
Instagram Is Ruining Vacation - pmcpinto
https://backchannel.com/instagram-is-ruining-vacation-701086a67440#.axm8wkawc
======
kristianc
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.

~~~
dominotw
> It would be in most travellers top ten things to do before you die list.

Something that has been bothering me lately. I have no memory of 99% of my
life. No I don't have medical condition, I've spoken to lots of people about
this, my friends who I've spoken to have forgotten their babies first steps,
their baby's first words, first date with their spouse ect which most people
would rate as top moments of their lives.

I am not even sure that the stuff I do remember form my life is actually
accurate or if I've stored them in an edited/modified form that would please
me. I am not even sure if 'me according to me' is a honest representation or
if its just bunch of inaccuracies that I've woven into somewhat consistent
story about myself.

People used to view material goods as good life now it all about 'experiences'
. I just don't understand that constant demand by both society and internally
to have experiences at all costs. We think that without experiences our minds
will become dull and uninteresting, experiences would wake us up from our dull
lives.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> I just don't understand that constant demand by both society and internally
> to have experiences at all costs. We think that without experiences our
> minds will become dull and uninteresting, experiences would wake us up from
> our dull lives.

I don't think we're expecting to wake up.

I think many of us feel totally powerless to live the lives we want to live:
to get the job we want, to buy our parents a house, to be seen by our peers
the way we'd like to be seen. We know we're up against a wall and that to some
degree we're settling for uninteresting things.

But then someone says "the Sistine Chapel has the most beautiful frescos in
the world" and what we hear is "if you can just get your butt here, you can
experience a taste of the best stuff there is". It's a chance to stop thinking
about what we can't have and just think about what we are having and how great
it is.

In some sense, actually experiencing the place isn't really important. In
fact, it's pretty dangerous. If you paid attention you might realize that you
actually don't know anything about antiquities, and you don't actually care
about Michelangelo. Looking deeply at the attraction can only cheapen it.

But if you just stand there, in the spot experts say to stand, and you pay
your money, and the staff do the thing they do when they get the money, then
for a few minutes you can really believe that you have it good.

It's self-actualization as a service.

~~~
zenlikethat
I think you have an interesting line of thought here, but don't underestimate
the dramatic emotional power that great works of art and architecture can have
on us. Such stunning displays of human achievement at once connect us with the
present, past, and future (reflecting on what great works you might leave
behind) all at once.

I know that when I visited the Louvre, for instance, I was inspired at the
sheer grandiosity of the works within. Whether or not experts said it was a
great place to go was irrelevant, I was awestruck either way.

------
dkopi
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.

~~~
bmj
_“Instagram,” Suler said, “is therefore a tool for validating one’s life.”_

I think this is the crux of the issue. You are right--photography has been
part of vacations since cameras were generally available. But what's different
is the real-time nature of sharing those images, and the real time acceptance
(or rejection) of those images via likes and comments. If those are more
important than the lived experience, then, I think we have a problem.

I'm a friendly critic of Instagram (it is the only social media outlet my wife
and I use). It is perfect for sharing images while we travel. It is also easy,
however, to get up checking if folks have liked our photos, or commented on
them. That's not Instagram's fault, of course, but I wouldn't even worry about
such things if we weren't sharing photos almost immediately.

~~~
dilemma
> I think this is the crux of the issue. You are right--photography has been
> part of vacations since cameras were generally available. But what's
> different is the real-time nature of sharing those images, and the real time
> acceptance (or rejection) of those images via likes and comments. If those
> are more important than the lived experience, then, I think we have a
> problem.

Why?

~~~
bmj
I guess it comes down to how you see the world. Personally, I'd rather be
fully immersed in whatever I am experiencing in real life, and not weighed
down by likes and comments on a social media platform.

Edited to add:

I recently came across this quote from Norman Wirzba, a theologian at Duke
University:

 _Media platforms and technological devices are not simply neutral tools that
we use to move through life. Their power is much more extensive, because they
shape and frame what we perceive and understand the wold to be. When people
spend enough time in front of screens, it becomes all but inevitable that the
whole world takes on the character of something to be watched. Given the
technologies we now have for manipulating screens in whatever fashion we like
to suit our own particular tastes, if we find the Mona Lisa boring, no
problem. We can run the image through the Fatify app or add the graphics and
colors we like to make it amusing or better than the original! Should we be
surprised that people often find the world uninteresting and dull?_

~~~
rayiner
Reframe it this way. What's more important: the inert and inanimate
surroundings of Angkor Wat, or sharing that experience with your friends and
family?

When I post a picture on FB or text it, I'm not "looking for social approval."
I'm reaching out to friends who aren't there with me and saying "hey man,
check this out!"

~~~
rangibaby
I would say the former. There are so many things about "being there" that even
the world's best photographer with the world's best camera equipment would
have a hard time capturing. I'm a hobbyist photographer myself, but there are
some times I just want to put my camera away and "take a memory".

~~~
gknoy
My memories of precious moments (first hours with my son, etc) are fragile and
fleeting, and already mostly gone. Most of the time the pictures I take are
not very good at capturing the essence of what I want to remember, but other
times ... it really does. Seeing video of my kids scampering through a park in
Ireland, or photos of them from years ago at the beach capture aspects of them
that I had forgotten.

Often the pictures remind me not of what is in the picture, but help me
remember what I was doing, where I was, and the things around it.

------
peferron
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.

~~~
whiteshadow
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.

------
junko
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
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)

------
JazCE
This is one of those topics that will keep coming up. I first properly noticed
this a few years ago whilst strolling around Tate Modern and watching a girl
go from exhibit to exhibit just taking a picture without seeming to take in
what she was picturing (I might be wrong, how we judge/look at art is
different).

Art is maybe different to historical places. Having just come back from Japan,
I noticed this whilst walking around shrines and temples, where it felt like
conveyor belt tourism. Walk along a path till you hit the "perfect" point for
your selfie/shot of said temple, then keep going till you hit the exit. I even
came across this sign:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaredce/26366290652/in/album-7...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaredce/26366290652/in/album-72157667137331876/)
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?

~~~
avar
To be fair museums themselves make this worse. I still haven't come across a
museum (granted I don't go a lot) that had exhaustive good-quality photographs
of all their exhibits available online.

So to give this girl the benefit of the doubt. Maybe this is the only time
she'll be in London, she only has a few days, and she's genuinely interested
in the art, but taking photos of it to inspect it later allows her to enjoy
more of it than hanging around carefully looking at individual pieces at the
expense of not seeing any of the others at all, ever.

~~~
matwood
> To be fair museums themselves make this worse. I still haven't come across a
> museum (granted I don't go a lot) that had exhaustive good-quality
> photographs of all their exhibits available online.

Bingo. I do go to a lot of art galleries and museums and this is a huge
problem. I get back and want to find that item that was very interesting and
study it more, and the best I can find is some grainy picture on wikipedia
that someone else took.

~~~
JazCE
Well, they have to incentivise you to visit. I can understand why they don't
put their pieces online, they want you to come, maybe pay for entrance or
donate, buy something from the gift shop. Putting it online is rightly, or
wrongly, detracting from that.

~~~
matwood
Maybe, but that does not make sense to me. If anything, pictures online make
me want to go see something in person. Also, the popular pieces can usually be
found online which does not fit the model of must come to see. My guess is the
less popular pieces are so numerous that it is too expensive to properly
photograph and host images of everything.

------
keiferski
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
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
That's an idea. I just don't want them to be tied an immediate dopamine fix.

------
takno
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

------
DanielBMarkham
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.

~~~
bluedino
>> 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.

~~~
dagw
The pictures by the pros won't have my daughter in them.

------
kerrsclyde
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
Maybe the days of your dumb (possibly illegal) youthful times should disappear
and not follow you your entire life?

~~~
ceejayoz
That shift happened so rapidly and so completely that it's not going to wind
up being a big issue, I think.

~~~
J-dawg
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
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.

------
mgiannopoulos
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
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.

~~~
dagw
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
Being around people doesn't ruin my vacation, being around people with their
phones and selfie sticks out does.

~~~
dagw
Then I'd avoid places with lots of selfie sticks.

~~~
malz
Here's a list for starters.

[http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-11-04/no-selfies-
so...](http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2014-11-04/no-selfies-social-media-
bans-at-landmarks)

------
ottonomy
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.

------
oconnor663
[https://xkcd.com/1314/](https://xkcd.com/1314/)

~~~
tunnuz
Exactly.

------
stephenr
> 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.

------
vic-traill
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.

------
atemerev
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
_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.

------
skywhopper
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
>... 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.

------
klean92
People used to compete socially by having the biggest house, the biggest car.

Millenials do it with instagram pictures instead?

~~~
JazCE
_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
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
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
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.

------
nommm-nommm
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
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
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.

------
djhworld
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

------
kmfrk
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.

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

~~~
oxplot
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.

------
z0r
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

------
anotheryou
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)

------
kup0
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?

------
agentgt
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."_

------
peterwwillis
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.

------
habosa
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.

------
manibatra
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.

------
djinny
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 :)

------
Taylor_OD
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.

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

------
ryandrake
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
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
You, also, seem to be confusing photography with Instagram.

~~~
kowdermeister
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
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.

------
quxbar
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.

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

------
wmeredith
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.

------
tikumo
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.

------
jakozaur
Similar as "I Forgot My Phone":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8)

------
bryanrasmussen
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.

------
collyw
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.

------
wahsd
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.

~~~
mtanski
> the whole internet is ruining and poisoning and deconstructing whole
> segments of human interaction and activity and relationship.

Let me correct it for you: The whole internet is CHANGING whole segments of
human interaction and [...]

The one constant of life is change. Change doesn't care if it's good or bad,
it just is. If you zoom out to a much large scale spices mutate and go
extinct. It just how it is.

Lets take it back to people. When writing came out, people lamented that it
was ruining oral traditions. When the printing press came out, people
complained that it was running writing. When cheap paper backs came out,
people complained that everybody could all of a sudden publish and this it
would lower the quality of books. Then my teacher complained that handwriting
was becoming lost worse because of using keyboards.

All of a sudden if connect everybody in the world to every other person in the
world it will have an impact. It will change and alter human interaction.

Now you're free to lament & you are free to not participate, but it doesn't
mean that other people don't derive immense value out of internet / instagram
/ online communications.

I don't even like instagram, but you know whatevs.

------
miseg
This would be reason enough for me to not take photos on holidays.

Documentting my every-day surroundings sometimes seems more worthwhile.

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

------
mikeokner
> narcisstick

perfect

------
jordache
speak for yourself!

Some people like to capture moments in intricate details.

------
dilemma
> 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
> 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
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
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
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.

~~~
Starwatcher2001
Stepping to the side isn't practical when you've paid money for a seat to see
a band, and can't actually see for the sea of cameras and phones.

------
x5n1
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
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.

