Photographers, Instagrammers: Stop Being So Selfish and Disrespectful

Outrage culture FTW

1% of the population is not the world. Stop saying it is.

And the OP is part of the problem, going somewhere to take a photo? Experience life instead.

I get it's their job and hobby but they are no different in the act, they get the journey so they still get life, but don't pretend their set up photos are real. They are fake, they admit they take days to get a good photo, that .1 of a second in time that really doesn't exist creating a culture of people also wanting that fake .1 second of life. They are feeding the beast.

If anything jumping on a floating bit of ice is actually experiencing the world.

Not really sure we have to say don't trespass and the rest is complaints that now there are so many people you can't 'fake' a photo pretending there are not.

Contrarian opinion: this sounds like a business opportunity to me. I'm pretty sure an enterprising lavender farmer could make a lot more money in season by charging for access to their fields, taking a deposit to cover damage, and selling lavender bunches as props for $20 a pop.

Took my teenage sons to Paris for their first trip abroad last week. Even they were shaking their heads at the ridiculous lengths to which people were going for a selfish pic:

— wearing wedding dresses into the Sacré Cœur and marching past all the no-photo signs to the altar for a fake I-got-married-here pic

— posing unnaturally with rapid-change outfits and accessories in the middle of street traffic on the Pont d’Iéna facing the Eiffel Tower and at l’Arc de Triomphe, ignoring all the honks and drivers and pedestrians alike yelling at them, until a police car stopped and turned on its sirens

— couples dragging strollers with infants and toddlers up to the Mona Lisa to take selfies

— throngs elbowing for position to take a selfie in front of a piece of art—and then moving on without even spending a single moment contemplating or appreciating the artwork

We saw a dozen or more such scenes every day. It was awful.

> To traditional cultures, especially word-based ones such as Islam, this is infinitely more threatening than the B-52s ever were.

Interesting that he wrote this prior to 9/11 (but then again, after the original WTC attack, and the African Embassy attacks).

I went to what can only be described as an "Instagram trap" earlier this month. It was the Rose Mansion exhibit (?) in NYC, I can only describe it as a mix between a fun house where the rooms are explicitly designed for Instagram and a cut rate wine tour. [0]

I sense a market for a consulting firm that specializes in managing photoshoots at locations like the one in the post explicitly for Instagram.

0: https://www.rosewinemansion.com/about-2019