Any one should be able to visit any national park, wilderness area, or other beautiful place and take as many pictures as they want... as long as they follow the rules and regulations.

Park your car where you are supposed to, stay on the trail, don't use a drone if it's not allowed, carry out your trash, don't feed the animals, don't leave your toilet paper under a tree, etc.

Sure I get annoyed when people take too long to snap their photo, but I also get annoyed at people at the grocery store, on the train, etc. You just have to deal with it and go on with your life! Just because some one else likes to take pictures, doesn't mean you should shame them for being a "millennial influencers". But we all should shame the people who don't follow the rules (and these people have been around since before instagram).

True. At the same time, travel has gotten so much cheaper and accessible that it’s really impossible to go anywhere and enjoy it in peace. I chose to go to Paris in dead winter to avoid the summer crowds - the lines were not any shorter. It feels like a long time ago but only a few years ago I was visiting a few national parks and the hiking trails were modestly crowded. In comparison they are all overrun now. The difference I’d say is AirBNB. My choices used to be shitty motels or campgrounds that never have space. Now, it’s a beautiful home by a stream just outside the park in a ranch. Shared with a few friends the cost is a fraction of a hotel room. Hotels were - not sure fully intentionally - used as a mechanism to enforce visitor counts. With AirBnB that equation is out the window. With low cost airlines making flights cheaper and better fuel efficient cars making driving cheaper and AirBnB making stay cheaper and inexpensive, the tourism sector is exploding. I do not think this is sustainable. As with the other cases, these things are externalising the cost to the cities and the parks do deal with.

>it’s really impossible to go anywhere and enjoy it in peace

This is only true for a very limited definition of "anywhere". You can go to Yosemite in the peak season and easily find places where you can't even see another person.

I beg to differ about AirBnB. My experience have been shittier than hotel run places bought by a real estate tycoon making a quick buck. I think AirBnb does little to ensure quality and loves making a quick buck too. I have had more terrible experiences than good experiences. Would not recommend

Don't forget that the CO2 footprint of these things is immense. Though take growth away and things will be come zero-sum; people will try to take things from each other rather than from growth, and will find petty reasons for conflict which will escalate sooner or later. Either way, we're likely f*ed.

I think calling people in to the conversation instead of calling people out is more effective over time--but I totally get what you mean. It's really hard to sit and watch people ruin things you love. Most of _the outdoors_ are designed to be shared experiences and when people go off-trail in sensitive areas or don't pack out trash it really leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

It’s easy to hate on people for wanting to go to a place they’ve seen in a photo and to focus on the fact that they want the same photo there... I think that’s a casual knee-jerk reaction. The impulse to have a destination while traveling isn’t a new one, and people have been taking photos for decades upon decades. The problem is that we now have a platform that concentrates attention so efficiently on the 20% of attractions anywhere someone might go. I don’t know the solution, but shaking our heads at people for wanting to experience the world they live in (even if they aren’t doing it to our creative standards) isn’t going to help, and seems to be how a lot of articles about this topic bait peoples’ attention and ire.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to go to these places and even taking photos of them, there is something greatly wrong with going to places and not respecting them: leaving rubbish, trespassing, damaging properties. This is very much made worse in the modern day of vain instagrammers because instead of taking photos of things, taking selfies is such a trend more than it ever was, which is causing people to climb into/onto things, tresspass and damage. That is not ok.

I don't think trashing of beautiful places is any worse now than previous generations.

I've seen tons of old broken glass and aging trash in the desert. A good amount of southern California has been paved over. Most of the northeast US is private land and the spaces in between given over to vehicles.

Yeah this new wave of disrespect isn't great, but it is nothing new and I don't think the focus should be shaming the instagram selfie crowd. General respect and teaching is still the way to go.

I don't think its new, but, as with everything nowadays, the scale is a lot larger and the desire for vanity pics has increased due to social media.

I have no issue with people taking photos, of themselves or otherwise.

What I find irritating are situations where lovely places become semi-professional photo shoots en-masse, where each group are spending hours trying to get the perfect shot, over and over, with lots of time reviewing the footage before deciding again it’s not quite right.

I think that’s fair and there’s definitely something to be said for having some courtesy and decency, especially in a crowded place.

Social media companies love to tell us about how they're bringing the world together or how they let us share our moments and memories with loved ones, etc. But there is something to be said about the comparison between how the generation before us shared these moments vs how we do.

'Back in the day', you would go on holiday, take a camera and a few rolls of film, snap some photos, and then return home. Perhaps a few days later you might find some time to go and get the film developed. You'd return and get your photos, ready to be shared with friends and family. You'd then set a date, you'd call your loved ones and invite them over for dinner or drinks so you could share your experiences and discuss your photos together. It was a face-to-face, real, personal experience.

Contrast that with the rapid-fire creation and consumption of photos on social media today and you can see how these 'moments' have become more trivial and feel less valuable.

I'm not saying one is inherently better than the other. There are pros and cons to both, but something tells me that if we're talking about "connection" between people, about authentic sharing between friends/family, the older way was better.

More often than not, 'liking' photos on social media ends up being a 'quid pro quo' so that you can get a 'like' in return down the line. There have been studies that show us that social media consumption has a negative effect (especially on younger audiences) on the mental wellbeing of users. Friend counts, likes and shares end up becoming a form of gamification where people chase numbers rather than real meaningful connections.

That is how we ended up in this scenario, where users flock to destinations to simply grab a photo, without ever really taking in their surroundings, just so they can keep up with the Joneses online.

Don't get me wrong, I don't completely blame the tech, the biggest part of the problem is the human condition and the ways we behave - and that aspect hasn't really changed much since we used cameras with rolls of film in them to today - we're still the same, attention-seeking people we were before, but the tech today just amplifies these traits.

Right, the problem is the “likes” or “views” and comments, whatever metric.

Anonymize (hide) the metrics and watch this attention seeking plunge.

Instagram is currently hiding likes in Ireland as part of a test, only the person who uploads the photo sees how many people like it. It will be interesting to see if they roll it out everywhere or decide against it.

That’s interesting and thanks for pointing that out.

Personally I think the converse would be more effective hide the score from the uploader. People upload to gauge their popularity (via image proxy).

Basically I don’t think the issue is, hmmm, what pic got the most likes, do I can get likes too. It’s let me see how many likes I can get on my pic. Obviously people will copycat to go for reproducibility of likes, but are mostly interested in the likes.

So just kill all the social networks? I love your enthusiasm but I don't think it works that way?

I mean if you kill the comments (ignoring "likes and views"), nobody would post anything on Hackernews. Engagement and community building are how message boards and social networks function...

Sorry, with regard to comments it was more geared to the comment count (metric) as well as the aspect (anodyne one-two word fawning comments that don’t engage beyond that).

IDK that killing comment count, likes, upvotes, or your engagement "metrics" really do anything. If I can post a picture and get 100 people saying "Damn, you look so sexy!" imma post that shit even if I'm unable to know exactly how many people just told me how sexy I am!

If you can create a feedback loop, people will use that loop to use that loop to get positive feedback. Unless you eliminate comments entirely, people will keep doing this. And if you remove the counts from your platform, you're just opening yourself up to have a secondary service provider create those metrics and sell them to influencers instead of being able to monetize them yourself.

Again, there's no advantage for a social network to kill its ability to create a community and content on its own. It goes against the model. You want to make this a bigger discussion about corporate responsibility and whatnot, that's a worthwhile conversation. But saying "keep the social platforms, but kill the social part unmeasurable" is a weird place to take it to.

The urge to take photos is weird. I'm travelling at the moment, and it seems everyone's first reaction of seeing something magnificent is... "I've got to take a picture of this!". I'm no exception.

I started asking myself, are we experiencing, or Instagramming?

Pictures are weird.

I've always hated being in pictures, but I wish there were more of my everyday life growing up (including my 20's) to show my son. Digging through my grandparents house and seeing 1000's of photos of fireworks, parades, etc I know what you mean, just enjoy it. But slice of life photos of my grandpa being a young father to my mom and aunts/uncles gives an interesting perspective I'm very glad was captured.

I spent a few weeks in Japan years ago and my favorite photos are the ones with me and other people just bullshitting around. There are probably 1000 photos of mountains, temples,paths, and animals that are essentially meaningless now. I've tasked myself on my last few vacations to ask for more photos, and to try and get as many candid ones as possible, while refraining from taking a bunch of "desktop background" photos I'll never use.

A concern I have now is many of those slice of life photos are being lost to cloud services that shut down (is flicker a thing? did it ever have an e?) or deliberately destroyed as part of snapchat's principle design. I'll get off my soapbox and let be, and just get some hardcopy photos so when my son is digging through my house, maybe he sees something equally interesting.

I'll always remember this really sad story I read somewhere. An old couple had rented early video-recording equipment for a trip to the grand canyon. They took videos of the canyon, and some of the videos included brief accidental glimpses of their young kids in the periphery. Decades later, those glimpses are priceless and precious to the old couple, whereas the videos of the canyon are worthless. "Why did we aim the camera at those stupid cliffs?! Our kids were right there! If only this shot was one more inch to the left..."

For this reason, I almost always ask my wife or kids, if they are with me, to get into the frame if I am photographing nature or a building or something. Maybe not every time, but most of the time. I figure that some day I will enjoy looking at them more than whatever other thing it was that I was taking a picture of at the time.

Snap a photo and then continue experiencing it in the moment. Not sure why it has to be one or the other.

A web service that analyzes ig-unpopular locations and then I go there. most people are oblivious to the fact that beauty can be found almost anywhere. many people don't even seem to have a personal concept of aesthetics which goes beyond popularity.

I agree, people have always been taking photos while traveling or visiting a specific location. Passing blame or shamming individuals for taking selfies does not seem like the proper route to take if there is a problem (which i am not saying there is or isn't). When I was younger I enjoyed taking selfies at spots but as I have aged and studied media in University my perception of the selfie has changed and I think that may be a solution to this - not shamming through articles.

i don't agree with your lion's share blaming (whatever "the problem" translates to - 80%? >50%?) Insta; the person being interviewed also doesn't think Insta is mostly to blame for this

i generally agree with person being interviewed and opine that travel is cheap as hell and the externalities aren't really captured at all - environmental ruin, local destinations ruined for those who actually live there, none of this is accounted for.

one example are bachelor parties in cheapish locales - you're not gonna see most of this on the 'gram, but you can bet the jokers renting the airbnb against local laws are going to be annoying as hell for the people living in the building

i think more and more locales are either going to ban or are going to tax the hell out of this and all it entails (Airbnb, lodging for non-residents, ....). and yeah, sure there are millions of other places in the world, have at it, as long as it's not here - or you're paying out the nose for it, and that $$ is being used to improve local stuff/offset environmental impact

All of my ire is focused on social media, especially instagram. I don't know if it's possible for me to care less about someone I don't know, or barely know, having been somewhere. Finding out what they ate there is even less interesting.

Here in Holland at the fields with all the flowers we have this issue with tourist in general. They walk into the field for a picture, destroying the crop costing the farmer thousands a year.

So the farmer put up a big signs telling people to take pictures outside the field etc. Queue the German/Chinese boomer who conveniently 'did not notice it'... People are just trash

I was in Amsterdam once and saw a sign in the floor indicating that was a selfie spot. I chuckled. People were waiting in line to use it. Maybe farmers should put signs of where it is allowed (and gives you the best angle) instead of where it is not.

Maybe the EU can institute an Instagram tax to mitigate damage and base it on image geolocation so that the areas more overrun get compensated accordingly.

Swiss Alps too and people trampling pastures for selfies. Local farmers have started putting up fake graves and memorials like scarecrows.

electric fence?

This is a stupid manufactured problem. People are visiting cool places and trying to take a cool picture of it. Let’s publicly shame them for it?

i don’t mind either when you see a big picture spot at a famous location and there’s a line of people waiting to get that best pic. if you made the journey out there and want to spend an extra 10 mins to come home with something that will help you remember it and look awesome at the same time, by all means go for it

Well in the case of Maya beach in Thailand, where they have already restricted access, it was having a big environmental impact:

"Today, the almost 5,000 daily visitors to Maya Bay have contributed to the area’s eroding natural beauty, threatening local marine wildlife and sustainability of the ecosystem. Issues like boat anchoring, an excess of pollutants and sunscreen, and irresponsible tourist behaviors have led to a major decline of the coral reef system in the area, according to Andrew Hewett, a spokesperson for the Phi Phi Island Conservation and Preservation Group"

https://theculturetrip.com/asia/thailand/articles/this-beach...

https://www.suretravel.co.za/blog/thailand-restricts-mass-to...

The other problem I see here is people going to popular places and being annoyed that other people are there.

And it’s nothing new.

It was just a lot more expensive.

People used to go with their cameras and invite their friends and family to a slide show when they returned for all the same reasons.

Now that the bottom 95% has the wealth and tools to do it, it’s somehow bad and we’re finding ways to keep them out of these experiences that used to be unavailable.

> People are visiting cool places and trying to take a cool picture of it.

This is not what they're being publicly shamed for. They're being shamed for trespassing, trampling, damaging the locations and littering.

I was abhorred to see a teenage girl pouting for a selfie outside the gatehouse of the Birkenau concentration camp.

Everyone else was ashen faced after an exhausting day of horridness.

I wondered about saying something but decided not to.

Easy to be shocked by this but some slack can be imaginably cut.

I accidentally went to a concentration camp in the Czech Republic without knowing what I was letting myself in for. Sure the sign said 'concentration camp' but I was just cycling by and in need of an excuse to stop, so I took the turning and went in. I hadn't heard of this one before - it was the one the Nazis showed to the Red Cross to show that all was well when it was not. I wasn't quite teenage at the time, but definitely young and ignorant.

My mistake was to offer to take a photo for some American tourists that were there. They seemed to be taking selfies so I just 'helpfully' offered to click the button for them whilst they 'smiled'.

This was obviously insensitive, but I had just casually arrived at the place with no thought. Meanwhile the tourists I had tried to help had planned this visit for months (if not years) and they had lost their whole extended family in Theresenstadt and other places where 'Arbeit Macht Frei'. There is something iconic about ironwork that says that, an impulse to take a photo definitely exists.

But it is all very different if you go there because 'this place looks interesting' rather than because you have thought it through. I learned as much from getting it wrong with offering to help someone with their camera as I did from seeing the bunk beds and barbed wire. I expect your teenage girl pouting learned a lot too.

"You like places where millions were murdered by starvation?"

Especially if this was after she saw that huge pile of human hair they have in Auschwitz.

Social media is a cancer on humanity. It is not benign, as many people still assume. Almost every time the medium is studied, the results show it makes people less happy, susceptible to propaganda, and generally shittier people. I've got an idea, if you really want to keep up with people set up an email list. Or just realize that you don't actually want to keep in touch, as evidenced by the fact that you never actually bother to call the people you claim to want to stay in contact with.

I think the only solution is to restrict access or regulate tourist flow (if feasible). You can't blame people for wanting to take pictures - it's an impulse that's hard to defy unless you are actively thinking about it and have had many thoughts / discussions about it like we are now. Yes, it's sad to see people taking selfies, then looking at their photos and walking away from whatever wonder they were just in front of for the sake of the photo. But hey, that's their prerogative, why should I care? Presumably they paid in time and money to get there so they can do with that time as they please. If we want to protect landmarks, scenic & historic places, we need to control how many people and how much access they are allowed to any given place. The tourist-powered businesses are not going to bite the hand that feeds them so that's a perfect example where the local government can step in and apply regulatory measures.

They do this in a lot of places, partially to conserve the area and prevent what you described and also as an added safety measure. Over-nighting in the Grand Canyon is a great example. I think it's a good idea in most places where the risk of injury or the risk of trampling is too great.

It's kind of a bummer that you have to plan so far ahead for some things. Grand Canyon permits are done during a 1-week opening 5 months before the calendar month you hike in, for example. It's challenging to organize a group when you have kids, jobs, etc. that could change in that time.

2030: you can generate a deepfake selfies portfolio in 500 ms and algorithmically choose the best looking one in another 500 ms, but people still want "the real thing", a real proof they were there. Popular spots offer zero visibility due to selfie sticks. Croatia is the first country to ban phones, in Dubrovnik.

The effect is very pronounced on the Greek island of Santorini. The rise of Instagram (among many other factors) can be correlated with the expansion of tourist season from ~5 months to 10.

Each day, dozens of young brides from every corner of the planet must wait to pose on the scenic steps with blue domes that is present in everyone’s consciousness, in the split-seconds when the shot is free of crowds.

Watching that scene play out over and over, and the general anxiety level of everyone involved, I found to be quite fascinating.

Everyone was working very, very hard to recreate the popularized conception of the experience, rather than just being mentally-present in an otherwise pretty place.

Your point about being present really resonates. When I go out into national parks for a backpack, I’m there to immerse myself in that space. Sometimes I take photos, but never of myself in those places - it’s about preserving what’s imprinted in your mind to look back on later. These photos make great fine art prints that can be given as gifts later on.

The gamification of travel via social capital never sat well with me.

A few years ago, my friend who moved to and now lives in Thailand told me something similar to the contents of the article. Specifically, a quiet beach area that locals would go to became overrun with tourists after Instagrammer with lots of followers posted the location.

I guess I wouldn't mind this if it meant we became more receptive to making life decisions to help preserve the environment, but it seems like the outcome is mostly just about getting addicted to upvotes/likes on digital platforms. Ah well.

The fact that so many millennials are attempting to make a career out of being an 'influencer' or 'digital nomad travel photographer' certainly doesn't help.

Can you blame them? It's that or working a minimum wage job.. which would you take? Have thousands of followers and make money online or work some miserable job for corporate overlords - the choice is not difficult.

Reminds me of Super Sad True Love Story.

"Super Sad True Love Story is the third novel by American writer Gary Shteyngart.[1] The novel takes place in a near-future dystopian New York where life is dominated by media and retail." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Sad_True_Love_Story

Unfortunately the problem here is not the selfie or instagram, its the smartphone.

An incredible tool with side effects people aren't yet capable of dealing with.

The problems with social media mainly exist because we have always on internet and a very good camera in the palm of our hands.

If it were a layer more difficult many of these issues go away.

That said I don't think its socially possible to put it back in the bag, so we'll probably have to simply invent a bigger distraction.

I am about to have this problem right in my back yard. I know the farm field that is 50 feet from my back door is going to grow sunflowers some time soon, and my driveway is the obvious way for people to access it. I have seen cars parked carelessly on major roads in the area when the same farmer used other fields, and I am really not sure what to do when the problem comes to me. I will be fortunate in that the field is slightly hidden and off the road, plus sunflowers can't be planted in the same place every year, so there is only a single season for people to discover and seek out the site. I am just really not looking forward to dealing with all of the people driving down my driveway to get their shot.

There was a similar situation in France on a lavender farm where the farmers put a gigantic sign up to ask Instagram to not destroy the fields. It effectively ruined their shots by being unavoidable in the frame.

You could also try to make lemonade here though. If the demand is there offer a private tour of the fields for $40/ea. Let them take better pictures than the roadside people with the sign and make some cash.

I think that's the only way forward, some kind of obnoxious display to discourage people from even trying.

Wonder if there are ways to disrupt digital lenses while being innocuous to human eye.

This is one at least:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/aud...

Which is already obsolete due to Android's HDR-by-default in all recent phone models.

Put up a gate and charge $50 to access the site :)

I have thought about that. Maybe when the time comes I should make a deal with Farmer Kenny. He really doesn't like the people trampling around to get pictures either, but maybe if I organized it and shared $10/person with him it would be better for everyone.

You should put up a stand and sell "Sunflower Fields Forever"[0] t-shirts for $30, and bundle it with limited edition "Sunflower Misters" for $50.

[0] - You may or may not receive a cease and desist order from Sony/ATV.

Jackson hole has started a campaign called "tag responsible" urging people not to use specific geotags, but I doubt its had any real impact. No place is secret anymore

*People are ruining the world's beautiful places.

Title fixed to remove implication that this is somehow 1- a new problem 2- "young people ruining things"

Oh Jesus! I feel really sad for this new selfie-generation. They just don't know how to enjoy stuff.