There Are No Girls on the InternetLet's escape December's darkness with a mental vacation to some exotic travel locales. Tulum! Bali! Lisbon! Millions of people visit these popular tourist destinations, but why? Is it for personal growth and discovery, or are we just chasing social rewards by notching another iconic photo on our Instagram page? Maybe it's both!
The idea that "social media has ruined travel" gets brought up a lot by grumbly Internet curmudgeons, but is it true? Bridget took a look at what social science has to say about it and discussed what she found with Producer Mike.
Read the research article by Drs. Lauren A. Siegel, Iis Tussyadiah, and Caroline Scarles
https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2022.2086451
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm bridge Ton and this is there are No Girls.
On the Internet.
So Mike, as I know, you know and some of the listeners by now know if you listen to the last few episodes, I have had kind of a rough few months, and during that time I have basically stopped using social media. I just didn't really have a ton to update anybody on other than you know, another day in the hospital with my dad. And honestly, it was getting to the point where scrolling social media would make me feel bad because when I did check in with what folks were doing online, I was then confronted with all of the ways that everybody around me continued to live their lives while mine had essentially stopped. So during that time when I was off social media, when I took the occasional trip or did the occasional traveling, I was really out of the habit of posting online at all. So I didn't and I realized that with everything going on, not posting about my traveling and my trips actually made me feel weirdly more connected to those experiences. At one point when my dad was in the hospital. I found this campsite near his hospital. Fun fact, it's the only legal campsite in Richmond, Virginia, and so I was able to go to the hospital and do hospital things with my dad during the day and then for the evening retire to this campsite and sort of really get that sort of nature recharge in the evenings I was looking for, like by a campfire. It was probably one of the nicest, coolest, most unique camp sites I've ever been to. But because I wasn't on social media, I wasn't posting about it, and it weirdly felt kind of good to not be posting about it, right, I got to have this experience truly be focused around being something that you know, spiritually nourished me and filled my cup personally, as opposed to really focusing on how do I need to present this to the outside world. How can I validate that this experience is as cool as it feels to be me experiencing it to others via social media? Does that make sense?
It does make sense. It makes a lot of sense to me. You know, a guy that has maybe a couple dozen followers across like all of my social media accounts. Yeah, it makes total sense to be really focused on your own perception of things and not focused on trying to present it to others. You know, maybe not the best strategy for explosive podcast growth, but in terms of personal satisfaction, it feels pretty good.
I was going to say, they say the best relationships and I think this also goes for podcast hosts and podcast producer are one where one person is very online and then the other person is like, never online, It's no idea what's happening online. Maybe that's what we have going on here.
Yeah, that sounds a bit like our dynamic here. I'm happy to play my role of not knowing what the hell is going on and counting on you to tell me all about it.
As you know, I'm still sort of reintegrating back into my life, back into the world, which I gotta say has been challenging, given how depressing a lot of the news is these days, and how depressing the world seems these days. I feel like I got a little bit of a late start to all that, Like I was in my own depressing world, and then when I re entered the rest of you all, I was like, oh, stuff is bleak. Oh, like, oh, everybody else is also really said okay, cool, cool, cool, getting caught up, getting caught up?
Yeah, you thought your dad dying was bad? Did you know about politics?
Truly? I in some ways I was like put lucky to be kind of spared from that, Like election night, I barely tuned into what was going on. I'm going to be sure if I should say this, As far as I know, my dad went to his heavenly home thinking that they were still tallying the votes and that we still didn't know the winner. So I really we've all taken a little bit of a intentional break from what's going on in the new cycle, and so I only want today's episode to sort of be a break from the new cycle, as I'm sort of getting caught up on everything and kind of like travel itself. It'll be a little bit of escape is but a chance to really explore who we are and how we show up in the world without the crushing pressure of dealing with all the disasters waiting for us back home, Which brings me to my central question that I want to talk about today. Similarly to how I didn't really share the details to my very cool, top secret camping spot does social media ruin and take the fun out of travel. So, right off the bat, y'all know that we have kind of a love hate thing going on with social media here at Tangoty. I am not out to demonize social media and say like, oh, it's those damn phones ruining everything, because I think that when we outright demonize technology, it really becomes way too black or white, and then we're not able to come up with reasonable frameworks for its use and for its place in society.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, And as we've said a lot of times on this show, there's a lot of positive things that we get from social media in the Internet. So yeah, trying to flatten things down into simple black and white doesn't really do anybody any good. But isn't it fun to just focus on one negative thing and just like really hate on it for a little while.
You know, it's my absolute favorite. But I mean, I will say I would never have been able to do the amount of meaningful solo travel as a black woman on my own in many places if not for social media. But it is for me often fund to just dig into the research and what people are saying about the negative impacts that social media and technology do have on travel, so pretty high level. There are places that the entire Internet swears up and down have been completely ruined by social media, specifically like influencer types. I think I did a little bit of very unscientific research, and by that I mean I searched on Reddit, and those apparently a bunch of popular touruss deessinations that travelers say are just done. Cross them out. They've been ruined, their cook it's over. Do you want to know some of those destinations?
Yeah, I mean I feel like I probably have a sense. But what did Reddit have to say?
So Portugal, which You're welcome everybody, Mike, You and I spent about a month in Portugal, I guess ruining it for everybody.
Yeah, I guess we caught the tail end because I thought it was awesome. But there were a lot of us there, us non Portuguese.
Oh, if Portugal would have me permanently, I would gladly go. I'm sure me and like a million other Americans. I'm sure saying that right now. Bali, have you ever been there?
No, I've never been to Bali. I've never been to that part of the world. I would love to go, but I guess maybe I shouldn't, but I still want to.
According to Reddit, you maybe missed the boat on that one. I spent about a month in Australia and a lot of Australian's vacation to Bali, because it's not that intense of a flay, like it will be a very intense flight for me coming from the East coast of the United States, and so I sort of had a kind of a fascination with it kind of early on from that trip. But I've never gone. And if you ask Reddit, it's too late. Don't go to Loom, Mexico. Have you ever been there? No?
I haven't. And that's definitely a place that I'm interested in. A lot of people I know have like gone and had really positive experiences. But I do have a lot of hesitation because it just seems so overrun with tourists, and not just tourists, but like a specific type of like all inclusive ayahuasca seeking, like new age tourists to like eat prey, drink margarita. I don't know, it's like it seems kind of fun but also a little like commercial. It seems quite commercial. In twenty twenty four.
So we've talked about this off mic, but I'm you know how I was talking about how I'm not doing Christmas this year. I'm just skipping Christmas, and so I was like, oh, if I don't do Christmas, maybe I'll go to like a yoga or like retreat or something. And so just doing the most preliminary of research. There are so many of them in Tuloom, and I could say, like, all of them look beautiful. It's like these really picturesque, instagrammable places, but I cannot not see that and wonder, like, what exactly is the impact that a bunch of non Mexican people coming to to Loom to do a mindfulness retreat or a yoga retreat or whatever. I cannot see these beautifully instagrammable pictures and not wonder what is the impact on the locals, Like what is the ecological impact? As beautiful as this stuff all looks, It's just very difficult for me to not see this as a kind of like consumption question.
I think is a particularly difficult question because Tuloom is a great example of a place that I think is marketed as like an ecological paradise of pristine beaches and beautiful jungle and an easy place to just like hang out on the beach and relax and decompress. But meanwhile, going there and enjoying those things is putting a lot of environmental pressure on the very beaches and jungles that that people want to see, and all that relaxation and fun is maybe contributing to a lot of economic inequality and strife. So there's no free lunch.
No.
I feel the exact same way, and part of me thinks it's kind of funny because taking a step back, the threads I was looking at on Reddit with people complaining about these different popular tourist destinations presumably are written by Taurus themselves who are visiting there and then cast whatever blame they have outward towards other people, saying that they're the problem. Like I'm trying to visit this place for vacation and all these tourists keep proving it for me.
I love going to a place and complaining about the tourists me too, And I have to.
Say, I mean, it wouldn't be an episode of There No Girls on the Internet if we didn't ask what is the role of misogyny here? Because all of these threads on redditor people complaining specifically about influencers, and part of you wonders, are these actual influencers, like people who are creating content or is this just sort of a veiled way of hating on women because women are associated with things like travel, blogging and influencing and contact creating, and so it's just a way of hating on things that people associate with women. I always want to ask that, because I do think there has to be some thread of massogity and woman hating going on here with the vitriol that people talk about influencers or perceived influencers going to some of these places. I'm not saying that influencers that their behavior is above reproach, like if you are pushing people over to get your perfect sealthier like holding up traffic, obviously, but part of me wonders, are these actual influencers or are they just like young women traveling that people think are annoying, so they're just hating on them and saying, oh, it's because I hate influencers, they're ruining travel.
Yeah, that's a great question. Is there any signs about this, bridget.
Well, there is actually a ton of research out there about how social media impacts travel behavior. Now, some of it is pretty benign and some of it is really not so benign. So according to the research, social media absolutely does impact where we travel. In a paper called Social Return and Intent to Travel published in Tourism Management, they looked at the concept of what they call social return, and that is the amount of positive social feedback that someone's social media posts about travel will generate. They looked at folks' intentions to visit Cuba, a place that I've traveled and absolutely loved. They picked Cuba because I guess it seemed like kind of an unusual tourism destination, they write. Cuba is considered a novel tourism destination for US travelers, as visitation is still restricted for most US citizens, despite recently restored diplomatic relationships between the US and Cuba. It was chosen as a destination of interest in the study as the inconspicuous consumption of novel tourism destinations is likely to elicit greater social return or status than the consumption of a mainstream tourism destination.
That makes some sense, you know, like rarity is something that people look for if if everybody's going to one place. It's not as cool to go there as compared to like someplace where nobody else is going.
Yeah, I'm trying to remember why I went to Cuba. I went alone. I went kind of on a whim. I think if I don't know, it's been so long now if I remember correctly, I was just looking at places where you could get an easy flight, and it just happened to be someplace that I was like, Oh, this flight is like a deal and it's not too far away. I could do this. I had one of my biggest travel blunders of my entire life going to Havana, Cuba. Have I told you this?
You did? And it was because of that terrible bank that you use. You should I'm always telling you that you should use a good bank like Chase.
That's right, Well, we do use Chase for our business, our shared like business accounts. So shout out to Chase for my personal banking needs. I am not lucky enough to bank with Chase for my personal needs. It's a whole long story. So Chase is not responsible for what happened to me in Cuba, which is that I called my bank my non Chase personal bank, and I said, Hey, I'm traveling to Cuba. What do I need to know when I get there? And the banker said, you'll be fine. Your bank card will work like normal. You could pick out cash like normal. It's basically like banking anywhere else in the United States. I said, cool, that my dumb ass gets on the plane, I don't take out any cash. I land in Cuba, I'm the first things, first time to go to the ATM. The ATM said, I don't think so. You can't use an American bankcard in a Cuban ATM. It turns out there had been some diplomatic change like that week, and so the information I was getting from my personal bank that was not Chase was correct when they told it to me, but I guess became incorrect like days later. So I had to spend the entirety of a week long trip in Havana, Cuba, with like twenty dollars cash to my name and no other way to use money or spend money or really make money. But you know what, thanks to the good people of Cuba, it actually all worked out fine. It actually was not that it actually ended up being fine, and I remember it fondly as one of my best trips solo.
That must have been pretty challenging to get around on twenty dollars.
You know what, I made it work.
Good thing. You're so charming.
Yeah, that was really the saving grace. So back to this study. Basically, they looked at people's intention to go to Cuba and they graded it along what they called the social return scale, which is basically how much love and interest online traveling to Cuba might get on social media. They found that the social return scale also had a positive and significant relationship with the intention to visit Cuba. These results suggest that social return is a salient symbolic factor in destination selection process. So basically, the research suggests that we're picking where we travel based on this idea of social return how much will people ooh and out over it on social media. The researcher is right in recognition that the traveler is keenly aware of the social value of their travel, and that not all travel experiences are evaluated equally. There is the opportunity for varying travel experiences to generate different levels of social return. In the age of widespread social media use, particularly in the context of travel, social return can be conceptualized as the amount of positive social feedback that one's social media posts will generate. The general ideas that the more well received a social media post, the more social media return the post will generate through increased likes, comments, and sharing. This in turn leads to an enhanced social status of the poster among their social group. In essence, social media has provided a medium for pure groups to manacure their social images to demonstrate the cultural capital needed to effectively climb the social ladder. So basically, we're all just traveling to like look cool on Instagram to impress our friends, not necessarily because that's where we want to go.
That makes sense, you know. I think they're doing the thing that social scientists love to do, which is taking a pretty common sense idea and putting a label on it social return. But it is useful to think about it that way, and it prompts you to think about what other types of motivation somebody might have for traveling. You know, either to learn more about a place, learn more about history, learn about connections to where your family might be from. You know, social return is a big part of it. And it sounds like this research is suggesting that social return is increasingly a big part of it.
Well, on that list of reasons that one might travel, where do you put as a way to express one's own vanity and narcissism, because that is another reason why people travel thanks to the rise of social media. Basically, this research found that instead of being like a meaningful thing that you might do for the sake of doing it, travel can be just another commodity to craft one's digital identity right. This is especially important as narcissism becomes more normalized and the posting of travel experiences on social media becomes more prominent primary motivation for travel. These self centered motivations being related to the current techno meritocratic system that we have entered, where once value is partly derived from the image they procure through digital platforms. This focus on social return is similar to other measures of the symbolic value of travel consumption, such as self concept or self congruity. However, with social return, the attention is on the anticipative image enhancement through posting about travel experiences on social media sites. So as like nefarious as that sounds, I have to say, I'm one hundred percent guilty of it. By the way, you know, if you're going through a bad breakup and you want to project that you are out here living your best and most glamorous life. What better way to do that than go on a like luxurious, far flung vacation and post about how much fun you're having on Instagram.
Right.
So, yes, I have seen the social return travel dynamic play out, and I have been guilty of it myself.
Where would you say is the top place that you went because you were seeking that social return and did you get the social dividends you were looking for?
Ooh, this is a good question. Also, not a place that I've actually gone for social return, but a trip I've sort of been planning in my mind for a very long time that is like partially based in social return. It's going to Washington State, where they filmed the show Twin Peaks or the movie Twin Peaks as well. I think I would get a kick out of being there because I like any kind of pretty outdoor, sort of like mountainous place. But I'm a big David Lynch fan, and I am in all kinds of like online communities talking about David Lynch, and so the idea of being like, oh, I craft did the perfect Twin Peaks, I Tinerary, and I went to all the spots where they filmed. I went to the diner, I went here. That's like fully a social return, planned vacation in my mind.
I love that because I mean, I also love Twin Peaks, but I feel like Twin Peaks is the perfect piece of media example for this because it's like quirky and weird and universally loved.
It's like, oh, y'all, I'm so quirky and like avant garde, this piece of media that literally is critically acclaimed by everyone. It's it's important to me. Did you guys know this is an expression of my personal identity.
Yeah, I'm one of the few people who can appreciate this hit television series that was like a runaway success on network TV.
This is such a non sequorter, and I'm so sorry listeners. I was watching Love Island and there was a couple on there who the guy was like, Oh, I'm so nerdy. I'm so into these like nerdy things like Marvel movies. And then the woman is like, oh my god, Marvel movies. That's so weird. I love them too. I'm screaming at my TV like They are literally the most popular films on planet Earth. They are like no our box office smashes. They're like the only movie they make. Y'all, aren't like quirky and special that you have this this incredibly popular thing in common.
Yeah, I feel that it's like a really good analogy for what we're talking about here. You don't want to go on a trip to a place that's like too basic or too common. You know, it's like, what's the point nobody's even gonna be impressed.
Well, so this is this is anecdotal, so I don't have any research about this, but I've actually almost noticed this like negative social return thing happening. I don't know if that's what you're referring to, where a travel destination is deemed to be too basic, and then I'll see people in like online travel communities turning up their nose at it a little bit, saying I'm like, oh, you went to Turks and Caicos. Everybody goes there. That's not exciting, that's not cool. Like call me when you go someplace really far along you have you seen this?
Oh? Definitely, I feel that happens all the time. I feel like Tuloom is kind of a good example of that, because I feel it's often a little unfair to the place. It's like, Yeah, you've created a really cool scene or place or experience that a lot of people want to come to, and now we're gonna hate on it because you've been too successful.
Yeah, I mean, and even I feel like taking a step back. Any conversation about travel kind of has that undercurrent, because we're talking about these places that don't exist for us to explore us tourists, right. They're they're the They're these incredibly dynamic, culturally rich places with with like a rich history and a rich people like. The idea of experiencing them only through this very narrow focus of is it a good is it a good place for me to come and hang out for a week is so narrow. So the whole conversation feels a little bit icky of defining some of these incredibly dynamic places through this very narrow lens of are they good tourist destinations or not.
Let's take a quick break. Enterer back, Okay, so I.
Have to shout out a researcher whose work I stumbled upon while I was put in together my thoughts for this episode. Doctor Lauren A. Siegel, PhD. Lauren got her PhD from University of Surrey and the UK with a focus on behavioral performance and visitor impacts to destinations considered instagrammable. Doctor Siegel published a paper with colleagues Ice Tessiata and Caroline Scarles called cyber Physical Traveler Performances and Instagram Travel Photography as Ideal Impression Management that basically says that thanks to the rise of platforms like Instagram, when we travel, we are all about getting that perfect picture for social media and less about sort of where we're at or why we're going there, and that this can really be connected back to the rise of Instagram. Stay right, a refreshed code of choreographed movements as photographic practices has emerged that did not exist before the popularization of Instagram. Less than two percent of the photos analyzed solely feature the la escape, reinforcing the shift to self presentation strategies as the foremost importance.
That's so interesting. I went and read that study, and you know, the photos that they analyzed were the top ones for each location recommended by the algorithm. So I have to wonder, like how much of that is driven by people wanting social return for themselves, making themselves the subject of the photo, and how much was driven by the algorithms rewarding photos that just center people. And so I thought about that a little bit, and I was like, well, wait, maybe those are one and the same thing, Like which came first, the narcissism or the algorithm?
Oh my god, I love that question, and truly like, I mean this could be. I want to do a whole series on this. But how much of what we like and what we do is algorithms and how much of it is actually us? I feel like in twenty twenty four, the things are all collapsed and what I like is just what my algorithm surfaces up to me and vice versa. They're one and the same, and like, trying to parse them at this point is impossis.
I totally agree. I think, yeah, any attempt to say that one is purely causally driving the other is just missing the point.
So doctor Siegel's work basically says that we're not really trying to capture memories and we travel anymore. All we're doing is what she calls self presentation. She writes there's been a shift in personal photography such that photos are used to construct one's idealized identity, which is contrary to pass photographic practices as a form of memory documentation. As such, users will look to ideals perpetuated by socio cultural norms to internally assess the level of manipulation that their travel images require. And this is apparently especially true on Instagram. As Instagram is the most visual social networking site, it lends itself to self presentation practices more so than other platforms. Photographs are much more effective than tax for impression management, as the myth of photographic truth lends credibility that is often missing in texts. Instagram consists primarily of photographs and therefore intensifies the importance of visual self presentation. However, despite the potential for instant image publication, most Instagram images are not mere point and shoot style photos and require the equivalent of a photo shoot carried out in tourist settings. So I could not read that bit and not think of those fake tourist pictures, do you know what I'm talking about? Those pictures where everybody goes to Turkey and they have that same picture of like hot air balloons behind them, right, Like, I cannot not think of these basically faked tourist photos that have become almost like a whole little industry. And I'm not hating on the people who run these industries because oftentimes their locals and like people's fascination with getting this perfect shot means money for them and money in their pocket, as it should, but it's so interesting. A great example is the Gates of Heaven Temple in Pali, which is this beautiful temple that gets thousands of visitors each year, and you can take this iconic picture that looks like you're staying under the temple on a body of water, and there's this mirror image reflected, so it looks like, Wow, you're standing under the temple right on this lake, and it's like a mirror image that doubles what's being seen in this picture. However, apparently there is not any water whatsoever at this temple, and what it is is like a guy holding a mirror beneath you. And so the image that I think of night like like, if you've ever seen an image of a temple from Bali, this is this is probably like what you're thinking of. That image is partially thaked because there is no water there This leads to some pretty unhappy reviews from people who saw this picture, traveled there, waited in line, and then did not see the like expected lake or body of water. Here's one review from trip Advisor. The title is Gate to Heaven A really long queue. Do you like waiting in queues? Do you enjoy waking up at three am? Or I love the idea of trying to be creative with poses for a photo. It's not technically real, per se. I got the perfect place for you. This temple is located quite a distance from most people's hotels, so for me, I left the hotel at three fifteen am to get there by five fifteen am. After a shuttle ride and getting a number, paying the feet of take a photo, and then walking up a steep hill, I was finally at the Gate of Heaven, but in actuality, it's the gate to a very long queue. I got out there by seven am, despite being one of the first ones there at five fifteen am. The employees here use a trick of the camera to create the image that has a reflection. You were given three or four poses to take the photo of you at the gate. I felt it was kind of corny and touristy. I guess if it's one's first time in Bali, why not. But anyone who does it more than once is crazy.
Wow.
I remember when like that story broke, you know, it was like the story of how those images were this temple was not what it seemed that mirrors were involved in creating the sense of this great lake inside the temple, when in fact it was just like guys holding mirrors.
So you know how you were saying that it's like classic social scientist behavior to identify a thing that everybody can already see and sort of given a name, which, by the way, you can say that because you are a social scientist.
Right, yeah, I say that with love. I mean people are like, oh, it's just common sense. But it's important to give things names because then we can, you know, have a definition and we can all talk about it, we can get sighted. It's important.
So doctor Siegel calls that the whole temple thing a micro destination, which is a specific place in a tourist destination that really pops off on social media content, like those blue domes in Santorini, Greece, like these places that you would probably need like specific coordinates to recreate that specific photo that has now kind of become iconic on social media.
Yeah, I remember experiencing that same thing at Arches National Park. We hiked up a mountain in the sun for like three hours. It was not the hardest hike, but definitely not an easy hike. It was really windy at the top, really sunny and hot. And so after all that, we're up at the top of this very windy, barren, arid mountain and unforgiving landscape, and what me and my friends find up there a long queue of people waiting to take photos in front of the historic arch. And I definitely got in line, waited like thirty minutes to get my photo. It was actually kind of a fun experience, like laughing with the other people up there. But it was definitely a micro destination like that one spot in this vast park in an even vaster desert.
I was on that ship with you many a hat blew off. The conditions up there were a lot, I remember it very clearly. But we did take that photo. So I'm not even saying this like I'm a like we're above it. Like what I think it's interesting about doctor Segel's work is that it pulls out these things that we all do, and so I don't think any I'm certainly not above this. I don't think anybody is above this. We took that the arch photo. We came all that way, like we're not trying to take the photo. And so in some ways, part of this is like, well, do you blame anybody who like, this is your vacation. You spent all this money, you want to get the iconic photo, whether it's really a lake or a guy holding a mirror or not.
Yeah, absolutely, I got it. I'm proud of it. And it was actually nice communal experience being up there with all these other people who had hiked up there to get it. And you know, standing in Q was not terribly unpleasant because it was an incredibly beautiful spot. So it's like, Okay, I just got to stand here and look around at all these beautiful mountains and rock formations for a while and laugh it up with like this family that's standing here in front of me and these like weird guys who were standing behind me.
Well, speaking of photos, doctor Siegel's research even gets into the nitty gritty of the way the particular ways that people pose for social media travel photos. So you know the shot and you close your eyes and picture you know, is that what I'm talking about? The shot of a woman walking in motion with like a flowy dress behind her in front of a beautiful backdrop, or like the photo of somebody sort of candidly not looking at the camera with a pretty backdrop behind them.
Hold on while I pull up like five hundred examples of this on my phone right now.
No, it turns out we are all just staging this those pictures. We are all just staging all of those poses all of the time. This is from doctor Siegel's research. It's hilarious, but I feel very called out personally. Most notable of these poses are the off camera gaze and gesticulations of being in motion. Another prominent theme to emerge from a content analysis was a facial expression, where in the subject's visual gaze was focused somewhere out of the camera's view. Only thirty five point three percent of the photos and the content analysis featured subjects looking directly at or into the camera lens. The research also did on site ethnographic observations in Bali, which were consistent with the findings of the content analysis. Many of those observed taurus fix their gaze off camera while posing for photographs. Such behavior indicates a clear motivation for the subject to appear as if they were caught off guard or in the midst of having an enjoyable experience, rather than staging a curated photo. Photos in which the subject apparently lacks an awareness that they're being photographed are known in popular media as plannedids i e. Plan candids. Plandets can also be considered a reinvention of URI's concept of the romantic gaze, with the purpose of conveying an idealize lifestyle and the nonchalance of an intended and performed ignorance to the presence of a camera and or documentation of the experience. Oh oh me, I wasn't even aware a photo was being taken because I'm too busy living in the moment.
You feel a little called out.
Oh that is my classic, Like, oh my, I'm not even look, oh, a picture is being taken. I wasn't aware. I was just engrossed in this book I'm reading in this beautiful park.
Yeah, you know, it's so funny because so this is a little bit of a non sequitur, but it does connect. I've been spending time on Blue Sky recently, which I've really been enjoying. And my feed includes a lot of natural landscapes, nature photography and space photography, but also there's just a lot of AI generated stuff that people are like engagement farming there, and so there's this AI generated images purporting to be photographs and being like, hey, this is fake, this isn't real, Like you should at least label it as AI generated. But talking about this now, it really makes me think like, well, what is real? Right? Like, is is a plan died real? Like, yeah, it's a photograph, but you know, maybe so what if people are posing like there they really are there just gazing off into the distance, thinking about you know, the butler or whatever.
Yeah, it reminds me of this thing I saw on I think, I think on possibly on Blue Sky where it's a picture of a man with his son and it's just like beautiful sky and background and somebody asks how did you get that sky effect in the photo? And he said it was just a regular sky, Like what do you mean? It's not the fact, just what's the way the sky looked at me? We're outside. I feel like every single time I talk about this on the show, it sounds like I've just taken a massive bong rip, but I swear I have not. When you start breaking into like what is real, I mean you know that line. Once you start writing, it all becomes fiction, Like once it's on social media, it all becomes fake. And so like the question of what is real, it's almost like not the right question to be asking, because it's like Baudriard's concept of hyperreality, Like it's even what you see on Instagram in some ways becomes even more real than what would be real otherwise that like you couldn't tell me that temple doesn't have a lake at it, even though that lake is fake, because I've seen that lake on Instagram so many times.
Yes, that's a good point, and I guess you know now that I think about it. At no point in any of doctor Siegel's research does she use the word reeal that I noticed. Right, she's just talking about the different behaviors that people do, and she's also talking about their motivations for doing it. Real isn't really even part of the analysis.
Yeah, I don't think that's even what she's interested in in in like grappling with and it almost kind of seems like an afterthought of like, well, what is real? Like what what does reel mean in this context? And I know a lot of this stuff can be funny, but it's also pretty serious. You know. The way that social media intersects with travel can lead to things over tourism, which can be a problem if a place that doesn't have the infrastructure to handle a certain level of tourism. National Geographic notes that eighty percent of travelers visited just ten percent of the world's destination. So like that can have a really big impact, and as doctor Siegel puts it, it can create a cycle that contributes to more self indulgent travel. It could also wreak ecological damage and exacerbate income disparities. And so it's kind of like navel gayzy and interesting to think about this intersection of social media and travel behavior. But it also really has, you know, talk about what's real what's not. It has very real irl offline impacts for these destinations as well, and some big tourist destinations are actually working to combat it. So BALI, which I know we've talked about quite a bit during this episode, released new guidelines for visitors in June twenty twenty three that includes rules about proper behavior and sacred temples, rules about how you should behave on the island and behave with locals, and rules around respecting the natural environment. Tourists now need a license to rent motorbikes and may not set foot on any mountain or volcano in Bali due to their sacred nature. Travelers also have to stay and registered hotels and villas, which obviously will impact things like Arabian bees, and Bali has introduced a Tourist Task Force to enforce these restrictions through raids and investigations if necessary. This is all from a piece for CNN dot Com that doctor Siegal wrote. Doctor Siegel also points out that other destinations have also taken similar steps. Places like Hawaii, Iceland, New Zealand, Costa Rica and others have all adopted pledgets for visitors to abide by local laws and customs. And there's also these big campaigns like Switzerland's No Drama campaign, Finland's be More Like a Finn campaign, the Netherlands How to Amsterdam campaign, which I think was all about like British Party lads coming and probably like indulging too much in the t shops etc. And like creating a problem. In Austria, they have the sea Vienna not hashtag Vienna campaign, which really asks for folks to really have a more mindful approach to their tourism when they're in Vienna. And in a study called does social Media help or hurt Tourist Destinations? A qualitative case study, doctor Siegel actually looked at the tourist board of Vienna with their kind of anti hashtag marketing campaign urged that encouraging visitors to go offline mult traveling in the city, and she found that apparently it's been like pretty well received. To make you went to Vienna, was it pre hashtag or post hashtag?
Oh man, I was in Vienna pre iPhone, so it was definitely pre hashtag. But I loved it. It was just the coolest, most charming place. I won't get into the whole thing of it, but what really struck me about Vienna was that it was both like old and classical and beautiful, but also like a vibrant, exciting city where like people lived and worked and loved and played and all the things. I just had the best time there. I was so impressed, And so I don't know what hashtag Vienna is but the actual city that I got to experience back in those pre iPhone days no further date specification provided was incredible. And so people if people were going there pursuing hashtag Vienna, whatever that might have been, I do have to wonder if they were missing out on some of the more subtle beauty that was there to be had well.
So that's exactly what doctor siegeal found that the staff of the tourist board in Vienna, who created this kind of anti hashtag campaign, explained that all these tourists would come to Vienna and that their image of Vienna was this mis quote metropolis without stress, and yet the tourism board felt that visitors to their city were increasingly just missing out on these very experiences because they were too busy on their dang phones, as my mom would say. So this seems like a pretty important observation relevant to all these other Instagram driven behaviors that we've already talked about that focus on getting this perfect picture for other people and having that stand in the way of actually being present and enjoying oneself. And that's exactly what I think that the Vienna Tourism board, it sounds like was trying to combat and y'all. If there is one thing I have learned over the last couple of months, it is that life is too dang short to live it for validation or people on your phone or other outside people. You shouldn't be living it for you. So if you're doing any travel over the holiday season, how to keep that online?
What a nice sentiment, Bridget.
Thanks so much, Mike, and thanks for listening. I will see all on the internet. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I just want to say hi. You can reach us at Hello at tengodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review.
Us on Apple Podcasts.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,
