This Hilarious Video Proves All Travel Instagrams Are The Same
Who's guilty?
If Instagram has taught you anything, apart from how to instantly deepen your insecurities, it's that we humans aren't nearly as original as we think we are. If anything, our hyper-connected existence has stripped us of much of our residual individuality. Whether we consciously use others' buzzed-out content as inspiration for our own, or we absorb it subconsciously via the countless images we consume, the concept of originality is pretty abstract to our modern brains. Everything's a copy of a copy of a copy – including ourselves.
Travel photographs illustrate the human hive mind perfectly. We all love a good travel Instagram or blog, but follow several and you'll probably pick up on a lot of similarities – not just that cliched leaning tower of Pisa pose. Remember that insanely viral girlfriend-leading-boyfriend series of travel photos? Yep, people are still copying that.
In “Instatravel – A Photogenic Mass Tourism Experience,” videographer Oliver Kmia reveals the extent of our travel-photo homogeneity. And as the hilarious video proves, many of the tourists and travel bloggers on Instagram, however creative they might think they're being, are more or less posting the same things.
It doesn't help that the more landmarks and locations we see doing the rounds on Instagram, the more we want to visit ourselves, where we will inevitably perpetuate those near-identical ripples of experience. Ultimately, it makes the world feel small, and – dare we say it – kind of boring. It does beg the question, if we reduce our travel experience to hunting for a series of you-had-to-be-there photos, is it even worth traveling at all?
If you ask us, we should all do ourselves a favor, turn off our phones and get lost in the adventure – content or no content. Life's not a reality TV show, after all.
Watch the video above and let us know what you think in the comments.
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