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The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos

hyperallergic.com

11–20 of 57 posts

Re: The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos

#11
post #5

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.

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?

Re: The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos

#12

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.

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.

Re: The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos

#13
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.

Re: The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos

#17
post #10
post #2

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…

If you take photos to remember something then you can have a lot of unique photos. While everyone else is chasing the perfect photo you'll have something that is actually true to the memory.

i am like this too. i have lots and lots of janky photos that aren't insta-worthy but fulfill their core purpose as little time machines

Re: The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos

#19
post #2

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…

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.

Re: The Homogeneity of Instagram Travel Photos

#20
post #11
post #5

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.

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?

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.

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