11 ms·

Instagram Is Ruining Vacation

220 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

takno 11y ago
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
klean92 11y ago
People used to compete socially by having the biggest house, the biggest car. Millenials do it with instagram pictures instead?
- JazCE 11y ago
  Then I spent 400 bucks on this Just to be like nigga you ain't up on this! - http://genius.com/225037 http://genius.com/225037 I think it's more a case of Millenials (not even really them) being able to afford to go to Angkor Wat or any other exotic destination.
  - cmrdporcupine 11y ago
    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. Now this kind of travel seems routine?
    - nikofeyn 11y ago
      i honestly don't understand how people afford it. i just joined okcupid, and you would think it was a dating site hosted by the travel channel.
      - matwood 11y ago
        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.
      - J-dawg 11y ago
        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!
    - martinald 11y ago
      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.
      - totalrobe 11y ago
        In my experience, $400 in airfare from the US will get you about as far as mexico.
        dagw 11y ago
        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
        matwood 11y ago
        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.
        totalrobe 11y ago
        Yep, NYC to EU isn't too bad but from the DC area $700 roundtrip to europe is a great price.
        matwood 11y ago
        I live in the Southeast and would love a $700 round trip to Europe. Even offseason is still close to $1k and in season is more like $1500.
    - nekopa 11y ago
      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.
    - gambiting 11y ago
      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.
- deleted 11y ago
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JazCE 11y ago
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-72157667137331876/ 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?
- stinos 11y ago
  Art is maybe different to historical places 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.
  - JazCE 11y ago
    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.
x5n1 11y ago
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.
- mikegioia 11y ago
  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.
atemerev 11y ago
I think he had a lot of fun making these pictures, sharing it and writing this story about it. We humans are social animals. Instagram is just the way of sharing experiences, no less important than, you know, talking about things.
- onion2k 11y ago
  Instagram is just the way of sharing experiences, no less important than, you know, talking about things. reply 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.
dkopi 11y ago
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.
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  > I find these types of criticisms of photography just part of the hipster "backpacker mentality" You should actually read the article because the author isn't one of those people.
  - dkopi 11y ago
    "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."
    - onewaystreet 11y ago
      "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."
    - l33tbro 11y ago
      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.
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junko 11y ago
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.
- AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
  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. [1] http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/photography.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/photography.html
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
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.
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- bluedino 11y ago
  >> 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.
jakozaur 11y ago
Similar as "I Forgot My Phone": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8
djhworld 11y ago
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
kerrsclyde 11y ago
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.
- pixl97 11y ago
  Maybe the days of your dumb (possibly illegal) youthful times should disappear and not follow you your entire life?
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    That shift happened so rapidly and so completely that it's not going to wind up being a big issue, I think.
    - J-dawg 11y ago
      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.
      - ceejayoz 11y ago
        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.
skywhopper 11y ago
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.
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  >... 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.
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dilemma 11y ago
> 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.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > 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".
  - dilemma 11y ago
    It's not a summary of her thesis, but where it's coming from. Someone else posted this and it does a better job than I do: https://xkcd.com/1314/ https://xkcd.com/1314/
    - jamespo 11y ago
      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.
      - dagw 11y ago
        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.
mgiannopoulos 11y ago
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.
- noja 11y ago
  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.
  - mgiannopoulos 11y ago
    This is just an issue of not going to the usual tourists-infected places in high-traffic seasons though.
  - dagw 11y ago
    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.
    - noja 11y ago
      Being around people doesn't ruin my vacation, being around people with their phones and selfie sticks out does.
      - dagw 11y ago
        Then I'd avoid places with lots of selfie sticks.
        malz 11y ago
        Here's a list for starters. http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-11-04/no-selfies-social-media-bans-at-landmarks http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-11-04/no-selfies-so...
z0r 11y ago
The real problem is exhibited but not addressed: a plague of insipid descriptions next to each photo followed by a string of dumb hashtags. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong
oconnor663 11y ago
https://xkcd.com/1314/ https://xkcd.com/1314/
- tunnuz 11y ago
  Exactly.
keiferski 11y ago
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. [1] http://www.urbansketchers.org/ http://www.urbansketchers.org/
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  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?
  - keiferski 11y ago
    That's an idea. I just don't want them to be tied an immediate dopamine fix.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    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.
- swah 11y ago
  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.
- kough 11y ago
  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.
kristianc 11y ago
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.
- ozmbie 11y ago
  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..
  - FroshKiller 11y ago
    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?
ottonomy 11y ago
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.
anotheryou 11y ago
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)
agentgt 11y ago
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: "Beautiful things don't ask for attention."
nommm-nommm 11y ago
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.
- wccrawford 11y ago
  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.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    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.
- ams6110 11y ago
  I pretty much stopped taking pictures years ago when I stopped doing film photography. I realized I never looked at them, so why bother?
manibatra 11y ago
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.
kweks 11y ago
Personally, I think the question is more: when photography change from "Look where I was" or "Look at that", to "Look at me"
tikumo 11y ago
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.
miseg 11y ago
This would be reason enough for me to not take photos on holidays. Documentting my every-day surroundings sometimes seems more worthwhile.
wahsd 11y ago
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.
stephenr 11y ago
> 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.
erjjones 11y ago
Why is this a top thread on HN? We are all aware of the fraud in photos. Next...
deleted 11y ago
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peferron 11y ago
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.
- Bahamut 11y ago
  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 :) .
- whiteshadow 11y ago
  I completely agree with you. 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.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  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.
oxplot 11y ago
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.
- lgas 11y ago
  Why can't photos be interpreted differently over time, leading them to be related to at the time of viewing, years later?
  - oxplot 11y ago
    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.
ryandrake 11y ago
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.
- kowdermeister 11y ago
  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.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    You, also, seem to be confusing photography with Instagram.
    - kowdermeister 11y ago
      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. * artistic exaggeration ;)
lttlrck 11y ago
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.
Taylor_OD 11y ago
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.
kup0 11y ago
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?
mikeokner 11y ago
> narcisstick perfect
quxbar 11y ago
I feel like some people will find a way to be shallow and performative about how they live their lives no matter what technology exists.
kmfrk 11y ago
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. I'm not going to blame Instagram for it, though.
jordache 11y ago
speak for yourself! Some people like to capture moments in intricate details.
peterwwillis 11y ago
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.
wmeredith 11y ago
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.
djinny 11y ago
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 :)
djinny 11y ago
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 :)
vic-traill 11y ago
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'. Maybe I should just shutup and watch the show.
collyw 11y ago
My favorite is concerts. People pay a small fortune to see their favorite band live, to watch much of it through a tiny LCD screen.
bryanrasmussen 11y ago
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.
oldmanjay 11y ago
I've come to think of medium as the place to find poor arguments made passionately. Articles like this are why.
habosa 11y ago
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.

220 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

takno 11y ago

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

klean92 11y ago

People used to compete socially by having the biggest house, the biggest car. Millenials do it with instagram pictures instead?

JazCE 11y ago
Then I spent 400 bucks on this Just to be like nigga you ain't up on this! - http://genius.com/225037 http://genius.com/225037 I think it's more a case of Millenials (not even really them) being able to afford to go to Angkor Wat or any other exotic destination.
- cmrdporcupine 11y ago
  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. Now this kind of travel seems routine?
  - nikofeyn 11y ago
    i honestly don't understand how people afford it. i just joined okcupid, and you would think it was a dating site hosted by the travel channel.
    - matwood 11y ago
      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.
    - J-dawg 11y ago
      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!
  - martinald 11y ago
    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.
    - totalrobe 11y ago
      In my experience, $400 in airfare from the US will get you about as far as mexico.
      - dagw 11y ago
        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
        matwood 11y ago
        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.
        totalrobe 11y ago
        Yep, NYC to EU isn't too bad but from the DC area $700 roundtrip to europe is a great price.
        matwood 11y ago
        I live in the Southeast and would love a $700 round trip to Europe. Even offseason is still close to $1k and in season is more like $1500.
  - nekopa 11y ago
    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.
  - gambiting 11y ago
    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.
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JazCE 11y ago

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-72157667137331876/ 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?

stinos 11y ago
Art is maybe different to historical places 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.
- JazCE 11y ago
  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.

x5n1 11y ago

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.

mikegioia 11y ago
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.

atemerev 11y ago

I think he had a lot of fun making these pictures, sharing it and writing this story about it. We humans are social animals. Instagram is just the way of sharing experiences, no less important than, you know, talking about things.

onion2k 11y ago
Instagram is just the way of sharing experiences, no less important than, you know, talking about things. reply 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.

dkopi 11y ago

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.

onewaystreet 11y ago
> I find these types of criticisms of photography just part of the hipster "backpacker mentality" You should actually read the article because the author isn't one of those people.
- dkopi 11y ago
  "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."
  - onewaystreet 11y ago
    "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."
  - l33tbro 11y ago
    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.

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junko 11y ago

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.

AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
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. [1] http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/photography.html http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/photography.html

DanielBMarkham 11y ago

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.

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bluedino 11y ago
>> 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.

jakozaur 11y ago

Similar as "I Forgot My Phone": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8

djhworld 11y ago

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

kerrsclyde 11y ago

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.

pixl97 11y ago
Maybe the days of your dumb (possibly illegal) youthful times should disappear and not follow you your entire life?
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  That shift happened so rapidly and so completely that it's not going to wind up being a big issue, I think.
  - J-dawg 11y ago
    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.
    - ceejayoz 11y ago
      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.

skywhopper 11y ago

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.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
>... 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.

deleted 11y ago

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dilemma 11y ago

> 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.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> 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".
- dilemma 11y ago
  It's not a summary of her thesis, but where it's coming from. Someone else posted this and it does a better job than I do: https://xkcd.com/1314/ https://xkcd.com/1314/
  - jamespo 11y ago
    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.
    - dagw 11y ago
      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.

mgiannopoulos 11y ago

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.

noja 11y ago
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.
- mgiannopoulos 11y ago
  This is just an issue of not going to the usual tourists-infected places in high-traffic seasons though.
- dagw 11y ago
  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.
  - noja 11y ago
    Being around people doesn't ruin my vacation, being around people with their phones and selfie sticks out does.
    - dagw 11y ago
      Then I'd avoid places with lots of selfie sticks.
      - malz 11y ago
        Here's a list for starters. http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-11-04/no-selfies-social-media-bans-at-landmarks http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-11-04/no-selfies-so...

z0r 11y ago

The real problem is exhibited but not addressed: a plague of insipid descriptions next to each photo followed by a string of dumb hashtags. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong

oconnor663 11y ago

https://xkcd.com/1314/ https://xkcd.com/1314/

tunnuz 11y ago
Exactly.

keiferski 11y ago

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. [1] http://www.urbansketchers.org/ http://www.urbansketchers.org/

k-mcgrady 11y ago
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?
- keiferski 11y ago
  That's an idea. I just don't want them to be tied an immediate dopamine fix.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  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.
swah 11y ago
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.
kough 11y ago
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.

kristianc 11y ago

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.

ozmbie 11y ago
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..
- FroshKiller 11y ago
  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?

ottonomy 11y ago

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.

anotheryou 11y ago

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)

agentgt 11y ago

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: "Beautiful things don't ask for attention."

nommm-nommm 11y ago

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.

wccrawford 11y ago
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.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  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.
ams6110 11y ago
I pretty much stopped taking pictures years ago when I stopped doing film photography. I realized I never looked at them, so why bother?

manibatra 11y ago

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.

kweks 11y ago

Personally, I think the question is more: when photography change from "Look where I was" or "Look at that", to "Look at me"

tikumo 11y ago

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.

miseg 11y ago

This would be reason enough for me to not take photos on holidays. Documentting my every-day surroundings sometimes seems more worthwhile.

wahsd 11y ago

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.

stephenr 11y ago

> 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.

erjjones 11y ago

Why is this a top thread on HN? We are all aware of the fraud in photos. Next...

deleted 11y ago

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peferron 11y ago

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.

Bahamut 11y ago
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 :) .
whiteshadow 11y ago
I completely agree with you. 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.
cableshaft 11y ago
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.

oxplot 11y ago

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.

lgas 11y ago
Why can't photos be interpreted differently over time, leading them to be related to at the time of viewing, years later?
- oxplot 11y ago
  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.

ryandrake 11y ago

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.

kowdermeister 11y ago
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.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  You, also, seem to be confusing photography with Instagram.
  - kowdermeister 11y ago
    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. * artistic exaggeration ;)

lttlrck 11y ago

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.

Taylor_OD 11y ago

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.

kup0 11y ago

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?

mikeokner 11y ago

> narcisstick perfect

quxbar 11y ago

I feel like some people will find a way to be shallow and performative about how they live their lives no matter what technology exists.

kmfrk 11y ago

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. I'm not going to blame Instagram for it, though.

jordache 11y ago

speak for yourself! Some people like to capture moments in intricate details.

peterwwillis 11y ago

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.

wmeredith 11y ago

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.

djinny 11y ago

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 :)

djinny 11y ago

vic-traill 11y ago

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'. Maybe I should just shutup and watch the show.

collyw 11y ago

My favorite is concerts. People pay a small fortune to see their favorite band live, to watch much of it through a tiny LCD screen.

bryanrasmussen 11y ago

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.

oldmanjay 11y ago

I've come to think of medium as the place to find poor arguments made passionately. Articles like this are why.

habosa 11y ago

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.