
The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos - bspn
https://hyperallergic.com/457945/alarming-homogeneity-of-instagram-travel-photos/
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CydeWeys
How many millions of people are posting on Instagram? How many billions of
photos are on Instagram now?

Is it really so crazy to think that all of those billions of photos, you can
find groupings of 12 that are similarly composed? How many unique photos are
there to take really?

I'd be way more impressed if you could somehow come up with a set of a billion
photos such that there are no compositional groupings across the set. Earth
only has so many types of things on it to photograph.

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asdfasgasdgasdg
I read one bit of utopian fiction where the propagation of digital production
was limited to a nearby social circle. That way, people weren't constantly
comparing their photographs with the best photographer in the world, or their
musical compositions with the best musician in the world. People would
specialize and create things, but for the benefit of their social circle, not
the entire world. I wonder if something like that, but for Instagram, might be
worth considering.

~~~
kkarakk
i don't think comparing your photo with the best photographer in the world is
necessarily a bad thing, it shows you what you haven't learnt yet and how
composition/lighting changes things.

if you translate that into FOMO somehow i think that's on your broken code/way
of living rather than anything else.

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throwaway713
I’ve been seeing a lot of these articles lately. We need someone to write
about the alarming homogeneity of articles about the similarity of Instagram
photos.

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m463
the comments here are alarmingly h... well you know the rest.

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sergeyfilippov
loosely related, but here is an amazing project by Dutch photographer Hans
Eijkelboom (20 years in the making) that explores the topic of 'homogeneity':
[https://www.citylab.com/design/2014/12/20-years-of-photos-
sh...](https://www.citylab.com/design/2014/12/20-years-of-photos-show-just-
how-boring-we-all-are/383781/)

(the book:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0714867152](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0714867152))

~~~
pseudosimus
I think this type of work is much better evidence for the claim of cultural
homogeneity from the article: The photo series are all taken within short time
windows of a couple of hours in the same location.

Instagram on the other hand contains billions of pictures from multiple
locations taken over long periods of time. It is only natural to find some
repetition and much harder to argue how much of that repetition can be
attributed to lack of creativity.

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natecavanaugh
Isn't this akin to complaining if people for access to tools for drawing, that
there would be a lot of fruit bowls out there? The fact is, cameras on cell
phones have brought artistic tools to an incredibly large set of people, and
of course there is to be expected alot of mimicry. But lots of originality can
come through. Browse through Dribbble sometimes. There can be plenty of
creativity in remixes and covers of others work.

~~~
notahacker
I imagine if someone built Instagram for ancient Greek art and analysed it
they could rediscover things like the Golden Ratio. And those Doric columns...
all the same.

And with photography much of it isn't mimicry per se so much as the fact that
humans find a lot of similar things interesting even if they pay no attention
to other people's artwork at all. Even if entirely uninterested in other
people's travel shots, people often find the rowing boat trip they took with
their partner interesting enough to record a picture of their partner taken
from said rowing boat, and so we end up with a lot of shots of partners
sitting in the prow which can't really _not_ be compositionally similar to
other shots of other partners sitting in other boats on other rivers.

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jacob019
Those photos all look amazing. Now I want to replicate those shots and put
them on Instagram.

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lostgame
This comment made my day. :)

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coralreef
This has less to do with Instagram and more to the fact that all art is
derived from other art.

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TheOtherHobbes
It has more to do with the fact that most humans are social and cultural
mimics, and genuine creativity is rare - and not always welcome when it
appears.

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olliej
I feel the the homogeneity is a result of what they’re looking for - people
sharing pictures of their vacations are not the same as people trying to be
“influencers”.

I don’t think any of the travel pictures I see on Instagram of shared albums
on Mac/iOS are like these. But then I’m not following influencers, I’m
following friends and family (travel photos), and dogs (no travel photos, but
definitely dogs)

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alkonaut
If I went to any of those locations I’d take a picture that looks exactly like
that but there is a huge difference - the people in it are _me_ or my close
ones. And the people watching my travel pictures are _our_ friends.

People who follow random people on Instagram are the enigma, not that they all
take the same photos.

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theoh
Trust HN commenters to call into question the (perfectly reasonable) premise
of the article.

The fact that Instagram is visual, not drably textual like HN, shouldn't
really prevent anyone from discerning the fact that there's a significant
amount of imitation, cliché, and trendy conformity in the images people post.

~~~
goshx
In an attempt to appear unique, everyone ends up doing the same thing.

Instagram is just a reflection of what society does in real life. This is
visible in fashion, hair styles, beard, and whatever is the trend now.

I personally don’t understand why so many people have this need to look like
their peers. Does anyone with more social skills have an explanation?

~~~
grkvlt
It's pretty simple, and really not caused by people attempting to appear
unique. There are two main factors: 1. All humans has a need to be accepted
and approved of by their peers, 2. Humans also have an essentially identical
neural architecture and a very similar set of likes and preferences to their
peers. This results in groups of people with similar habits, clothes, and so
on. The vast majority of humans normally want to fit in and conform, rather
than be the odd one out in a group, see the entry on tribalism in any good
anthropology textbook.

Also, anyone who claims not to understand this is either lying, engaging in
some form of virtue signalling or has some sort of mental illness.

~~~
agent008t
But take computer games, for instance. The main character (or any important
character) is usually very different from everyone around them. Both in the
way they act, but also the way they look. Nobody wants to play as the NPC.

To me, that applies to real life as well. But it would seem that a lot of
people want to stand out in a video game/movie/book etc., but conform in real
life?

~~~
theoh
Not everyone can be the protagonist in real life, but they can imitate a
prominent person and thereby associate themselves with that person's success
and prestige. It's a variety of narcissism in which less successful people
deal with their narcissistic urges by becoming "followers".

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_narcissism#The_char...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_narcissism#The_charismatic_leader-
follower_relationship)

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gowld
Black Mirror's Nosedive episode did up all the sets, scenery, costumes, and
makeup as one gigantic Instagram post.

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IanHalbwachs
[https://www.instagram.com/socalitybarbie/](https://www.instagram.com/socalitybarbie/)
would fit into many of these

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TheRealDunkirk
It's like she's got the exact same expression on her face in every picture.
It's almost doll-like.

And if I hadn't been looking for the joke, I'd have done a double take,
because it does look exactly like a real account from a distance.

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tempodox
Shouldn't that be self-evident? Humans have a lot in common and so do the
things they find attractive or memorable. Even if someone attempted to be the
world champion of uniqueness, in a population as large as Instagram users that
would be hard to accomplish.

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Sophistifunk
How is this alarming? Who gives a toss if people who want to be "influencers"
are all doing the same thing? Frankly it makes it easier for the humans to
ignore them.

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adventured
The author is struggling with the fact that humans are overwhelmingly a
mimicry bunch.

Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with it, it's the only way
there can be billions of people. The automation & cloning process when it
comes to personality, choices, behavior, likes, dislikes, etc. saves an
incredible amount of time at scale.

30 minutes spent reading comments on Reddit or Imgur for example reveals that
almost everybody is copying everybody else on there. You see witty lines,
factoids, memes, repeated ad nauseam for years. The moment someone comes up
with something new, it's immediately copied for hopeful points (attention and
validation of existence; I think those things lacking is a serious and common
issue for most people, which is why it works so well as a system in
communities).

Imagine if everyone on Reddit, to post something, had to be original. 99%+ of
the site instantly disappears. The effort or type of brain required to come up
with new, very entertaining memes for example. Humanity wouldn't get anything
else done if that much originality was required of all things, it's a division
of labor applied to social everything.

There's nothing to be alarmed about. In my opinion most people have nothing
interesting or original to contribute (by default I think it would have to be
that way), so they copy everything from the more interesting tiny minority and
it gets passed down the chain in a cascade of mimic. Most of humanity is a
lifestyle and behavior clone top to bottom. Humanity is a tribe of organized
copying, passing down what works from one person to the next to save time.

It takes either a particularly outstanding character/personality/thinking
abnormality, or a large amount of effort, to do something original when the
composition comparison is a billion other people.

~~~
agent008t
Interesting. Kind of like how the evolution of our DNA works - we are
fundamentally just imperfect replicators, introducing random mutations to the
information. Ones that are deemed beneficial are propagated further, others
are ostracized.

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Gatsky
I for one am utterly amazed that a social media platform does not actually
foster creativity and originality. What.A.Surprise

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
One could say the same about HN comments. ;)

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mercer
Congratulations! I tried to be clever and find this exact comment, but
somewhat surprisingly yours is unique!

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tokai
It´s called genre.

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rich-tea
Yeah, some people lack imagination. I used to make electronic music. I lack
imagination. I wasn't good at it. But I had fun doing it nonetheless.

