I went to see sunrise (and spend the day at) Angkor Wat in December, and have a rather different perspective to the OP.
Sure - there were lots of people crowded around a similar spot at sunrise. It's Angkor Wat, and seeing sunrise there is the kind of thing that most people in attendance are going to do once in their lives. It would be in most travellers top ten things to do before you die list. People are going to want to take photographs.
Did the presence of other people there massively ruin the day for me? No. When sunrise is over, you have at least six hours to wander round the temples completely uninterrupted at your leisure.
If you so choose, you can come back in the afternoon when there are far fewer people around. Do I get an awesome amount of pleasure from looking back at my photos of Angkor and sharing them with friends and family? Yes. Do most of my photos even have me in them at all? No.
It's really impossible to hold the details of an experience like wandering round Angkor in your head for years to come. I'm not going to remember the detail on a specific bas-relief, or the view I got from the top of a specific temple in years to come. Having photographs of these things really helps in that regard and enables me to 'revisit' any time I want.
This is yet another judgy, post-intellectualizing Medium piece whose purpose isn't communicating any particular point but garnering clicks and attention for the author. You really think Instagram ruined your trip to Angkor?
Did you really take the decision - faced with an absolutely awe inspiring monument at sunrise - that the best use of your time and resources was to take a judgmental photo of the people around you? Get over yourself.
> It would be in most travellers top ten things to do before you die list.
Something that has been bothering me lately. I have no memory of 99% of my life. No I don't have medical condition, I've spoken to lots of people about this, my friends who I've spoken to have forgotten their babies first steps, their baby's first words, first date with their spouse ect which most people would rate as top moments of their lives.
I am not even sure that the stuff I do remember form my life is actually accurate or if I've stored them in an edited/modified form that would please me. I am not even sure if 'me according to me' is a honest representation or if its just bunch of inaccuracies that I've woven into somewhat consistent story about myself.
People used to view material goods as good life now it all about 'experiences' . I just don't understand that constant demand by both society and internally to have experiences at all costs. We think that without experiences our minds will become dull and uninteresting, experiences would wake us up from our dull lives.
> I just don't understand that constant demand by both society and internally to have experiences at all costs. We think that without experiences our minds will become dull and uninteresting, experiences would wake us up from our dull lives.
I don't think we're expecting to wake up.
I think many of us feel totally powerless to live the lives we want to live: to get the job we want, to buy our parents a house, to be seen by our peers the way we'd like to be seen. We know we're up against a wall and that to some degree we're settling for uninteresting things.
But then someone says "the Sistine Chapel has the most beautiful frescos in the world" and what we hear is "if you can just get your butt here, you can experience a taste of the best stuff there is". It's a chance to stop thinking about what we can't have and just think about what we are having and how great it is.
In some sense, actually experiencing the place isn't really important. In fact, it's pretty dangerous. If you paid attention you might realize that you actually don't know anything about antiquities, and you don't actually care about Michelangelo. Looking deeply at the attraction can only cheapen it.
But if you just stand there, in the spot experts say to stand, and you pay your money, and the staff do the thing they do when they get the money, then for a few minutes you can really believe that you have it good.
I think you have an interesting line of thought here, but don't underestimate the dramatic emotional power that great works of art and architecture can have on us. Such stunning displays of human achievement at once connect us with the present, past, and future (reflecting on what great works you might leave behind) all at once.
I know that when I visited the Louvre, for instance, I was inspired at the sheer grandiosity of the works within. Whether or not experts said it was a great place to go was irrelevant, I was awestruck either way.
> I am not even sure if 'me according to me' is a honest representation or if its just bunch of inaccuracies that I've woven into somewhat consistent story about myself.
If a guy called "Rick Deckard" gets in touch and tries to have a chat with you - run.
Same boat 99% of it is a blur at best. I think what makes experiences memorable is not only the picture but the people you travel with. Assuming they remain in your life years after the "experience" you can continue to reference and talk about that time you went to ... and did ... These people with or without the picture will do a much better job of making an experience live on.
Same boat here as well. I'm quite sceptical of people who claim to have vivid memories almost like videos in their mind. I often think they're just better than us at replaying the narrative they've constructed and filling in the gaps with imagination.
I read somewhere that eyewitness accounts, when tested, are often wildly inaccurate, and very prone to manipulation by asking leading questions e.g. "when did you see the suspect driving the red car?"
What I find is that when I get together with family or long time friends, it's the reminiscing about the past highlights which serves as a refresh of the collective memory and serves as touchstones to also renew interpersonal connections. As a kid I wondered why adults retold the same stories over and over again, as an adult I see that it's a way to save the most important highlights (and maybe add new ones over time).
This is the reason culture tends to place so much value on communal experience. I once attended a sporting event that had an exciting and impactful conclusion. For a few hours, a stadium full of people shared the ups and downs of that event, along with the players and others who were a part of it. People hugged strangers, they talked and cheered together.
Events are a touchstone of our existence. I don't think they are something woven together to hide are "real" existence, they are what we remember that reminds us we are something separate from our lives, work, family and so on, yet still very much a part of those things.
> Something that has been bothering me lately. I have no memory of 99% of my life.
Those would be your mental filters at work. Your brain is always sweeping itself, trying to take information and move it into long term storage to help keep your short term memory ready to process the next bit of information.
If you remove yourself from all stimuli and focus on those events, you will be able to pull them up. They will be through the lens of nostalgia, but they are not gone forever.
> I've spoken to lots of people about this, my friends who I've spoken to have forgotten their babies first steps, their baby's first words, first date with their spouse ect which most people would rate as top moments of their lives.
This is due to the hyperconnectedness and sheer amount of information we have available. Ours minds are wired to want constant stimulation, to always be seeking new forms of information. The internet has given that to us with a cost. The only way to get out is remove highl limit the amount of information you take in, and focus more on your daily life than th life of others.
This is one of the most disturbing parts about modern existence. We're built to forget, but the rest of the world is increasingly built to never forget.
This is what photos & journals are for, IMO. The simple process of reflecting (writing) helps you commit your memories, and media helps you recall them later. You don't even need the whole thing committed to paper & jpg. I find if the framework is there in front of me, I can then fill in many of the details.
Regardless how you feel about the value of "experiences" (e.g. exotic vacations) and whether they should be pursued, I figure it's important to remember. Your relationship with friends, family, & the world is all built on shared memories.
I'm sort of the same way. And oddly, I do remember other random, unimportant moments with vivid clarity even 20+ years later. I guess for some reason my subconscious thinks those are significant but I can't rationally figure out why.
Definitely don't read any singularity related sci-fi, or watch Ghost In The Shell, then -- there are no answers to these questions to be found there. Only more questions. Entertaining but sometimes disturbing questions.
I know what you mean. I look back on family holidays most fondly, even though I know I spent most of the time arguing. But the overall impression has mutated somehow to a positive one. It's a funny thing, memory.
Having experiences doesn't necessarily mean going to Cambodia to see a sunset (unless that sort of thing appeals to you). It can be very simple things as long as it's something that you enjoy. Some of the best experiences of my life were sitting around with friends on a lazy day.
> Did you really take the decision - faced with an absolutely awe inspiring monument at sunrise - that the best use of your time and resources was to take a judgmental photo of the people around you? Get over yourself.
When I saw the Mona Lisa/Sistene Chapel it was surrounded by a stream of ~50 people with flashbulbs constantly firing and talking loudly. That sort of distortion of an environment can be difficult to ignore. It sounds like the author had a similar experience, and if that happens to you, you might find that the thing that grabs your attention most is how everyone's constant photography can degrade an experience.
The word "touristy" has been around a long time, long before Instagram came around. Singling out Instagram is just another way to make the age-old complaints of tourism slightly less stale.
Trying to paint a critique of Instagram's effects on tourism as a lame re-hash of an old idea seems a bit off.
Sure, it might be the same complaint, but if the severity is 100x worse it holds more weight. And if Instagram is the main vehicle for this behavior, then it is a fair target of criticism.
For another example of the effects of smartphone-enabled-social-media, check out some youtube crowd shots from concerts before 2000 and ones from today. Obvious is emergence of masses of people looking through phones and holding up phones; a bit less obvious and a bit more worrisome is that folks seem generally less excited to be there.
> When I saw the Mona Lisa/Sistene Chapel it was surrounded by a stream of ~50 people with flashbulbs constantly firing and talking loudly
You write "Mona Lisa/Sistene Chapel" as if these were connected to each other, but they're not. They are in two different countries. And photography is not allowed in the Sistine Chapel, so it's very unlikely that you are recalling this incident correctly.
The connection is that they are both tourist attractions that were negatively impacted by photography during my visits.
Regarding the Sistine Chapel - you're right, photography is not allowed and I overrepresented the flashes when grouping it in with the Mona Lisa. But during my 5 minute visit I saw 3 different flashes and heard 3 different exclamations from Vatican staff "No pictures!", which was plenty disruptive.
I've been lucky enough to visit both the Sistine Chapel and the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. I've been to the Sistine Chapel twice (2003 and 2011) and both times it was very crowded and remarkably quiet. Even while waiting on line to get in it was very quiet. I was surprised.
The crowd in front of the Mona Lisa was a bit louder but still very quiet. Many people were taking photos but there were signs up, and people around to remind you, that flash photography was prohibited.
Neither experience was as tranquil as I would have liked to take in such awesome works of art but it didn't bother me much because it honestly felt like everyone there was doing their best to not disturb everyone else's experience. I guess that's just the nature of visiting two of the most famous works of art on the planet.
I missed the sunrise when I was in Cambodia, so I went to Angkor Wat during sunset instead. It was amazing.
The place was almost empty. I walked around for over an hour while the remaining tourists left and then sat at the entrance and shared a beer with my driver. It was such a great experience. I don't think I took any photos either..
Off topic, but can you unpack "shared a beer with my driver" for me a little? Like, the two of you split a beer? Did you have the beer and offer some to your driver, or did your driver have the beer and offer some to you?
It's funny, because I've got a few pictures that sum up exactly what you said about this single expression. I don't have many, but I greatly value the pictures I've taken that retell the story of a certain event to me.
Yeah, it really seems like the author is making an argument against cameras in general. Tourists have been taking pictures for a long time. Instagram didn't invent trying to impress people with photos of your travels.
"Instagram didn't invent trying to impress people with photos of your travels."
This is absolutely true. Before Instagram and similar sites, you'd invite friends over and then force a slideshow on them. This was widely reviled and turned into a staple of comedy. Because no one really wants to see people's travel photos.
The difference with Instagram and friends is that there's this sense of reciprocity -- that if we feign interest in other people's works, they'll have legitimate interest in ours. It's the giant lie of social media, where everyone is creating but almost no one is really consuming -- we all think we're tricking the system and cultivating our own consumers.
> It's the giant lie of social media, where everyone is creating but almost no one is really consuming -- we all think we're tricking the system and cultivating our own consumers.
Hmm. I can see what you're getting at, but I don't entirely agree.
Looking at my facebook newsfeed nowadays, for example, there's an awful lot of sharing going on, but it's not original content - there's very little creation going on. I'm slowly weeding this stuff out because what I really want to see is what my friends and family are saying, or posting, for themselves.
I share photos on Instagram as much for my own benefit as anyone else's. That being said, I have found myself thinking things that essentially boil down to, "This will get a lot of likes," and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
You might be a little cynical with the comment about feigning interest though. I'm sure it's true of some people but I know for myself, if I click 'Like' (and especially if I make a comment), it's because I genuinely do like something.
> Looking at my facebook newsfeed nowadays, for example, there's an awful lot of sharing going on, but it's not original content - there's very little creation going on. I'm slowly weeding this stuff out because what I really want to see is what my friends and family are saying, or posting, for themselves.
This is reportedly something that Facebook has noticed themselves.
> Overall sharing has remained "strong," according to Facebook. However, people have been less willing to post updates about their lives as their lists of friends grow, the people said.
Instead, Facebook’s 1.6 billion users are posting more news and information from other websites. As Facebook ages, users may have more than a decade’s worth of acquaintances added as friends. People may not always feel comfortable checking into a local bar or sharing an anecdote from their lives, knowing these updates may not be relevant to all their connections. [1]
> People may not always feel comfortable checking into a local bar or sharing an anecdote from their lives, knowing these updates may not be relevant to all their connections.
Google Plus solved this exact problem 5 years ago with "circles", letting you choose what to share with which groups of "friends". Why hasn't Facebook implemented this?
They actually have - and make it a bit easier than G+ did - with Groups and Smart Lists.
They also added a separate tier called 'Acquaintances' that you could add people to a while back.
However most users don't make use of it and will either share with Public or Friends. The only exception is things like groups - which are popular with things like neonatal classes and sports teams.
"Looking at my facebook newsfeed nowadays, for example, there's an awful lot of sharing going on, but it's not original content"
Maybe I'm just teasing easy confirmations of my theory -- very probably the case -- but I truly think that is the inevitable end-game that Facebook has hit, that Twitter has hit, and that Instagram is rapidly shooting towards.
When the circle of reciprocity breaks -- when people break the "contract" of earning cheap accolades by giving cheap accolades -- it starts to become embarrassing posting original content. When you post content and get a single digit of likes, it's demotivating for many and makes them feel like a social failure, so pretty soon it's just regurgitated memes and the like. I've seen this play out across a number of age groups, to the same eventual outcome. And I didn't look at this cynically but it was a theory I floated years ago about Flickr, so I watched to see if it would happen on Facebook. I truly believe social networks should allow users to hide all likes/shares/etc, but they won't for a very good reason - gaming users.
"You might be a little cynical with the comment about feigning interest though"
We all have close family and close friends who of course we have a personal, sincere interest in. But as you go out the sincerity declines at a perilous slope. But Instagram and others aren't built around sharing with a few close friends.
I've thought of making a chrome extension or something that would edit your newsfeed like this. Only show posts that don't have external links. I have a feeling my feed would become pretty barren.
> Because no one really wants to see people's travel photos.
I remember my grandfather showing slides from back home in Latvia and finding it super interesting. I've had lots of nice slideshow memories. I remember getting together with friends and swapping stacks of photos after trips.
Have you sat through a lot of bad slideshows? Or are you just repeating the joke?
I'll register another data point disproving your notion that no one wants to see people's travel photos. I have friends I deliberately invite over right after any trip they take so I can see their photos and talk about their travels.
Although, I can't see this being nearly as interesting with the traveler there in person to explain the photos and provide context. Not particularly interested in just a stream of people's photos, but a story from someone who traveled along with photos of what they saw is very interesting to me.
There's a reason travel shows exist as an entire genre of television.
> that if we feign interest in other people's works, they'll have legitimate interest in ours.
As a counter point, my wife and I both genuinely enjoy seeing other people's posts, esp. from friends who live far away or are on vacation. As much as the world is at your fingertips on the internet, there's something special in seeing a friends photo at or of some beautiful place I"ve never heard of. As much as it seems to annoy others, I've always enjoyed it (and unlike Facebook, I don't get updates from the 90% of poeple I'm not interested in hearing from).
> This is yet another judgy, post-intellectualizing Medium piece whose purpose isn't communicating any particular point but garnering clicks and attention for the author. You really think Instagram ruined your trip to Angkor?
I think Medium is ruining my enjoyment of the internet
Also the Angkor Wat temple area is approximately 30 miles by 30 miles. You only get that sort of crowd where the tour busses go for the official sunrise viewing spot. I had my own motor scooter for transport and it was easy to find ruins where you were on your own - no tourists, locals or attendants.
> This is yet another judgy, post-intellectualizing Medium piece whose purpose isn't communicating any particular point but garnering clicks and attention for the author. You really think Instagram ruined your trip to Angkor?
Yes: this. It all seems so reasonable until you step away a little and have a think about it. Tourists have been behaving this way since tourism, and especially since photography, became a thing. It is not Instagram's fault.
I am moderately annoyed with myself for falling into the trap of clicking on the link to, and then actually reading, this article.
I have noticed a dramatic change in tourist behavior in the last 4 years or so. I literary have been hit in the head by people welding selfie sticks too engrossed in getting pictures of themselves to pay attention to others in a crowded area. What's worse is the people who are repeatedly asked by staff to refrain from doing something and just blatantly disregard instructions. I never saw this happen before the age of smartphones and cheap DSLR cameras.
I'll give you that - the selfie stick phenomenon is completely ridiculous. Actually the entire selfie thing leaves me cold, but perhaps I'm just getting old.
I think you missed the author's point. The point to me was mainly the lies that photos tell. OP posted on IG representing that he was (presumably) calmly relaxing with some coffee while watching the sunrise, when in fact he was part of a herd trying to snap a photo like this.
The secondary point is that constructing that lie ends up removing people from the moment. I think this is the weaker point as people have been taking pictures for a long time... but it is true that the population that does this has increased manyfold, since everyone with a smart phone can participate.
>Do most of my photos even have me in them at all? No.
What's the point then? I used to take such pictures, and even though I'm an OK shot, my pictures of famous places or even interesting "random" landscapes aren't gonna be nearly as good as ones I can find online. If I'm in it, then at least there's some unique story being told. Otherwise I'm just making a crap documentary.
My photos aren't the best either, but they're mine. The sensory recall from my own perspective is far more powerful than anything I get from professional photos of the same place because they cue memories of more than just the captured photons. They remind me of the weather that caused that light, those people, the food, that trip. It might be a crap documentary, but it's thoroughly mine.
I'm not usually attracted to the places that attract a big crowd taking the same picture together, but when I do the worst thing I can say is that it feels a little silly.
Photography is an incredible way to experience a new location.
It isn't ruining vacations, its redefining them.
In Laos, I met a young munk named Khao at the top of Phou si in Luang Prabang. He kindly posed for a photo, and then we had a conversation. He gave me his email, and I sent him the photo later on.
The "perfect photo" isn't the goal. Memories and being able to share our awesome travel experiences with friends and family is.
I find these types of criticisms of photography just part of the hipster "backpacker mentality": I'm better than the mainstream. I don't visit the same tourist destinations like everyone else. I eat the local food and not at touristic restaurants. I see a sunset and I don't upload it to Instagram.
“Instagram,” Suler said, “is therefore a tool for validating one’s life.”
I think this is the crux of the issue. You are right--photography has been part of vacations since cameras were generally available. But what's different is the real-time nature of sharing those images, and the real time acceptance (or rejection) of those images via likes and comments. If those are more important than the lived experience, then, I think we have a problem.
I'm a friendly critic of Instagram (it is the only social media outlet my wife and I use). It is perfect for sharing images while we travel. It is also easy, however, to get up checking if folks have liked our photos, or commented on them. That's not Instagram's fault, of course, but I wouldn't even worry about such things if we weren't sharing photos almost immediately.
And before the camera people made sketches and drawings of places and things they visited. The first thing that comes to mind is Darwin's drawings.
I worked on a mega yacht and the thing that most separated me from everyone else as I interacted with the owners and guests is the context of our stories that we tell. I might tell a story set in inner city high school I went to in lower Manhattan while their son tells a story that is set at Phillips Exeter Academy. The point is what separates me most is context. It is really important for a young person to separate herself from her peers by being in the context of being at Coachella. There is more than just memories. It is also about social standing.
I'm not criticizing the act of taking photos while traveling (or, even when not traveling). It is a craft, an art, and a way to record history. I've got no problem with that. The issue is when the act of taking and posting those photos is simply about self-validation that we have a problem. Spending your holiday constantly checking your phone to see if people have liked your latest photos doesn't seem very relaxing.
This is how those people go through daily life. For them, vacation is about relating to other people--the people they are with and their friends and family elsewhere. They want to share everything they are involved in, and in part they want to make themselves look good. So they take photos and they immediately share them.
This may not seem relaxing to you, but I don't see how it's a problem. It's how they want to spend their vacation--and even if it is not relaxing, it's what they want to do. What's the problem?
A complaint seems to be "people are spending too much time photographing and not enough time experiencing the place." Photographing and sharing is precisely how many people experience the place, along with sharing those photographs and by seeing the photographs of others. Those people are sociable and like to share. That's not bad.
Personally I am not like that. If one wants a quiet vacation experience without big crowds, it is easy to get. For instance I often hear Yellowstone is crowded. While there I never understood this perception--it seemed expansive and quiet to me as we plied the roads and hiked down the trails. Then we saw Old Faithful. It was like going to the shopping mall. Same goes for this guy seeing this place in Cambodia. I'd bet anything that if he just strayed a couple thousand feet from whatever vista this was, he would have experienced "the real place," whatever he wanted that to be.
These sociable folks who want to share photos are like that every day. They're not going to change because they're on vacation, nor should they. Similarly the people who just want to experience wherever they are without sharing it with everyone are going to be like that everyday. They don't change while on vacation either. There's nothing wrong with the folks who want to share and pieces like this one are nothing but a bunch of snobbery. If the writer wants to spend his/her vacation being a snob, well, ok. The folks taking the photos and sharing them are probably enjoying their vacations. Hopefully he is enjoying his by being a snob.
The problem is that it's unhealthy to be wholly focused on only 1 aspect of your life. Plenty of people become depressed by not feeling socially validated on social media.
I suspect most of these people are already depressed, and the validation they find in social media staves off the more severe feelings.
Or it's become something of an addiction to them, and a lack of validation (either a lack of "likes" or an inability to post) results in withdrawal, which can cause depression and shares some behavioral symptoms with depression.
But "we" don't have a problem because we don't do it. And "they" don't have a problem either, because they choose to do it (unless the behaviour is compulsive in some way).
That's not how I would spend a vacation myself, but it's their vacation and their time. If they enjoy the attention, what's wrong with them enjoying it?
I think there's a huge difference between a drawing and an Instagram photo. The former requires an in-depth look at something for an extended period of time, while the latter takes a few seconds.
> I think this is the crux of the issue. You are right--photography has been part of vacations since cameras were generally available. But what's different is the real-time nature of sharing those images, and the real time acceptance (or rejection) of those images via likes and comments. If those are more important than the lived experience, then, I think we have a problem.
I guess it comes down to how you see the world. Personally, I'd rather be fully immersed in whatever I am experiencing in real life, and not weighed down by likes and comments on a social media platform.
Edited to add:
I recently came across this quote from Norman Wirzba, a theologian at Duke University:
Media platforms and technological devices are not simply neutral tools that we use to move through life. Their power is much more extensive, because they shape and frame what we perceive and understand the wold to be. When people spend enough time in front of screens, it becomes all but inevitable that the whole world takes on the character of something to be watched. Given the technologies we now have for manipulating screens in whatever fashion we like to suit our own particular tastes, if we find the Mona Lisa boring, no problem. We can run the image through the Fatify app or add the graphics and colors we like to make it amusing or better than the original! Should we be surprised that people often find the world uninteresting and dull?
Reframe it this way. What's more important: the inert and inanimate surroundings of Angkor Wat, or sharing that experience with your friends and family?
When I post a picture on FB or text it, I'm not "looking for social approval." I'm reaching out to friends who aren't there with me and saying "hey man, check this out!"
I would say the former. There are so many things about "being there" that even the world's best photographer with the world's best camera equipment would have a hard time capturing. I'm a hobbyist photographer myself, but there are some times I just want to put my camera away and "take a memory".
My memories of precious moments (first hours with my son, etc) are fragile and fleeting, and already mostly gone. Most of the time the pictures I take are not very good at capturing the essence of what I want to remember, but other times ... it really does. Seeing video of my kids scampering through a park in Ireland, or photos of them from years ago at the beach capture aspects of them that I had forgotten.
Often the pictures remind me not of what is in the picture, but help me remember what I was doing, where I was, and the things around it.
I don't go somewhere so I can take pictures to show my friends, I go there because I want to see/experience it for myself. Plus friends don't care to see more than a few pictures, anyway.
Great for you. I personally care a lot more about sharing something with my family or friends. I probably wouldn't go anywhere if I couldn't share it with someone.
> "if we find the Mona Lisa boring, no problem. We can run the image through the Fatify app or add the graphics and colors we like to make it amusing or better than the original! Should we be surprised that people often find the world uninteresting and dull?"
How is the ability to play with the Mona Lisa not part of the world? Our lives online aren't imaginary, they're just as real a part of our world as the physical. If you enjoy tweaking the Mona Lisa, making it more personal, then that's you actively finding the world interesting and fun.
Ahhh! You just sparked a memory of an old graphics application on the computer that let you use smudge and liquify like tools on Mona Lisa's face to distort it in all sorts of ways. I remember playing with that constantly, thinking the technology was soo futuristic, being able to make the Mona Lisa look evil and cartoonish. You could do it with your own pictures too, but the default image was Mona Lisa. I wish I could remember what that software was called.
But anyway, some of this stuff predates social media and smartphones. And it was more of a novelty than anything. It might have even given me greater appreciation for the painting, since it is such a great painting for distorting human features.
What I don't understand is why "we" have your personal problem.
I don't know if I can blame social media for this or not, but people vastly overstating their arguments because they are caught up in their own emotions does not make for illuminating discourse.
As I understand it, we're slowly tying behaviour of this sort - essentially, being in a state of seeking constant approval from others - to increased risk of mental health issues as time goes on. It also makes it a hell of a lot more difficult to do anything that one's peers wouldn't approve of.
I usually don't share pictures until I'm back from vacation.
I spend a lot of time sorting and sifting through the photos, picking only the best to share.
People have a very short attention span. If your vacation album has more than 50 photos, it doesn't matter how good the photos are, or how exciting the experience is.
same here. when going on vacation compared to weekend outing, we usually bring quite a few photos from various sources (recent trip to Borneo - my dslr, gopro for diving, fiancee's point-and-shoot used also heavily in underwater housing for diving, her cell phone which she carries everywhere compared to camera). All combined it was cca 2000 pieces, damn too much but when you are there seeing all the diffrent beauty all the time, it's hard to resist snapping more than bare minimum.
the issue among others is, the most amazing places are sometimes off the grid, some photos require some proper processing (panoramas, night shots with milky way etc). which tends to take a lot of time and you need proper PC for it (lightroom, autopano, photoshop etc).
it would be a poor use of precious vacation time to spend evenings editing photos, wouldn't it...
on the other hand, however amazing it was (and it was, highly recommending before those idiots burn rest of rainforest and transform it into palm tree plantations) - I am not going to look in next months into photos once processed, however amazing they are (and some, especially diving and jungle ones are really :-O to me). we do various mountain stuff a lot and most weekends tend to bring additional set of pics. so it has to be process-quickly-and-move-on, otherwise it takes all my free time.
The social problem might lie in the addictive nature of likes and approval, the pressure to get those degrading actual quality of the photos (live stream vs curating later) and degrading the experience for the vacationer; lose-lose while Instagram wins thru eyeballs.
Funny thing is that it's actually a tool to validate one's life to the corporation that owns and possesses that data. You validated nothing by being a corporate drone other than that you are a corporate drone that was milked all our life.
I use Instagram as my own personal diary of pictures, but I don't set my profile as "private" so anyone is free to enjoy my pictures, or not. I don't give a shit.
If you start adding hash tags to your photos, that's when you're chasing the validation game and it becomes everything I hate about social media / facebook.
Other than the ease of distribution, is this so awfully different from slideshows and the like? There are two kinds of tourists; tourists who go places to see places, and tourists who go places to be seen in places. The only difference in my mind today versus "back then" is that the rise of social media sites has made it much easier to be seen in places, and so has made the second type of traveler more prolific and well known.
In the end, it's their vacation, and if sitting around taking photos of everything is their way of relaxing, who is anyone else to judge? As usual these sorts of posts come down to entirely too much interest in what everybody else is doing, mind your own business.
I think this is a lifestyle choice and you have a problem if you have a problem with your behavior or don't like the result of it. If i see people doing it and they are happy why should it be a problem?
The article was fairly nuanced and even-handed. The anecdote about a photo yielding some enlightened experience seems like an absurd stretch, and does little to counter the overwhelming evidence that people are more concerned about telling others about their experience than actually experiencing.
Memories and being able to share our awesome travel experiences with friends and family is.
Indeed. One of the primary criticism of this philosophy is that it's a giant lie. That people use this sort of "share how awesome it is" approach as a compensation for it not being awesome. As the stated quote says, the camera is the ultimate fantasy machine. The peaceful picture of Angkor Wat (or the Pyramids, or countless other big instagram game sites) is essentially a lie -- the image of peaceful historic tranquility is a fraud.
It has taken me a fair amount of travel; getting repeatedly lured in to tourist destinations based on the amazingly beautiful and serene photos of them to realize that it is all a lie and to try to plan my vacations around avoiding that lie. Two situations really stand out in my mind:
The first was at a tiger temple in Thailand, where the monks would run tourists through a photo assembly line of sorts. They would have all of the tigers out at specified times of the day in a controlled area, the tour bus arrives, everyone files out in a single file line, one monk takes your camera out of your hand while another leads you around to the various tigers that are setup in photogenic poses while the first snaps a photo with each of them, and then leads you out.
The second was at Antelope Canyon in Arizona. All of the tourists get loaded in to an off-road bus and driven to the entrance of the canyon. Because it is such a narrow and twisting path through the canyon, they are able to shove huge numbers of people through while allowing everyone to get the perfect shot. When I was there it was before Instagram, but the guides would go so far as tell everyone the proper f-stop and shutter speed to capture each photo correctly as they tossed dust up in to the rays of light piercing the canyon, or put sand up on a ledge to get the photos of it cascading off. Then they would hold each group back for a few minutes until the group ahead cleared out of the shot.
It was a cattle call in both experiences but the photos represent an experience completely unlike what actually happened. I have learned that when vacationing, you are much better off going to the "second rate" destination if you actually want to enjoy anything. Just a few miles from Antelope Canyon is another slot canyon called Water Holes Canyon that was only 70% as impressive as Antelope Canyon, but we were the only people there and could explore it however we wanted!
Once you know about the lie, it's easy enough to avoid, but sometimes the pull to get that shot is still strong. The picture of me with the tiger is pretty damn impressive!
"But as I stood there in Cambodia, swatted by selfie sticks, bruised by elbows, perfumed by the body odor of my fellow photogs, I realized the irony of being at a temple in which no one was really present. Was Instagram ruining travel?"
...
"But here’s to hoping that before clicking “share,” there’s a moment to enjoy the view and a sip of instant coffee. Without getting elbowed. Or poked with a selfie stick. Or tagging that photo #Instabruise."
Still don't really see what is "hipster" about these quotes from the article. They're pretty fair criticisms of what mainstream tourism is like today.
While it's a bit much to say that Instagram is ruining vacations, it's also a touch naive to say that the product is facilitating "memories and being able to share our awesome travel experiences with friends and family is". Social media is, for the most parts, a tool to elevate your perceived social status. So saying "It isn't ruining vacations, its redefining them" in the context of Instagram just reads like a Zuckerberg pull-quote.
Aren't Medium posts repeating cliched arguments contrasting the author with the supposed superficiality of the masses a pretty clear example of "a tool to elevate your perceived social status"?
I've always thought about it as a trait of the young, because I remember feeling this way myself. As I searched for identity one of the ways I found it was by not identifying as something. It's a totally understandable, if slightly immature attitude. I still find myself doing it, however, especially when talking about politics.
It can be a bit toxic, however, and it's probably the major reason I drifted away from "mainstream" reddit. It seemed dominated by young men complaining about tumblr, which was dominated by young women complaining about reddit.
Of course, just reading that sentence, I see I've fallen into the trap.
In all honestly, though, I wouldn't worry about it too much. People are just doing what they do to find their identity, and as long as you don't look down on them for not finding the best solution (because who has?) then keep looking for what works best for you. And recognize that it'll change over time. Embrace the changes, but don't dismiss those who haven't made the same changes as you.
"So, whether at Angkor Wat, Times Square, or my breakfast table, I will continue to pay homage to the melt. But here’s to hoping that before clicking “share,” there’s a moment to enjoy the view and a sip of instant coffee. Without getting elbowed. Or poked with a selfie stick. Or tagging that photo #Instabruise."
I can't say that I experienced (or saw) many selfie sticks myself. The moments before sunrise at Angkor tend to be dark enough to render selfie sticks pretty useless.
Art teachers often tell students to document by sketching rather than by taking photos. Snapping an image can be a lazy, visually uninvolved way of registering a situation of interest. For me that's the lamentable phenomenon here. I'm not sure about the relevance of Susan Sontag's thought -- it seems like the selfie stick nonsense is a more superficial and trivial kind of digital self-indulgence than she probably imagined.
There is lazy photography but there is also involved, artistic, interesting photography.
Not all photography is lazy, and in fact it's a very fun way to experience a place. I just got back from visiting a country for the first time and I had an incredible time going around with my lightweight camera rig (not iPhone).
I don't think this has anything to do with photography. As someone who's always out with my DSLRs and lenses on nature/wilderness hikes I can say that every picture I take is with the intent of freezing something that is beautiful to my eyes and being able to take it with me. The entire process is like painting on a canvas to me. It's peaceful, relaxing and beautiful.
Taking a picture of your feet dangling off a cliff screams "hey look at me I'm so cool because I travel and I want your likes to feel better about myself". It's not about photography. The only intent here is to share and not enjoy what's around you.
Funny you used such an example, because it's a rather short sighted perspective. Sure, feel all warm and fuzzy about it, but reality is that what you are partaking in is really the deconstruction of human diversity and uniqueness and smoothing out of humanity into a grey matter of mediocrity and uniformity.
Sure, maybe you won't experience the outcomes in your lifetime, but do you think your child or grandchild will also be able to go to that same place and have a similar experience? No, they won't, because the relentless drive of the internet will not stop trying to consolidate and creating uniformity.
WE are really starting to see its horrific effects on humanity in Europe, where a self-loathing population that wails for diversity is self-destructing by deconstructing the very thing that makes them unique and actually contributes to diversity and uniqueness. The problem is that everyone is so mired down in the myopic small scale, that they can't see the permanent and irreversible destruction and devastation and repercussions their actions cause on a bigger scale.
But so is humanity, furiously paving the path to hell in narrow minded, short sighted, selfish, bleeding heart on their sleeve soaked pavers.
You are right. The masters of photography made memorable photos sometimes (and most often) at the risk of their lives. Now that everyone has access to the tech to reach more people, more people are getting into it.
Why am I getting down voted? It is a fact that they took risks - calculated ones to get the shots they wanted. Pretending otherwise won't give them justice.
> I find these types of criticisms of photography just part of the hipster "backpacker mentality": [...] I see a sunset and I don't upload it to Instagram.
Oh no! I guess I became a hipster! Please, I'll download Instagram, I'm not trying to be snooty, I'm just a guy. I appreciate things like sunsets, I didn't know I had to share them. Most places have sunsets. Maybe I can tweet that you should look at your own? No, to be safe, I'll post an Instagram every day. That way I won't be seen as condescending by random people on Hacker News.
The above poster was saying there is a subculture of people who, in order to feel superior, conspicuously avoid posting on Instagram about a sunset. This is an absurd characterization. There is no place in the galaxy in which it is conspicuous to not post beautiful things to Instagram. I have no judgments for users of Instagram, but a pocket full of confusion for someone who assigns a motive and subculture to everyone who doesn't live their lives exactly the way they do. It's provincial and sad, ironically so, considering that in context, that these people are documenting the travels to a foreign land.
Several years back I decided to stop taking photos. I felt I spent too much time looking at the world through my camera screen or viewfinder instead of with my own eyes, and worrying about the right settings instead of simply enjoying myself and letting go. (I'm not an experienced photographer, which probably also makes me slower.)
Turns out it wasn't the best solution either. Memory decays, and a few years later it became difficult to reminisce anything about the places I went to.
The sweet spot for me is to just snap a few pictures, quickly, without worrying about how good it looks. I don't post anything on social media anyway, so I couldn't care less how cool my photo looks. But years later, these photos are invaluable as catalysts to trigger my brain into reminiscing much much more about these moments than if I didn't have any photos.
Although I use social media, I tend to only post pictures there that are meaningful to others, like photos with/of other people that dignify them, or pictures about my life that do not serve my ego, but can hopefully enrich the life of my friends.
I am quite sad by the glorification of narcissistic attitudes, posts, photos, etc in most of modern societies. That does not seem not me like the way humans as whole can evolve to be even better beings.
Yep. I don't get the extreme stance on this of not taking pictures, where people are like "oh no! no one's actually experiencing anything except via their phones! you need to stop taking pictures!"
Sure, there are people who can go to extremes, and it doesn't take a smartphone to do it. I remember when my mother would basically leave the camcorder on constantly for any event involving her kids, and take 30 rolls of pictures (literally hundreds of pictures) on every trip we went on. She now has crates of pictures and 8mm video she's never had the energy to properly sort through. She still takes tons of pictures, but now they become files on a computer, so they're much easier to sort and keep track of.
But you can just take a couple of pictures quickly, when the mood strikes you, and then go back to enjoying the experience. That quick picture literally took maybe 10 seconds for you to take. Oh no! I didn't experience the moment for 10 seconds! I'm wasting my life, according to these people!
No, I'm creating an artifact to help me remember what happened in the future because my memory is crap because I shove mental models of software architecture into it all day.
This is what I do - most of my picture taking is spontaneous, when I feel that I'm suddenly in a moment that would make a good picture, I'm aware of it, and it is a good moment to take a picture.
The trick for me is that I don't feel particularly compelled to have to take pictures to share with people. My experiences are for me first - to enjoy them, one would have to be enjoying them with me to get the full experience :) .
I once had a pretty strong stance against photography. I come from a culture where everyone takes photos of everything to the point that events seem to circle around it. It was just boring, and I agreed with a philosopher (sorry can't remember which) that when you take a photo, you miss the authentic moment because you're busy manufacturing one.
Now I wish I wasn't that idealistic/arrogant because now I don't have much photos to look at! When I look at my childhood photos, it makes me realise the extent we can sometimes whitewash our own memories of the past.
Though Susan Sontag has already been mentioned, I'll also throw out that Ayn Rand, a female philosopher of arguably lesser validity, was also not very fond of photographs [1]. At least, with respect to its status as works of 'art'.
> A certain type of confusion about the relationship between scientific discoveries and art, leads to a frequently asked question: Is photography an art? The answer is: No. It is a technical, not a creative, skill. Art requires a selective re-creation. A camera cannot perform the basic task of painting: a visual conceptualization, i.e., the creation of a concrete in terms of abstract essentials. The selection of camera angles, lighting or lenses is merely a selection of the means to reproduce various aspects of the given, i.e., of an existing concrete. There is an artistic element in some photographs, which is the result of such selectivity as the photographer can exercise, and some of them can be very beautiful—but the same artistic element (purposeful selectivity) is present in many utilitarian products: in the better kinds of furniture, dress design, automobiles, packaging, etc. The commercial art work in ads (or posters or postage stamps) is frequently done by real artists and has greater esthetic value than many paintings, but utilitarian objects cannot be classified as works of art.
This is one of those topics that will keep coming up. I first properly noticed this a few years ago whilst strolling around Tate Modern and watching a girl go from exhibit to exhibit just taking a picture without seeming to take in what she was picturing (I might be wrong, how we judge/look at art is different).
Art is maybe different to historical places. Having just come back from Japan, I noticed this whilst walking around shrines and temples, where it felt like conveyor belt tourism. Walk along a path till you hit the "perfect" point for your selfie/shot of said temple, then keep going till you hit the exit. I even came across this sign: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaredce/26366290652/in/album-7... a sign of the times?
I struggled in Japan, my knowledge of the language was completely lacking, and it made me wonder, how do we cater to those who don't speak English in the UK, is it a struggle for those too? Is the selfie destroying culture, or have we not done enough to allow people to understand the thing they're looking at?
I don't think it will keep coming up for long. Cameras are getting cheaper and better fast enough that those interested in recording parts of their vacation will soon find it easier to just record continuously to ensure that whatever they are seeing can be shared. It's a limited-time version of the argument for life-logging. When your headset or glasses take a photo of everything in front you all the time, all that's necessary is that you have seen something. The objections related to manual management of cameras and how people aren't really experiencing the moment will be moot.
Of course, we'll replace them with objections to being recorded in public, as we saw with Google Glass, but eventually those will fade, too, as it becomes impossible to know if other people are currently preserving any give moment.
To be fair museums themselves make this worse. I still haven't come across a museum (granted I don't go a lot) that had exhaustive good-quality photographs of all their exhibits available online.
So to give this girl the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is the only time she'll be in London, she only has a few days, and she's genuinely interested in the art, but taking photos of it to inspect it later allows her to enjoy more of it than hanging around carefully looking at individual pieces at the expense of not seeing any of the others at all, ever.
> To be fair museums themselves make this worse. I still haven't come across a museum (granted I don't go a lot) that had exhaustive good-quality photographs of all their exhibits available online.
Bingo. I do go to a lot of art galleries and museums and this is a huge problem. I get back and want to find that item that was very interesting and study it more, and the best I can find is some grainy picture on wikipedia that someone else took.
Well, they have to incentivise you to visit. I can understand why they don't put their pieces online, they want you to come, maybe pay for entrance or donate, buy something from the gift shop. Putting it online is rightly, or wrongly, detracting from that.
Maybe, but that does not make sense to me. If anything, pictures online make me want to go see something in person. Also, the popular pieces can usually be found online which does not fit the model of must come to see. My guess is the less popular pieces are so numerous that it is too expensive to properly photograph and host images of everything.
That's personal I guess, for me both can evoke the same feelings of wonder of what humankind can do. And for both, I have never felt the same, nor have been as blown away by the real thing as by a picture. Maybe I just lack imagination, who knows? For example: I have seen tons of pictures and documentaries of the colosseum in Rome. Sure they give me a feeling of being impressed etc, but none of them do the same to as when actually standing next to the colosseum and looking at it.
That's personal I guess, for me both can evoke the same feelings of wonder of what humankind can do.
Sorry you're right, it is personal. But, maybe, it's easier to explain why Monks, Kings or Militia built/destroyed something than it is to say why Rothko/Woody Allen/Rembrandt painted/filmed/wrote something a certain way. I'm probably wrong, my knowledge of art isn't particularly great.
So what I was trying to say that, yes you can get a feeling from art, but understanding it is harder, or explaining it is harder, so taking a photo/selfie of the Mona Lisa is maybe more acceptable than the conveyor belt selfie of temples/canyons/great buildings.
I've had to do this several times before, simply because I'm often with people (i.e. parents or friends) who don't have the patience for me to stop at every placard and read the context, they just want to take in everything for a few seconds and move on.
I often have to take pictures of this stuff and not read it until later just so I don't lose sight of them.
This hits pretty close to home for me. I'm lucky enough to work remotely, and for the past ~year I've been living abroad. I'm also a huge Instagram user. I have somewhere around 700 photos, most of which are travel-related and have 5-10 hashtags each.
I've felt the same thing as the author, dozens of times. I've gone out of my way multiple times to simply take a cool Instagram photo and wait for the likes to come in.
I've been subconsciously looking for an alternative for awhile now. Sketching [1] may be an option, but my drawing skills are a bit rusty. Maybe I'll just take photos but upload them to my own site, rather than seek the kudos from random Instagrammers.
Why upload them anywhere? Take the photos and store them on your computer/phone/backup drive. I mean if the goal is to have some nice photos you can look back on but remove the element of crazing likes etc. why even bother uploading them to your own website?
that's exactly what i do. then, i force my photos on my friends in real life next time i see them. then they have to pretend to be amused! it's great fun over drinks.
I went through something really similar. I had joined Instagram as a way of meeting other photographers in the Bay Area, and had a great time shooting with lots of cool people, learning new tricks, and getting feedback. But the turning point for me was when I realized that the reaction (or lack thereof) to my photos could make me unhappy with a photo I had previously really liked. I decided I'd rather take photos to please myself than to please other people.
Now, I shoot, and maintain a photo blog, but it's more or less disconnected from social media. I'm happy to receive critiques on my work, but now when I post a photo it's for me to look at later, rather than to get likes, and it's made me a lot happier.
I was really envious of artists when visiting the major european cities: they really saw the buildings/sculptures. Everyone one just takes a picture and moves along, to finish the Louvre in a single day.
I would have thought the main issue is the sheer number of people who can now afford to go to these exotic locations, rather than the pictures themselves. On the upside I'm able to enjoy places like Devon much more now that the people who packed out the beaches 30 years ago are all off taking pictures at Angkor Wat
I've been a hobby photographer for over 40 years. I've also sold my work.
This past weekend I watched the latest James Bond movie. When I was a kid, I used to love those. Not only was Bond invincible and always cool, but he also traveled to the most exotic places.
Watching the movie yesterday? Meh. Not so much. It occurred to me that with all of the photo sharing going on social media, it takes a lot more than a movie star in a panoramic shot to impress me. In fact, lately when I watch movies, I'm guessing the locations they were shot -- simply because I've seen so many other images of the same place.
I feel that images as a way to say something about yourself, like "Hey, I was here!" probably don't work like they used to. I have some friends that will dump 80 pictures of their day at the beach. Wow. Nobody has a day at the beach that is that memorable.
Images as a way to show your feeling at the time? I don't think they're ever going out of style. I'll take 100-200 shots, then find 1 or 2. Then I'll spend some time in post production making the image match the feeling I had looking at the scene. This may or may not be realistic. I find that I rarely can achieve this effect by pushing pre-canned image processing buttons.
It reminds me of my first trip to the Grand Canyon. My wife and I got out of the car and looked. Wow! Big! Really big! So I took some pictures.
Just then a bus pulls up. Scores of other people get out, all with cameras. Big! It's really big! Many more pictures were taken.
I realized that this was total bullshit. If we go home now, we'll just have yet another picture like 7 million other pictures. It means nothing. So we went hiking down below the rim. (We hiked an hour or two down. It was twice that time coming back up.) It was during this hike that I actually had a personal experience of the Grand Canyon. We met the new superintendent, we chatted with other travelers, we noticed how that once you started interacting with the canyon, it left a completely different experience than just looking at a 2D image.
Technology is giving us a lot of little ways to pretend we're "starring in our own reality show", but most of that is just pretend.
>> If we go home now, we'll just have yet another picture like 7 million other pictures. It means nothing.
If I go somewhere like the Grand Canyon, I don't take a single picture. If I want to see pictures of the Grand Canyon I'll go on the internet and find some professionally shot one and remember that way. I'll let the pros take care of the pictures and I'll just enjoy seeing the real thing with my own eyes.
I wish I had just a couple of photographs of my misspent youth (15 to 20 / 1994 to 1999). I spent a lot of time socialising/drinking/partying with a big social group of friends. Pre-digital era, nobody ever took a picture. With hindsight I should have taken just a few to reminisce with in my old age.
Do you really think so? I wish I had your optimism.
I'm pretty sure that in 5-10 years the tabloid press will do their best to dredge up the old social media photos of anyone in the public eye, and turn it into 'journalism' with their usual tone of faux-outrage. And people will still keep coming back and giving pageviews to the Daily Mail.
I really hope I'm wrong and you're right, and the explosion of online sharing will mean we're all more accepting of the fact that people do silly things when they're young which shouldn't be held against them forever. I just can't see it happening.
The response to "celebrity X has a sex tape" is already "meh, so what? I've got a few too". The same thing has happened with drug use - in my lifetime we've gone from Clinton saying "I tried pot, but of course I didn't inhale it" to an understanding that it's unremarkable to have smoked some marijuana in early adulthood.
When the kids today growing up with social media from childhood start applying for jobs and running for office, it'll be hard to find candidates without something you can find... and you'll probably be wondering if they're secretly a serial killer with such a clean record.
People have been taking photos of their vacations, printing them and then making other people view them, for decades now. Nothing has changed except the amount of photos and instantaneous method of posting. Don't worry, technology is not ruining anything in this case.
It's ruining it for me if I have to dodge selfie sticks and migrate my way through a hoard of tourists too busy paying attention to the photos they have just taken on their phones.
If you find being around people ruins your vacation, then perhaps you should stop taking vacations to places full of people. The world is full of isolated places where you can be alone.
Sounds like you have a problem with selfie sticks (as do I!), and not picture taking. I take a lot of pictures on vacation. Between my iphone and my dslr I might have 1-2k pictures taken over 2 weeks. Many of them are the same picture with different settings as I 'play' around. I always pay attention to what is happening around me and am considerate of others.
I've been following some friends' travels through southeast Asia over the last six months via Instagram, and it's been great. Seems like they're having a great time, and I like being able to talk to them about what they're seeing, doing, and eating. Bummer this other person felt her vacation was ruined by what she chose to do.
> That scene — the fight for the perfect Instagram
Ok so either one of two things has happened here:
a) the author believes every person who takes a photo on a smartphone is using Instagram.
b) the author is part of a group of people who have replaced the word "photo(graph)" with "Instagram" in their vocabulary, similar to how "kleenex" is often used in America instead of "tissue".
I honestly don't know which is more likely, but they're both fucking ridiculous.
I've noticed an increase of what I call people documenting their experience at events, and circulating that documentation.
This predates Instagram - I was at a Dylan concert at Bluesfest in Ottawa circa 2007, and a noticed lot of folks spent significant effort getting audio/video clips (and presumably sharing them using their method of choice based on time spent banging away on their phones after capturing the clip). There were even noticeable numbers of folks calling people and holding their phones up for the other end to hear.
It's a little weird - it has an element of having to prove to people that you're at a some big event and experiencing something that other people aren't.
My own preference is to Be There Now (apologies to Ram Dass) and soak in the experience. Of course spending time noting other people not being in the moment in turn diminishes my own focus.
I am saddened by what I perceive as a lessening of being in an experience with the people around you, and a need to prove to people that you're a part of something exciting, perhaps even some 'I'm Here and You're Not'.
Instagram is just the way of sharing experiences, no less important than, you know, talking about things.
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Except Instagram users (and every other social network) is not about "sharing". They're about broadcasting. If it was about sharing then there would regularly be multi-way conversations between users. Instagram is about posting a picture and receiving likes and comments in response, but that's where the conversation ends. That isn't "social" by any definition I understand.
Instagram and Facebook travel photos are the contemporary equivalent of postcards to friends and family back home. I agree it's important not to make capturing a good photo the most important part of your vacation, but while a few people are going to fall into that trap, for most of us the photos serve as a way to remind us of the experience and share it with our loved ones. The fact that photos are so easy to take these days is a problem, sure, but give it another couple of decades, and our life-capture gear embedded in our clothing will record 360-degree video and audio of our entire lives and we'll have mini-drones that will capture our selfies for us, or maybe we'll just be able to stand in any spot in the world and smile and think "selfie" and the surveillance-industrial complex will take the 3D image of us in our surroundings it constantly keeps built from universal surveillance and mark that moment specifically to share with our list of approved cohorts.
>... and our life-capture gear embedded in our clothing will record 360-degree video and audio of our entire lives...
I disagree. This could be happening now. The reason it is not is because the vast majority of our day is boring. And then there's the disgusting biological acts we have to do to stay alive. Nobody wants to record all that.
Could possibly be. I didn't get on a plane til I was 17 and that was a domestic flight. And didn't get overseas until I was 19 and my grandparents paid for it, and we had family overseas. It just wasn't financially possible for a (reasonably financially stable) working class family like ours to fly.
Not knowing how old you are, or where you hail from, but I was able to travel a lot when I was a young teen during the 80s (in the UK), just by having a different priority on my money than my friends. My mother was living on disability, so I got all my money from part time work.
But I saved like a madman to travel. Looking back on photos from when I was 14-15, you can see that most of my clothing was old and out of fashion, I never had the latest music, or went to concerts or other things that my friends did, but all my cash went on travel (and computers :)
Granted, most of my early travel was just by bus, ferry and thumb, and being next to Europe helped too.
The main thing is that airfare is really cheap. Firstly, it's got cheaper because of efficiency savings and economies of scale.
Secondly, people's incomes have risen way quicker than the cost of airfare. It's reasonable for someone in the working class - making say $20/hr - to be able to afford a $400 round trip to another continent. Many destinations are really cheap when you get there, too.
Depends how far in advance you book and where you're flying from. Poking around www.google.com/flights I found plenty of flights from New York to various cities in Europe in October for less than $450
Of course it is cheaper if you live in a hub. NYC, ATL, CLT, all have cheap flights. My guess is that most people do not live within easy driving distance of those places and have to pay the local airport premium.
If you live in Europe and plan couple months ahead you can buy international flights with Ryanair or any other budget airline for as little as $50, round trip. So it's perfectly possible for a student to go for a weekend in Paris or London, staying at youth hostels or AirBnB locations. If you don't mind taking a bus it's even cheaper, my friends just booked a bus to London(from North of England, so not quite international, but still) for $7 because they booked it 4 months in advance and the bus leaves at 1am so it's not very popular.
The biggest boon to my traveling was a) go to cheaper places b) AirBnb c) off season or shoulders. Croatia is amazing and inexpensive, although I would make sure to go in the summer to experience the beaches. Hungary is the same and is nice in the fall/spring. Slovenia is a beautiful country. Even Prague can be affordable on the 'shoulders'. Flights are still pricey, but even they are cheaper if you avoid the 3 months of the summer.
I have even touched on SEA which appears to be the younger persons favorite inexpensive place to go.
Oh man, you brought back a few memories of when I tried internet dating. So many posed photos next to world landmarks. Look at me! I'm well travelled! Look how interesting and fun I am!
I don't take more than a few pictures on vacation anymore. Ive learned I can enjoy the experience more if I'm not worried about trying to take pics of everything. Better yet, my memories of the experience are better than the pictures I used to take. Giving up "must capture this moment" mentality allows me to be present in the moment. It is very liberating.
I'm actually finding the opposite. I used to take no pictures at all, and now we take a nice big camera when we go on vacation. I'm amazed at how little I remembered about the details, and the photos bring that flooding back.
Of course, this assumes there were memorable things happening in the first place. If you just saw the sites and that was it, then the pictures aren't actually any better than any else's pictures... And to be fair, other pictures are usually just about as good for most memories.
A picture of the Kaminarimon gate in Tokyo isn't actually that different between pictures, after all. A picture of a certain event (parade?) with it in the background would be different. And pictures of an event like a wedding would be very unique.
You only need a couple though. Like the old days, do some stuff, snap a couple photos along the way, usually only one person in the group even had a camera.
It's not just holidays that this is a problem, even just communal domestic activities like concerts are full of people watching the action from behind the glare of their phone screen
I mean, smartphone cameras basically ruined everything; I remember grousing over people pulling out their phones at concerts - and at any other momentous event, basically.
My problem with the trend is that there's a growing trend for people to experience things through a medium - or filter - rather than directly, and they miss out on a lot by doing so. With photographs (and Instagram), you can have your cake and eat it too, of course, but I'm bummed about the camera phone as a permament intermediary between us and the real world.
One day mid last year I decided to delete all my 10000 photos spanning a decade. The reason built up gradually and it was the emotions these photos evoked that did nothing but get in my way of enjoying/experiencing the now.
Whatever's significant enough to be important, I remember. I feel a lot more free and happier by not hanging on details of the past.
In contrast, I think writings, like diary and poetry are much more useful to keep, because they can be interpreted differently over time which means they can be related to at the time of reading, years later.
Photographs are pretty much as detailed as a painting could be. Writing and poetry however is like a 5 minute sketch where you can fill in the details based on your current state.
Photographers know the "photographers look" since a long time. Not taking the camera with you was an easy fix, but you still have the automatic framing of everything you see in your head, just learn not to act on it.
As with many things: If it's important to you, just try to change habits. Learn some impulse-control instead of forcing arbitrary rules or restrictions upon yourself.
(disclaimer: i didn't read the article and suppose it's the usual whining about new tech and addiction to it)
I can see both sides of this argument and I'm not sure I fall squarely on one of them. I've been on both ends of this.
While I have been on vacations and taken a lot of photos I enjoy while on them, there is something to be said for being present for the experience. That's why, I typically set aside a certain amount of time to take photos, and then I put the camera away. Now, with smartphone cameras, I feel more inclined to take photos of every experience and post them, and I have had second thoughts when doing so- feeling less than present and more involved in putting it on display for others. I guess it's the social aspect that is causing this- taking photos for photos' sake, just for one's own use, I guess is at least somewhat different? Not sure.
It's the same thing that frustrates me about people that take pictures the entire time during a concert. They're missing the experience so they can capture a fraction of it for later instant-reminiscence. What happened to just actually having the experience instead? Sure, snap a shot or two and then enjoy the show, but why watch an entire live experience through a viewfinder or the back of a camera, when it's right there in front of you?
This reminds me of a quote I heard from recent late night channel surfing movie: "The life of Walter Mitty". I probably would have never seen the movie normally but was sort of surprised it wasn't complete crap (FX the channel seems to have penchant at finding movies like that).
There is a line from the sort of venerable Sean Penn:
Yesterday I drove down La Jolla Shores Drive, which is a steep winding road that follows the La Jolla coastline. It was sunset, and the view was magnificent.
Every single person I passed on that road was frozen in place, carefully angling their camera phones to get the perfect sunset picture. It was like an outdoor wax museum.
The author's first anecdote reminded me of what happened when I went to see the Kinkaku-Ji temple in Kyoto. It's a very famous buddhist temple that is covered in gold and reflects over a beautiful pond.
The grounds were specatcular and for the most part I could walk around them without being in too much of a crowd. But at the one point where you could get the "famous" picture of the temple reflecting into water there were a few hundred people shoulder to shoulder trying to hold their phones above everyone else.
This was especially heartbreaking to me at a buddhist temple meant to inspire tranquility and a place where I had hoped people would be able to take in the serenity of the scene instead of fighting for the photo.
In the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" the author Daniel Kahneman states that we remember our memories and that is one of the main reasons that people take photographs on vacations and such rather than being in the moment and actually experiencing.
One research stated that people tend to post the best moments of their life on social media. We want to share our achievements, travels, experiences. It creates a problem for others. They see these pictures and feel that their life is not that awesome and that they should do something wrong. The youth is influenced more than others. From the other hand, Instagram and other social media motivate people to take nice pictures, create interesting descriptions. We get skills that can be used at work if you are on a marketing side :)
Recently I was at a pretty cool rooftop bar in downtown Chicago with a great view of the lake with a couple co workers who hadnt been there before. I try to limit my social media services (if I start using a new one I drop one I've been using) but snapchat seems to be ruining moments for people. My co workers all had to snap everything that was happening rather than just enjoying the moment.
Instagram I understand because you can keep the photo but snapchat is gone in an instant. I dont get it.
I think at least half of the comments here are missing the point. This article is not about photography. The title is not "Photography Is Ruining Vacation". Yet, everyone's here defending photography, as if that's what's being criticized. We've had annoying tourist photography since the invention of the handheld camera, but that's not what the article is about.
The title is saying exactly that. It doesn't provide any insight what's wrong if there's something wrong at all. How long does it take to take an instagram shot? 2-3 seconds? How many do you take on a journey? 50-100? Do the math and divide that with the length of your journey. Taking pics is a marginal activity.
It's easy to judge a class of people, when you have a special event, like a sunrise. But did the author followed them after it passed? No. She just seen an opportunity to bash "modern instagram culture" because she thinks people are not enjoying themselves anymore thanks to a mobile app. The whole article has an everything was better back then feeling which I've seen millions of times.
Nope, I just use photography and "to instragram" interchangeably as people use to google for search although everybody* knows that there's more search engines out there.
This seems like an updated version of what people have been doing for decades: Coach loads of tourists stopping briefly at viewpoints (with the place to stand for the best shot marked by the city on the sidewalk) around beautiful cities, just to take photos, bookended with a cafe and restaurant (writing postcards).
If that's how people want to spend their time and relax its fine by me.
I like how in the closing paragraph the author says he will continue to be the douche with his camera out all the time, which is the real problem he outlines in the article, not the existence of Instagram. But that he sincerely hopes that others will be more responsible. This borders on shoe-gazing hipster parody.
It kinda is the same as all those people who feel the need to share their meal, or with whom they are. Imho it means you are not completely there and thinking of other people who you need to impress. I must admit, i have my moments of weakness, but not so much as other people i follow.
I think in the case of a bunch of parents taking pictures of their kids it isn't for instagram, it's to give those kids the picture so they will remember that day.
I know this will probably be rather controversial, but it's not just instagram, the whole internet is ruining and poisoning and deconstructing whole segments of human interaction and activity and relationship.
It goes far beyond just people posting the best of the idealized pictures they took of idealized places; it goes well into the perversion that social media in general causes that is eating its way through humanity right now where idealized illusions and perceptions are posted to social media that affect others in ways that has never before been experienced by humans. We are simply not socially or even evolutionary adapted to that massive change in human relations at this point, and I can assure you is having real impacts on lives and will only start spinning out of control even more over time.
It is precisely why I deliberately do not post images on social media, not just because it is a security issue to me, but because I am damn sure I don't want to attract the zombie hordes to the places I've discovered around the world just so they can be trampled by ignorant dolts that just want to post a picture online and attract even more people.
It's really a kind of real world network effect that is gripping humanity. Austin, Texas is a good example of a foreshadowing (or is it maybe just a casualty of a transitory phase) world in which social media draws in throngs of people who then smother the thing they ostensibly like and love (Anyone remember the baby dolphin incident?)
The new social media capacity for posting and distribution of awareness, combined with the natural and social amenities of the city and events (ACL and SXSW) caused a flood of people to start migrating like buffalo to a watering hole and they have, for all intents and purposes, fully smothered what made Austin great in the first place and are well underway of trampling and overrunning the rest. Sure, go visit Austin and you'll love it too because you don't know what it was and therefore have no context or baseline, but reality is that things will be AWESOME until there's a break in the pattern. You don't understand that Austin simply does not have the capacity to support the throngs of people that have moved there, which has caused it to essentially collapse what it was; and also does not have the capacity to support larger populations with anything like the amenities that you see in other real cities. Unfortunately, these kinds of things tend to have a long run-up and build-up and an inversely sharp break-point; but the break will come eventually once the city succumbs to the unsustainable pressures. Texas and Austin actually have a long history of exacerbated booms and busts, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out in today's social media world.
Will social media prevent a bust by feeding the ponzi scheme, or will it trigger or fuel the bust as the next big thing becomes the it place to live and work and it drains the city practically overnight as the locust swarm flocks to it's new grazing grounds.
But to get back on track; there is something rather incompatible with prior assumptions about humanity and even things like overpopulation and whether the planet can support such large populations, which do not take into account or include the real world network effects we are seeing with social media. Social media is causing an intensification of the impact of human activity as people start herding far more than ever before and all flocking to the same places and things; and the second something becomes popular on social media is pretty much the death knell by simply being overrun, overwhelmed, and smothered by throngs of people.
> the whole internet is ruining and poisoning and deconstructing whole segments of human interaction and activity and relationship.
Let me correct it for you: The whole internet is CHANGING whole segments of human interaction and [...]
The one constant of life is change. Change doesn't care if it's good or bad, it just is. If you zoom out to a much large scale spices mutate and go extinct. It just how it is.
Lets take it back to people. When writing came out, people lamented that it was ruining oral traditions. When the printing press came out, people complained that it was running writing. When cheap paper backs came out, people complained that everybody could all of a sudden publish and this it would lower the quality of books. Then my teacher complained that handwriting was becoming lost worse because of using keyboards.
All of a sudden if connect everybody in the world to every other person in the world it will have an impact. It will change and alter human interaction.
Now you're free to lament & you are free to not participate, but it doesn't mean that other people don't derive immense value out of internet / instagram / online communications.
I don't even like instagram, but you know whatevs.
> It was just boring, and I agreed with a philosopher (sorry can't remember which) that when you take a photo, you miss the authentic moment because you're busy manufacturing one.
Susan Sontag. It's a pessimistic sentiment that is borne out of insecurity and self-centeredness ("I know what's best for everyone else"), and has nothing to do with the world outside the ego.
> Susan Sontag. It's a pessimistic sentiment that is borne out of insecurity and self-centeredness ("I know what's best for everyone else"), and has nothing to do with the world outside the ego.
That's a pretty terrible summary of Sontag's thesis. Maybe that's what you genuinely took away from her essay, but I can assure you there's a lot more of value in On Photography than that.
It's also a rather dismissive way of taking about perhaps the most famous photographers and filmmaker of the early postmodern era, whose partner also was (and still is) an equally famous photographer.
You don't have to like Sontag, or even agree with her, but you can give her a bit more credit than dismissing everything she wrote as having "nothing to do with the world outside of her ego".
Taking a picture of a sunset is very nice, the distraction of 100 lit up screens filming a full gig video from 100 feet back that will never be watched is something else.
Then don't stand there. The world is a big place, if you find yourself surrounded by 100 lit up screens and you would rather not, take a few steps to the side.
Cameras are destroying memory. Stupid tourists just want to take pictures. Everything is canned. And it's a tourist trap. Thanks to capitalism it all looks and feels the same. Thanks Obama. /scene
Want an authentic experience, go where you are not expected to go as a tourist. Everything else is canned and available on Youtube and Flickr and Instagram and has been for over a decade. Just today I rode of gondola in Italy via Youtube and wondered what the fuss was about and why I would ever do that.
I think you're right, but I also think a lot of people want something different. Most people see something they admire, want to recreate it for themselves, and then share it with their friends and family to show/record that they've done that. It might be the exact same thing that many other people have done, but a lot of people just want to do the experience that they build up in their head.
Sure - there were lots of people crowded around a similar spot at sunrise. It's Angkor Wat, and seeing sunrise there is the kind of thing that most people in attendance are going to do once in their lives. It would be in most travellers top ten things to do before you die list. People are going to want to take photographs.
Did the presence of other people there massively ruin the day for me? No. When sunrise is over, you have at least six hours to wander round the temples completely uninterrupted at your leisure.
If you so choose, you can come back in the afternoon when there are far fewer people around. Do I get an awesome amount of pleasure from looking back at my photos of Angkor and sharing them with friends and family? Yes. Do most of my photos even have me in them at all? No.
It's really impossible to hold the details of an experience like wandering round Angkor in your head for years to come. I'm not going to remember the detail on a specific bas-relief, or the view I got from the top of a specific temple in years to come. Having photographs of these things really helps in that regard and enables me to 'revisit' any time I want.
This is yet another judgy, post-intellectualizing Medium piece whose purpose isn't communicating any particular point but garnering clicks and attention for the author. You really think Instagram ruined your trip to Angkor?
Did you really take the decision - faced with an absolutely awe inspiring monument at sunrise - that the best use of your time and resources was to take a judgmental photo of the people around you? Get over yourself.