Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
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The Negative Impacts of Influencers' Influence
It’s spring break again San Juan is being overrun by tourists. There’s a conversation happening on the island about how to deal with tourists who are flagrantly ignoring COVID protocols and negatively impacting the health and safety of residents like me. Tourism is definitely not something new in Puerto Rico, but there seems to be a different type of tourism going on these days. I call it Instagram tourism—tourism inspired and intensified by social media.
Influencers are able to draw attention to whatever they want: brands, causes, and places. Each come with their own set of problems, but I want to focus on the spotlight that they shine on places. Instagram has a geotagging option where users can post the location that a certain photo was taken. It could be anything: a restaurant, a museum, or a mountain.
It wasn’t long before these geotags started having nefarious consequences. Influencers have been accused of destroying natural areas with their geotags. There was the 2019 California superbloom incidence in which perfect weather conditions set off a massive bloom of orange poppy flowers—and triggered a crazy social media frenzy. Influencers came from far and wide to delight in the beauty—and also trample all over the poor flowers in the name of getting the ultimate Insta-worthy photograph.
One of my friends is a tiny home-dwelling vagabond and she is constantly posting beautiful photos from yet another breathtaking place. Recently, I noticed her geotags changed to read: “Tag Responsibly, Keep the West Wild.” This is the latest movement to stop influencers from essentially spoiling a good thing. One person posts a spectacular photo of a gorgeous natural place, which reaches their followers. Could be hundreds of thousands of people! Then those people want to take an equally stunning photo, so they traipse to that location—thanks to the handy dandy geotag. Then they share the location with their followers… and the cycle conditions.
What this creates is an oversaturation in certain places—specific restaurants or natural areas that are especially scenic or photogenic. This, in turn, makes those places inaccessible or unenjoyable—both for residents and visitors. Case in point: Diamond Head State Monument in Oahu, which has seen massive tourism numbers in the past and is using the pandemic as an opportunity to re-think their strategy.
Don’t get me wrong! I’m all for people exploring the world! I’m all for people enjoying nature! I’m all for people visiting this beautiful island in the Caribbean. But as I look around and observe the tourists all around me, I wonder how much of their experience is purely for Instagram purposes—and how much of their experiences have been already tailored by Instagram thanks to influencers and geotags. In a world dominated by social media and the image we project to the world, a beautiful breakfast spread becomes “content” and gorgeous scenery equals “likes” galore.
It makes sense that we get our vacation information from social media; we already get everything else from our feeds, from news to entertainment. But what happens when these “Instagrammable destinations” become victims of their own awesomeness?
I’ll leave you with this question posed by a photographer in Iceland who has witnessed many influencers acting irresponsibly in the name of getting an Instagram worthy photo: “Is it about likes and themselves or do they really care about the planet and nature?”
Digital Life Around the Web
Listening to:
Everyone’s a Critic: Would you want a white tourist rating your black Baptist church?
Reading:
Stacy Selby’s newsletter Gathering: “Instagram, with its stories feature, reminds me of Sisyphus with his boulder, rolling it up the hill only to have it roll back down, on an endless loop.”
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