
Paris's Rue Cremieux Has an Instagram Problem - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/03/rue-cremieux-paris-instagram-tourists-where-to-take-pictures/584164/
======
rland
I have been toying with the idea that travel is the ultimate expression of
selfishness and narcissism. I have a place that's very dear to me that is
similarly being eroded by a crush of visitors. They are loud, cause crazy
traffic, carve into the natural rock, fall down cliffs and require medical
help, etc.

20 years ago, you might have had 3-4 people on a given weekday sunset visiting
to see the view. Now, that number is probably approaching 100. On weekends
it's a throng of people, almost like standing room only.

It's a beautiful place, and it's inarguable that anyone should be able to see
and enjoy it. But really, are most of those people there to see the beauty of
the place? Would they be there if not for the opportunity to post it on social
media? It's not like this is a hidden spot whose location was revealed by
social media. It's a well known natural area. It just didn't get this crowded
until it became hip to take photos of yourself in some beautiful place.

And then I realize, this is what people who live in areas with real tourism
must feel like, except magnified to nightmarish proportions. Travel
contributes greatly to carbon emissions, destroys environments, puts stress on
local wildlife and people... just so that someone can have an ~experience~ for
themselves.

The thing is, I think most people have a great deal of "interesting-ness"
right near home. They just compete globally on Instagram, which requires a
plane ride.

I don't hold this opinion, I'm just trying it on for size -- I've traveled to
a lot of very beautiful places and had cool experiences, so it'd be hugely
hypocritical. But yes, I really dislike the Instagram effect.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
> I have been toying with the idea that travel is the ultimate expression of
> selfishness and narcissism.

travel isn't the problem. People experiencing their lives via the lens of
their phone/camera is. Take pictures by all means. But taking pictures to get
likes from strangers in order to experience it as a valuable memory is
pathological.

Edit: I hate to bring my phone with me when in nature because I feel it robs
me of the experience I could have actually enjoying the moment. My ex always
complained _" why you never take pictures of these special moments?"_ ... If I
would have my eyes on the phone it wouldn't be special. 10 or 20 years later I
still have rich memories of those times where it mattered and I guess not
having a phone/camera with me at the time was big part that it actually became
a great memory.

~~~
afiori
> "why you never take pictures of these special moments?" ... If I would have
> my eyes on the phone it wouldn't be special. 10 or 20 years later I still
> have rich memories of those times where it mattered and I guess not having a
> phone/camera with me at the time was big part that it actually became a
> great memory.

For me it is in the other direction. I do not avoid social media (think I am
on most on them...) but interact sparingly (less than once a month). Still I
am sometimes an obsessive photographer exactly because I know I have a
terrible memory.

------
warp_factor
Funny how the whole thing with traveling evolved over time. 10 years ago,
traveling was that hype thing that everyone needed to do a lot to be more
"open and inclusive" and "discover the world".

As another comment said before, travel nowadays tends to become that super
selfish adventure where the only things that matter is to come back with the
best selfies and brag on social networks about how cool it all was. It is not
like that for everyone of course, but I have the feeling for a lot of people
traveling means going to somewhere famous to get a stupid Instagram shot, with
zero concerns for other people or the environment.

Maybe that like everything else, traveling became too easy which started a
race to the bottom for attention and pushing people to do more and more stupid
and selfish things to be seen.

~~~
speedplane
> 10 years ago, traveling was that hype thing that everyone needed to do a lot
> to be more "open and inclusive" ... travel nowadays tends to become that
> super selfish adventure where the only things that matter is to come back
> with the best selfies

Traveling is still extremely important to personal development. The current
development does not negate the importance of the first. It's like saying
reading books is no longer important because everyone today just reads
facebook posts.

~~~
warp_factor
I was privileged enough in my life that I traveled a lot over the last 15
years. I really feel it is more and more difficult to have a genuine
experience sometimes because of all the tourist crowds behaving horribly.

So, yes, it is definitely still possible to go to a remote location in Asia
and be exposed to a different culture, but if you go to any major city, you
will mostly end up in a hostel with loud millenials that don't really care
about anything else than maximizing their own experience.

~~~
dagw
If you're in any major city you can almost certainly go 30 minutes in the
opposite directions the tourists are going and be exposed to a different
culture or find a quite oasis. No need to go to Asia.

~~~
hopler
Or you can watch documentaries to learn about foreign cultures. But anyone can
do that. The true marks of a refined and worldly character are taking
expensive trips to foreign resorts that only better people can afford.

~~~
a_c_s
According to whom? An authentic experience with locals is far more worldly in
my book than dozens of nights spent in a 5-star hotel bubble of luxury.

~~~
S4M
I think you missed the sarcasm in your parent comment.

------
vnorilo
I actually think tourist-y photography reduces the experience of traveling. I
realize for someone deep into photogrphy it may be the opposite.

I remember going to Tanzania for a safari with my dad when he turned 50. It
was amazing and everyone wanted to document everything. This was 2007 so no
Ig.

At some point I realized that staring at my viewfinder is a bit less immersive
than actually looking, smelling and feeling your surroundings. Even the mental
state of looking for frames or photogenic objects oriented me towards thinking
about when _I 'm no longer here_, showing stuff to my friends.

~~~
a2tech
I also don't take photographs when we're traveling. Unless I see my wife
looking particularly charming or the mood strikes me, I just wander around and
look at things.

What I've found is that since EVERYTHING is photographed all the time and I'm
constantly exposed to them, most of these spots to visit are anticlimactic in
the extreme. St Paul's Cathedral? Meh. I've seen everything in it from every
angle shot by professional photographers that have been given access that I'll
never have. Every beach we visit, every set of mountains we hit, I've seen
photographed and captured at its most perfect. My random Sunday afternoon
visit will never live up to it. I still find some enjoyment in it but most of
the joy of a new discovery has been sapped away.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> It might seem curmudgeonly to take issue with what is mostly harmless fun,
but Rue Crémieux is not the sort of place that can be all things to all
people.

Well, what's harmless fun when one person does it becomes an ecological
catastrophe when ten thousand people get wind of it and want a piece of the
fun, too.

I get that people want to get to a nice place. So do I. But when we get there,
and find another ten thousand people who had exactly the same idea, it's not a
nice place anymore. So why does everyone insist on going where everyone else
goes?

I'm Greek and I've seen this first hand in our islands, that are tourist
magnets. I once made the mistake of going for a couple days to Santorini in
the middle of the summer. _Never again_. Such were the throngs of people
trying to get to town that it took us half an hour to advance, shuffling and
bumping on warm human bodies, a distance of a hundred meters or so. I learned
to spend my summers in Athens, where it was calm and quiet with everyone gone.
You could set up a nice game of football in any of the main traffic arteries
if you were so inclined.

Even Athens city, one of the ugliest places on earth, becomes almost pleasant
when you have it all to yourself.

------
CaliforniaKarl
See also Maya Bay — [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-
sh/the_beach_nobody...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-
sh/the_beach_nobody_can_touch) — Covered here two weeks ago in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214357)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207797](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207797)

See also the Tate Modern's viewing deck —
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/12/tate-modern-
neig...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/12/tate-modern-neighbours-
lose-privacy-battle-judge-says-put-net/)

See also Lombard Street

~~~
evgen
And see also Notting Hill -- [https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/please-
stop-influenci...](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/please-stop-
influencing-on-our-doorsteps-notting-hill-residents-tell-unapologetic-social-
media-a4078806.html)

~~~
tinus_hn
The situation has been the same at the Abbey Road crossing for a long time.

~~~
satysin
[https://www.earthcam.com/world/england/london/abbeyroad/?cam...](https://www.earthcam.com/world/england/london/abbeyroad/?cam=abbeyroad_uk)

You usually only have to watch for a few minutes to see people stopping
traffic for a picture. I just saw a group from only a minute of watching!

~~~
Freak_NL
Minutes? Instantly upon opening that link.

Utter pillocks crossing, than turning around to recross the crossing (and
again, and again). Oblivious ninnies stepping out onto the carriage way with
their attention focussed on some or other device in their hands to photograph
the aforementioned pillocks, and Londoners seemingly used to them going about
their business.

------
fffrantz
Instagram also changes/destroy the landscape, as explained here :
[https://youtu.be/Itjc14Fm-gs](https://youtu.be/Itjc14Fm-gs) It's incredible
what people would do for likes...

~~~
908087
Seeing railings put up on previously pristine cliffs to protect idiots from
killing themselves taking selfies is infuriating.

------
baud147258
I've lived in Paris for two years and before that I was in the suburbs and
I've never heard (or seen) that street. Funny how bubbles work.

~~~
bsaul
Born and raised in Paris, lived there all my life, and never been in that
street nor did i know about it either.

But that’s not so surprising. Local people usually don’t explore as much as
tourists. They have their daily routines and eventually go to places for a
reason. I actually often ask a non french friend of mine to bring me to new
places because she still kept that explorer mentality. She knows Paris better
than i do in some ways.

~~~
etiennemarcel
I think it's sad... I've lived in Paris for the last 15 years and have
explored a lot of the city (but still have a lot to see). I remember a
colleague, born and raised in the western suburbs, who saw the Opera for the
first time the other day when he had to walk to the office because the metro
from Saint-Lazare was out of order.

~~~
bsaul
suburb vs Paris is also something else. I had the exact same experience two
times: once with the opera , and another with montmartre’s sacré coeur ( she
didn’t even know what that was, she just told me « that’s nice, what is it ?
»). I was in a bit of a shock.

------
mynegation
I imagine Rue Cremieux had this problem before, just less pronounced. Even
more interesting when Instagram _creates_ the buzz for the places not visited
much, if at all, before, e.g. sunflower farms announcing it is cloed to
visitors, forever: [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-how-the-
quest...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-how-the-quest-for-
the-perfect-selfie-forced-an-ontario-sunflower-farm/)

------
mrleiter
>"When someone says they’re addicted to travel, at least I know they’ve never
been addicted to anything or known anyone with an addiction, and, unrelated,
are probably as insufferable as the budding astrologers." [0]

This is from a brilliantly honest and short essay about the Tinder culture and
its impact on the author. Well worth a read.

[0] [http://www.stilldrinking.com/this-is-not-about-
tinder](http://www.stilldrinking.com/this-is-not-about-tinder)

------
oliv__
Not Instagram, but in the same vein I always wonder when Google Maps takes me
through seemingly quiet/random streets --through a path probably determined by
the algorithm to be fastest but which I otherwise would've never driven
through--, I wonder how much that affects the street residents and whether it
can ruin a stretch of town, just because it happens to be on the path to a
popular destination.

Does anyone have anecdotes on this?

~~~
blcArmadillo
There was this story from awhile back:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-
homeowner...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/traffic-weary-homeowners-
and-waze-are-at-war-again-guess-whos-
winning/2016/06/05/c466df46-299d-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html?utm_term=.24787ac735c0).
Below is the key part:

> When the traffic on Timothy Connor’s quiet Maryland street suddenly jumped
> by several hundred cars an hour, he knew who was partly to blame: the
> disembodied female voice he could hear through the occasional open window
> saying, “Continue on Elm Avenue . . . .”

> The marked detour around a months-long road repair was several blocks away.
> But plenty of drivers were finding a shortcut past Connor’s Takoma Park
> house, slaloming around dog walkers and curbside basketball hoops, thanks to
> Waze and other navigation apps.

> “I could see them looking down at their phones,” said Connor, a water
> engineer at a federal agency. “We had traffic jams, people were honking. It
> was pretty harrowing.”

> And so Connor borrowed a tactic he read about from the car wars of Southern
> California and other traffic-weary regions: He became a Waze impostor. Every
> rush hour, he went on the Google-owned social-media app and posted false
> reports of a wreck, speed trap or other blockage on his street, hoping to
> deflect some of the flow.

> He continued his guerrilla counterattack for two weeks before the app booted
> him off, apparently detecting a saboteur in its ranks. That made Connor a
> casualty in the social-media skirmishes erupting across the country as
> neighborhoods try to contend with suddenly savvy drivers finding their way
> on routes that were once all but secret.

------
chenxi
If we have figured out how to get thousands of people to show up at a
particular spot, to all take the same pic, shouldn't it be possible to get
thousands of people to show up at a spot to do something more productive?

We need "Herd Hackers". The herd mind needs a good kick in the right direction
once in a while.

~~~
Scoundreller
Just set up a chromakey at a strip mall.

Charge users $24.95/month to take more selfies with new backgrounds.

“Sell” the franchise for $199/month to anyone that wants to set one up.

$499/month for the enterprise plan (twice the features for half the
stability).

~~~
scruffyherder
I too have read 'we can remember it for you wholesale'

~~~
Scoundreller
I haven’t, but my brother probably has.

I blame him for contaminating my mind with all of these concepts.

------
jacquesm
The whole world has an instagram problem. The biggest annoyance to me is
people who basically just go to places to be able to send you proof that
they've been there. The epitome of that is people who will travel to some
exotic place for New Years Eve just so they can send you a Happy New Year text
adding 'from Zanzibar' or wherever they've decided to park their suitcase for
that one evening.

~~~
bjoernw
I don't think the tool is the problem. We just have more people, flights are
cheaper, and younger generations value experiences more than buying property
and starting families. People used to send postcards, now it's digital.

~~~
908087
Sending postcards to a few friends isn't the same thing as immediately
broadcasting them to millions of people in seek of points on a gamified
bragging platform.

------
gregoriol
Rue Cremieux doesn't have an Instagram problem: rue Cremieux chose to be
unique, and preserve that uniqueness. The popularity is deserved, and I think
this "Instagram problem" story is part of the marketing around it.

Everything that stands out, that is remarquable, attracts attention and
curiosity, that's what to expect. If you don't want that, don't make yourself
stand out.

~~~
who-knows95
what about this
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/philipp...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/philippines/articles/boracay-
closure-when-will-island-reopen/)

~~~
gregoriol
A little bit different but still, as with all movie locations, someone sets a
movie at some place, someone at local gov (or owner) gave the authorisation,
expect then that a lot people are going to go there. Same with a lot of famous
movie places/houses/...

I'd say that the opposite idea would be more something like Abbey Road's
Beatle picture: that one likely didn't have planning/authorisation, but
changed the place for a long long time.

------
addicted
The particular street has obviously been attractive for a while. And Paris is
one of the most visited cities in the world (if not the most).

So what has changed here? Has the instagrammability of this street led to more
people visiting it? Or has the need and desire to photograph and broadcast
your entire trip led to people taking more choreographed and more elaborate
photos?

If it’s the former, then the issue appears to be that Instagram has changed
tourist preferences. If it’s the latter, then it appears to have changed not
just preferences, but behavior, where tourists don’t visit a place to enjoy
their visit, but rather to broadcast that they have visited it.

~~~
netsharc
I suppose in a world without Instagram, people would just walk through the
street and enjoy it, maybe take a few pics to show during their "My trip to
France" slideshow for friends and family in their living room, but with
Instagram, it's morons jumping up and down dancing and doing silly poses.

------
matt_the_bass
I’ve often struggled with the question of what does it mean to visit a place.
Does it mean take pictures, walk the streets, talk to locals? What qualifies
as a visit?

If I stay inside someone’s home for a week spending time with them but not
leaving the house, does that count as visiting that city/state/country?

What about if I walk the streets for 3 days but don’t talk to anyone local?

Do I need to spend money? Do I need to visit tourist sites? Do I need to visit
a museum?

I like to record memories but I don’t post or tweet or gram. Does that mean
I’m visiting? Or not visiting?

------
loosetypes
While less of a nuisance, growing up in sf, the Full House house became my
barometer for tourist-levels.

I never watched the show, so when people asked me for directions I used to
assume they meant the painted ladies.

Gradually I realized I was wrong: Nowadays, more often than not, there's a
line of people waiting out front to pose and cars double parked.

Apparently the remodeling is explicitly to change its appearance in order that
people will stop.

I've heard similar stories for the Mrs. Doubtfire house.

------
who-knows95
my favourite example of this is;

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
scotland-45146681](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45146681)

rock stacking, used in the mountains to mark a safe path, and used by idiots
to be ~hip~ on IG.

it causes a real stress on local resources and causes aggravated erosion.

i have travelled alot, but dear god i hate the american/western style of doing
it.

~~~
driverdan
I hate that so much. Cairns as trail markers are fine but people who leave
rock stacks all over the place are a scourge.

If you want to stack rocks that's fine. Just make sure you put the stones back
when you're done.

~~~
who-knows95
i know, i don't understand it. it's like people who carve their names into
rocks/trees.

damaging a shared resource so you can feel like your name will preserve, is
the highest level of narcissism.

------
maelito
Paris needs more pedestrian (and coloured) streets.

------
yardie
At first, I thought this was the neighborhood near me with cobblestone streets
and small houses near me. Glad to see it’s not and that lovely neighborhood is
still unknown and unspoilt.

Won’t list it here, it’s in the 19th. ;-)

------
gangstead
Couldn't the residents paint the houses more boring colors, reducing demand to
visit the street?

------
thundergolfer
Seems like a straightforward problem with the solution suggested by the street
occupants also being straightforward.

Though I loathe Instagram-tourism, it's existence isn't exceptionally
problematic to these places. It's just one factor amongst many.

------
sametmax
Most touristic places suffer from this.

If you go to Nice after june, the streets are a terrible place to be.

If you go to the Mont Saint michel in the summer, same.

Venice in Italia is like that during the whole year.

Living in those places make you hate tourists, even when you make money with
it.

~~~
dagw
_Venice in Italia is like that during the whole year._

I was in Venice in mid-September a few years ago and it wasn't bad at all.
Even places like the Piazza San Marco weren't really crowded. Go a few hundred
meters away from the main attractions and the streets where empty. The only
crowds we really saw where a few hours one day when a cruise ship showed up.

------
waylandsmithers
The suburban answer to this would be to turn on your front lawn sprinklers. No
confrontation is necessary and the passers-by are gently moved along.

------
lm28469
The deeper issue is that the shift from "being" to "having", and "having" to
"appearing" never slowed down since it was first theorised. Instagram doesn't
serve any purpose other than fulfilling narcissistic people and people in need
of exterior approval, and, even worse, it does it in a self reinforcing way.
It’s the epitome of individualism. The few social aspects that I'm reluctant
to even give to Facebook aren't on ig at all.

It is quite the invention, it both feeds on and nourishes the worst traits of
the human brain. Everyone is against these vile dystopian societies described
in so many books, all the while the seeds of these societies have been planted
during our lifetime and we’re all watering and cherishing them.

Travel used to be about the journey just as much as it was about the
destination, not by choice, but by constraints. Nowadays it's mostly about
snapping a low quality pic of a sight people already know [0], going from A to
B the fastest and cheapest way, packed like cattle in ultra dense flying or
rolling metal cages, wreaking havoc on local environment and populations.
After mass producing food, cars, culture, we’re now mass producing
“experiences”, and they inherit the same traits as other mass manufactured
goods: they’re cheap, meaningless, repeatable, bland, and most of all they’re
not going to bring you the long lasting “happiness” you expect.

No amount of text will convey what you feel when you get to Grand Canyon,
Yosemite, the Louvre or other known places. The beauty of the place is dead,
all you are left with is a chaotic heap of people shielding their faces from
the very thing they came to “experience” behind cameras and phone.

Some people in this thread seems to think that the money brought by tourism
counter balances everything. If your only metric is economic growth I have
good news for you: a lot of modern issues can be ignored, maybe even all of
them.

[0] [https://www.boredpanda.com/social-media-instagram-
identical-...](https://www.boredpanda.com/social-media-instagram-identical-
photos/)

Debord puts it better than I’ll ever be able to:

“The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated
results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into
appearing, from which all actual “having” must draw its immediate prestige and
its ultimate function. At the same time all individual reality has become
social reality directly dependent on social power and shaped by it” “the more
he contemplates the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing himself in
the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his
own desires.”

“the collective pseudo-displacement of vacations, subscriptions to cultural
consumption, and the sale of sociability itself in the form of “passionate
conversations” and “meetings with personalities.” This sort of spectacular
commodity, which can obviously circulate only because of the increased poverty
of the corresponding realities.”

