrammers/'influencers' (that's a too pretty name for what it usually is, if they travel around like that they are rather 'influenced') ? Well they are for people with sheepish mentality. I would have to have utterly bland life to be interested in some John Doe's life, where he made this or that selfie and consistently follow them. I guess I am too old and experienced for Instagram bandwagon. With all the travel photo I do, I would anyway end up as one of those 'influencers' (at least that's what people tell me when they see my photos and the amount I create)
Yes, they also have tours to help you 'experience' the life of a local, like going through a favela in Rio. Anedoctal, but from what I've seen it can be really offensive to people on those places, because it works pretty much like a safari.
The German film-critic Siegfried Kracauer wrote a very interesting essay against tourism as a mass phenomenon in the 1930s or so, just as the phenomenon was about to be born. Really interesting piece, you can find it in an essays book called "The Mass Ornament", and the book itself can be read in here [1] (warning, big PDF)
[1] https://monoskop.org/images/0/0f/Kracauer_Siegfried_The_Mass...
We are definitely getting to the point where since everyone is doing it, it's not special anymore.
Much like a bachelor's degree used to be something sought by companies. But now, they are considered the baseline.
It's really just another branch of the same kind of materialism.
The mating signal thing is crazy too. I recently dabbled in dating apps (hopefully, never again). It seems virtually every woman on there is obsessed with travel (has "wanderlust", or wants to visit "30 countries before 30", or "couldn't live without my passport", along with a bunch of photos of them posing in front of familiar stock-photo tourist sites).
It's almost always like this: an obsession with travel itself, rather than a passion for a particular culture or region or language or activity that requires travel. (Which might not really be any better, but I'd identify with it a lot more easily).
What's driving this? Is it covert (or subconscious) signalling that they want a mate with the resources to fund this lifestyle? Or simply a feeling that this is expected of them to seem fun and interesting?
As you said, not nearly enough has been written. I wish a great writer with the requisite knowledge of culture and psychology would dive into this.
If you really want to experience something, don't take any pictures. Just be there. After a while you might not have vivid memories of everything you saw, but you'll still be able to recall the feeling of being there. Talk to other people about it face to face, describe what you felt and what it was like to be there.
I have no photos of a trip my family took to some lake house in Indiana when it was young. I couldn't tell you what the place looked like, but I can still feel the calm and relaxation of being there decades later.
I have no photos of a waterfall I visited with my wife in Grand Teton National Park, but I can still feel the cool air and the mist in the air. Couldn't tell you what it looked like, but I have what matters. And I didn't have to show it to anyone.
The first time I encountered the word was in 1980, reading a 1969 comic book containing the phrase "The Wanderlust begins to rise in my bosom!" Phineas T. Phreak was speaking, and I think he ended up going to Disneyland with two of his friends (with hilarious results).
What are you talking about? Travel is status seeking and status displaying. It showed up after WWII.
"I travel" is a polite way of saying "I am rich enough to travel". "I like going to places, seeing new things, meeting the locals and blah blah blah" is a polite way of saying "I'm rich enough to be able to take off work time for going to new places, seeing seeings, meeting the locals and blaj blah blah"
I can't even imagine what Maroon Bells is like during high season.
Whenever I see this kinda stuff, I can't help but think of the "Ugly American" trope and how it seems like it's an insanely (and desperate to be) visible minority of the whole world now
From the section titled “The Interface Culture”:
We are free and prosperous because we have inherited political and values systems fabricated by a particular set of eighteenth-century intellectuals who happened to get it right. But we have lost touch with those intellectuals, and with anything like intellectualism, even to the point of not reading books any more, though we are literate. We seem much more comfortable with propagating those values to future generations nonverbally, through a process of being steeped in media. Apparently this actually works to some degree, for police in many lands are now complaining that local arrestees are insisting on having their Miranda rights read to them, just like perps in American TV cop shows. When it’s explained to them that they are in a different country, where those rights do not exist, they become outraged. Starsky and Hutch reruns, dubbed into diverse languages, may turn out, in the long run, to be a greater force for human rights than the Declaration of Independence.
A huge, rich, nuclear-tipped culture that propagates its core values through media steepage seems like a bad idea. There is an obvious risk of running astray here. Words are the only immutable medium we have, which is why they are the vehicle of choice for extremely important concepts like the Ten Commandments, the Koran, and the Bill of Rights. Unless the messages conveyed by our media are somehow pegged to a fixed, written set of precepts, they can wander all over the place and possibly dump loads of crap into people’s minds.
Orlando used to have a military installation called McCoy Air Force Base, with long runways from which B-52s could take off and reach Cuba, or just about anywhere else, with loads of nukes. But now McCoy has been scrapped and repurposed. It has been absorbed into Orlando’s civilian airport. The long runways are being used to land 747-loads of tourists from Brazil, Italy, Russia and Japan, so that they can come to Disney World and steep in our media for a while.
To traditional cultures, especially word-based ones such as Islam, this is infinitely more threatening than the B-52s ever were.
Interesting that he wrote this prior to 9/11 (but then again, after the original WTC attack, and the African Embassy attacks).
Uh, certainly also maybe perhaps because written words were the only medium at the time? I imagine video and audio recordings will be just as important for future historians as writings have been to our time's historians
I'm lucky enough to have been to some of those places in the past (Wanaka, Angkor) and while there were some crowds, it wasn't anything like depicted in the article.
It's the essential conundrum of tourism. The more people that go to a place, the more they ruin what made the place special in the first place.
A few weeks ago, we had a friend from the US visiting, and we decided to take him there. We hadn't been there in about 10 years now, and it was insanely busy even though it was just a random Wednesday. The road from the town of Lake Louise up to the actual lake was a traffic jam the entire way (about 5km), and there was no parking at all anywhere near the lake or in the town. I ended up having to drop my wife and our friend off at the top and drive back down, then down the highway for almost 10 minutes to the "overflow lot" to find anywhere to park (and it was almost totally full too, even though it's huge).
We've talked to some people about it since, and apparently that's just how busy it is all the time now. The amount of over-tourism to some of these Instagram-famous places is getting ridiculous, and (like it goes over in the article) they're just really not able to handle it and it turns into a huge mess of people behaving selfishly because once they're there, they're not leaving without the photos they want.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Louise_(Alberta)
Shame that it's usually swamped but it makes sense, it's a beautiful area. Maybe try again in the winter?
Weeell...technically it is. (At least it's not far off.) But sometimes "get off my lawn" is justified.
1% of the population is not the world. Stop saying it is.
And the OP is part of the problem, going somewhere to take a photo? Experience life instead.
I get it's their job and hobby but they are no different in the act, they get the journey so they still get life, but don't pretend their set up photos are real. They are fake, they admit they take days to get a good photo, that .1 of a second in time that really doesn't exist creating a culture of people also wanting that fake .1 second of life. They are feeding the beast.
If anything jumping on a floating bit of ice is actually experiencing the world.
Not really sure we have to say don't trespass and the rest is complaints that now there are so many people you can't 'fake' a photo pretending there are not.
I think it's already trending that way, but the effects are slow to arrival.
Critical point. Only when people start to think about this topic, they'll realize that shaming was invented for a reason, and a great reason: it works. It kept order into civilizations for millennia.
Really fuck social order and fuck social shaming - may they die and stay dead and buried and we have to deal with petty problems instead of this bullshit.
I don't think it's going to go away any more than things like magazines or travel shows are going to go away. At best, some subset of the "influencers" will find something else to signal about.
[0]: https://www.instagram.com/insta_repeat/
Is it "new" when literally thousands of people took the same pic from the same angle ? It's herd mentality 101 if you ask me
— wearing wedding dresses into the Sacré Cœur and marching past all the no-photo signs to the altar for a fake I-got-married-here pic
— posing unnaturally with rapid-change outfits and accessories in the middle of street traffic on the Pont d’Iéna facing the Eiffel Tower and at l’Arc de Triomphe, ignoring all the honks and drivers and pedestrians alike yelling at them, until a police car stopped and turned on its sirens
— couples dragging strollers with infants and toddlers up to the Mona Lisa to take selfies
— throngs elbowing for position to take a selfie in front of a piece of art—and then moving on without even spending a single moment contemplating or appreciating the artwork
We saw a dozen or more such scenes every day. It was awful.
I was hiking to a remote castle recently, 30 min drive + mud roads remote, I got there and saw a parked car (there is no parking spots btw), immediately thought "eh, you got to be lazy to come here by car, half the fun is the walk". Five min later I stumbled upon a couple in suit/wedding dress and two photographers, I think I physically cringed at the sight.
I sense a market for a consulting firm that specializes in managing photoshoots at locations like the one in the post explicitly for Instagram.
0: https://www.rosewinemansion.com/about-2019
People have always taken pictures around the world. But recently travel is becoming a lot cheaper, a lot safer, developing countries are developing so they are easier to get to, its easier to get to far corners of the world, chinese are traveling more, americans are pushing off buying homes and having kids until later in life leaving them free to travel. The world is just more populated now too.
The slides he took were for his own amusement, and the family’s, just like most other people’s photos. They weren’t shared instantly with the world. That was very much a professional’s conceit.
Now, everyone with a phone has a camera that’s very high resolution and usually internet-connected. The cameras keep getting better (for no good reason that I can tell) while the phone itself remains relatively unchanged. Sure, it can run more apps, so it’s now pretty much a personal computer that incidentally includes a phone,, but because we feel the need to be always connected, we’ve always got a camera.
Consequently, everyone feels the need to overshare every moment of their life, as if they will somehow become important, or that we’ll magically care. It’s too cheap and it’s too easy to spam the world with the beautiful moments that, incidentally, are just like everyone else’s beautiful moments.
My grandfather had a probably almost-unique collection of all 250-plus courthouses of Texas at the time, without competing with anyone to get them, just because he thought it was a neat idea. Now, there are probably hundreds of that collection, produced by ridulously competitive amateurs who want to be Instagram-famous.
In the past photos were mainly for your own use and you'd talk to people about your trip. Now photos are how people tell each other about what they're doing and where they are. As social media has become competitive for many people that compounds the effect.
When I was travelling around SE Asia twenty years ago with a film SLR I was a novelty. At a viewpoint most tourists would take one photo with a point and shoot and I'd take perhaps 2 or 3. The rest of the time was spent looking & exploring.
You hit on a lot of them: Reduced cost of travel is certainly one. And, as you say, young professional couples are more likely to be sans children for at least a period.
The somewhat related popularity of some urban areas probably also fuels the experience over stuff meme. If you live in a small Brooklyn apartment, your cost of living may be high but you also aren’t going to accumulate a lot of possessions because you’d have nowhere to put them.
For tourism, air travel becoming cheaper and the mobile Internet becoming ubiquitous (mainly for booking and review sites/apps) are much more important.
It used to be that you might find a nice secluded place because a family member or friend went there and told you about it or showed you by sending you a physical photo in the mail or showing you a photo album. The exposure might be counted in the tens. It would then be a substantial financial endeavour to go visit that place.
Today, all it takes is one "influencer" to find something new and within a week it's seen by tens of thousands to millions of people, many of whom can afford to visit it if they wish.
Now, after the proliferation of cheap DSLRs I now think photography is the most obnoxious thing ever. Now ever asshole imagines themselves as a photographer and acts like a dick to get that one picture. I was out with a wannabe photographer friend and watched her climb over a safety barrier and dangerously close to the edge of a cliff in order to take a photo. I was shocked.
This one made me so sad: https://www.instagram.com/publiclandshateyou/p/Bu_qnY7hjhQ/?...
Mirrorless cameras are the rage nowadays.
And the worst part is: “my $relative has a DSLR and he’d shoot for free, do it for free and you’ll get exposure”.
Sigh.
But yeah, I get your point.. its super annoying when people do those things or when they say "you must have a nice camera" instead of complimenting your skills.
Before smartphones were a thing, I used to have a side-gig as semi-professional photographer for metal concerts. Semi-professional means in this case, I had an official accreditation for the venue and the band, experience, equipment and most importantly, professional courtesy an respect, but was working for a not-for-profit heavy metal magazine that just had to cover server costs - all volunteers who happen to be really into the music and wanted to share that and support artists, big and small.
There are some very easy ground rules: You are in the photo pit for the first (usually) 3 songs, no flash, not getting in the way of other photographers, and not disturbing the performance or audience.
This worked out great - as few people were able to capture the concerts, people actually appreciated our work, both in the magazine I wrote for as well as on my personal photography blog. It's a great way to re-live some moments of a great performance, for free.
I stopped doing that after more and more kids with smartphones spent entire concerts on their phones, trying to get front-row selfies, crowd-surfing for the purpose of their friends snapping a picture, kids who somehow got into the pit with a phone and the flash on full power, and of course unprofessional "influencers" who only cared about getting a shot for their Instagram page and their own self-image and brand, not for the reasons I highlighted in the first paragraph.
And here is the end result. This account basically takes Instagram photos of the exact same location/style and groups them together. It’s kind of mind blowing!
I wonder how they'd feel if tables were turned - farmers all photographing young people on their laptops in cafes etc.
If you go to China, Chinese tourists will want to take pictures of you (assuming you're white). And they really like taking pictures of white kids.
It's kind of funny, but I've never seen anyone react by thinking the Chinese are all selfish jerks. That just wouldn't make sense.
How would you feel if hoards of Chinese people came over to photograph you in your native environment, say, stuck in traffic on your commute, or late to drop your kids off at school, or while they're standing in your front garden while you're up a ladder trying to clear the guttering?
Perhaps you'd tire of that more quickly?
I think the problem in this subthread started when jwmoz decided the "equivalent" of tourists coming to your fields, trampling your crops, and cutting and taking bunches of produce for themselves was tourists coming to a Starbucks and taking pictures.
It is less about a global power imbalance and more about a situational one.
Which is exactly what happens in many countries. In the Netherlands this is a common (and recent) issue with Chinese tourists visiting folkloric villages that have normal people not living there who are not part of the tourism industry as well — like picturesque canal-strewn Giethoorn.
Since westerners were a rare sight in many of the villages I visited, my friends and I found ourselves constantly being photographed, with the local teens and even older adults alike all posing in selfies with us in the background. I’d say we were photographed roughly 20-30 times per day, for the the month we were there. I’m not kidding.
I’m sure we looked like clowns to them with our height and big noses. I found it hilarious and am glad I brought some amusement to these folks.
Side note: I see every person on this thread thinks they aren’t part of the problem. It’s the other people of course! Tourists complaining about other tourists has a real irony to it. Rich people getting mad they have to share the worlds treasures with a growing population of other rich people. Boo boo. A certain percentage of the population is always going to be assholes, whether they live in a place or are just visiting. Instagram isn’t the root cause to why people suck, this too shall pass.
That's even more depressing (if true) than this abomination of "social networks" that we are seeing right now.
But still, even if your point might be true, we should stop giving people easy ways to be degenerates. There should be repercussions or something, but good luck codifying it into a law :)
It's a difficult problem.
You don't always need laws to stop bad behavior. Influential social shame and scorn are often just as effective.
We're literally talking about behavioural modification here. FB + INSTA may not make people assholes, but they certainly reward certain classes of asshole behaviour.
They're not unique in that, but other asshole-promoting loop systems have been around far longer, so we tend to assume they're how things are rather than questioning them.
Which is why "This too shall pass" may not be a valid assumption.
It depends on what problem you're referring to. People going onto private property and damaging locations are a special kind of asshole. They're not regular tourists.
I wondered if we could get a contest running: for every "influencer" picture, see who can find the most unflattering backstage picture for that set. Maybe once people realized that behind each "young and carefree" photo there's a professional photographer, lights, a mobile wardrobe, a ladder, and hundreds of people doing the same, then the madness would stop.
But then I realised that I just re-invented the paparazzi. And if they haven't changed people's perception of Hollywood glamour, neither will this plan.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mariahoxley/whys-she-so-small
Of course a lot of "tourist attractions" are like that day-in, day-out.
easy, they'd say "thanks! Follow and subscribe!!"
I understand how many can feel that way, but what if these photographers were genuinely interested in the underlying work. They did put in the effort to travel all the way to a farm to check it out. They took pictures of it in appreciation. Maybe they did not know how to properly respect the people and the place, maybe they should be taught rather than chastised.
Every child knows that you don't do whatever you want on the grounds of other people, in their gardens and homes.
Stop being jerks and just ask people politely if it's ok for them that you take a picture.
Also I don't get how they all need a picture of the same place.
In the end all they do is to deprive themselves from real happiness and the possibility to just enjoy the moment. Their POV changes in the moment they see the world through the lens of their cam and they don't even seem to get this.
I didn't mean to excuse this behavior, what they are doing is certainly not good. My point is only that in their desire to photograph, there must be some level of appreciation for it, and it would be more productive to develop that appreciation than shut everything down.
As a simple example, the next farmer that gets instagram-mobbed, rather than putting up a "No Trespassing" sign, could instead put up a sign at the front of the property asking visitors to "come to the porch, say hello, and learn about farming". Many of the people who trekked all the way out to a farm to photograph it, will likely take the extra few minutes to get a deeper understanding. The farmer will maintain (or improve) her dignity, and maybe the instagramer will learn something new.
I'm just saying there are better potential solutions than mocking and distancing yourself from a group of people, you can bring yourself closer together.
If I'd want to have so much company I'd have opened a store or museum I think.
Where I come from we really had something that was called "privacy" and "intimacy" and when we were at our place it was given to us without struggle. When I think about massive tourism, satellites in LEO and drones above our heads I see this in decline without a real choice or possibility to avoid it from coming to my little farm.
Of course I'd not want to have to put up signs or even technology to keep people, drones etc. off my grounds but I'd rather do that than being disturbed by strangers (or strange technology) every waking minute.
It's not like one person comes over on a sunny Sunday to ask me about farming but the 1000 people who have the same idea that day or the couple who want's to shoot their love scene in my yard at midnight in the moon light while I just want to fall asleep with the sounds of the crickets and not some fuck-fest.
Don't get me wrong here - I am very open minded. But I value my privacy etc. and I see it being taken away without me having a chance to decide/stop it/whatever. It's not the one person, but the mass of people who care more for their damn picture than respect for nature and people who happen to live there.
It's because they don't care about the place, they care that they've been there. This is a problem as old as photography; I remember watching tourists on my daily commute coming to the same spots, day in, day out, and shooting the exact same photos of the exact same buildings from the exact same angles. All I could think of is, "your exact photo is on Flickr already in 10 different copies, why are you doing this?!". The rise of social media (Instagram in particular) only made this worse.
I think they are harming themselves by doing this because they can't really enjoy the moment and just "be" there.
I rarely take pictures because I always think "there's already awesome pics of this on the net" and also when I'm back I don't want to overwhelm people who want to see them with a collection of "just 1000 photos of me in front of the Louvre".
Of course I'd love to have a picture of me standing in front of Taj Mahal but in the end it's not so important. The pictures people haven't seen yet are much more interesting (to me), especially places where tourists don't want to be or perspectives they shouldn't see.
E.g. the "Golden Beaches" in Bulgaria. Stay in the tourist zone and you'll have the typical beaches, hotels, bars etc. But the exciting part of the area is when you leave this "paradise" and see the massive destruction tourism, the hotel lobby etc. bring to nature and the people.
Seeing these scenes changed my mind and I realized I'd never want to do "all inclusive" at the places where all people go again.
I think people need more stable personalities so they can break out of their "hive-mind-thinking" and start sensing their environment and enjoying themselves without the constant feedback of "the hive". Behaviour like this reminds me of the Lemmings and the Borg.
I wouldn’t want a stream of Instagrammers at my door “asking for permission” to take a photo either. That’s also annoying.
Economically, you might get "famous" enough for small brands to send you free stuff to show in the photos, in the long run they want to win the recognition lottery and get more and more famous. It's very self-referencing
...
>They’d damaged the land. They’d stolen the owner’s products. They’d ruined the fields that had been tended to with hard work for months. But even the farmer’s final attempt to put and end to it wasn’t enough – they wanted more.
Oh, can't wait the day when we are going to look back at "social media" platforms and go: "what the hell were these creatures thinking?"
I really think social media is one of the worst tools for the human psyche ever conceived. It's a net loss for sure.
It's addictive and also messes up with dopamine generation. Not to mention the vanity/envy aspect of it: people comparing to selective representation of other people. It's remarkably insane when you think about it.
Maybe it's best not to think about it :)
Younger instagram users are much less interested in showing off perfect shots than their millennial predecessors.
* Our popular areas are completely overrun during tourist season - I personally think not much fun for tourists or locals (unless a crowd is good e.g. party zones)
* As a local, I can usually find something way better when I travel in NZ that isn't overrun by tourists (e.g. from article, that one lavender farm in France is overrun, but I bet there are plenty nearby that are not).
* I personally love the vibe of the high tourist areas. Generally having tourists is good for nightlife, great for meeting other cultures, and tourists create heaps of economic opportunities (very often in places that would struggle otherwise).
* When travelling overseas, I skip anything "must see" that is in a guide or otherwise recommended (unless you want a tickbox or it is totally off-season). I go to small towns that are in non-tourist areas, and find my own awesome shit.
* When travelling, try to meet locals in a low-density tourist area. You get to see the real country. In reverse, I try to be super welcoming to travellers I meet (I have no problem giving a hitchhiker a room in my home if they pass my sniff test).
* NZ isn't a big country, but there is a huge amount of amazing places to visit everywhere, if you have your own transport and more than a few weeks to travel.
* Try to avoid staying in tourist high density areas. Avoid the easy tourist transport means, avoid the tourist backpackers or hotels.
* Yes, tourists often leave a mess (NZ has a real problem with tourists travelling by vehicle shitting everywhere), but the benefits of tourists really outweigh the downsides IMHO
* I would love NZ to introduce a visa fee per travelling day - that pays for cleaning and pays for free entry to high traffic tourist destinations. We should be striving to attract the high value tourist, and not nickel and dime them once they are here. Tourism can be a Veblen good.
Summary: there are places that are tourist destinations, but there are heaps of places that tourists don't go to that are incredible.
These things are kind of like Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian: famous for being famous, not for any actual intrinsic qualities they may have.
There are exceptions. For example Venice is VERY touristic, but also for good reasons IMHO.
I was actually in Wanaka last December, and yeah, it's a funny looking tree, but to go out of your way for it? Yeh nah. There were many more memorable/fun aspects of our Wanaka outing.