Two days after I returned from vacation in Europe, Andrew Evans, a professional traveller, interesting dude, NOT influencer, and wise human uploaded his TEDx talk and paraphrased, “All the world is staged.”
Having just spent two weeks among hordes of fellow tourists, I’m inclined to agree.
Of course, we’ve been staging our travels for centuries. The voyage of “discovery” anecdote Andrew shares in the video included the equivalent of an 18th-century one-star Yelp review. But things have changed, driven very much by technology. “Pics or it didn’t happen” is just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know that a Canadian invented the selfie stick?
Some years ago air travel started to get cheaper and more broadly available, enabling a much larger volume of humans to roam the earth. Online travel bookings and deals sites encouraged it even more.
But before the internet, and especially social media, proof of and the influence resulting from our travels was largely limited to a small social sphere – those we could show photos to or tell about our favourite places.
With the arrival of the internet and more…socially-driven travel, it hasn’t taken long for travelling to morph; it’s no longer about experiences, but about flaunting our privilege and getting validation for a rarefied lifestyle. (And, if you’re extra ambitious, to get others to pay you for it.)
The value of beautiful places devolved from centering around their natural wonders, historic sites and local cultures to being backdrops for carefully crafted versions of… us. Clifftop bikini yoga beside a waterfall, anyone?
It doesn’t seem like a lot of people casually take photos as they’re sightseeing and experiencing a place and its charms anymore. Sightseeing is more like scouting for photoshoot locations, assuming you aren’t already beelining somewhere that has a super popular Instagram hashtag.
Scenic locations have become media sets, with hair and makeup getting done before strange and dramatic poses are struck and adjusted and photos taken until the closest-to-perfect one is achieved. (And then on to editing! Filters for all!)
I saw enough boyfriends being used as porters and ordered around as photographer lackies that I started wondering if dating app matching now filters for obedience and photography skills. I witnessed it in every city we went to.
Traditionally, one can usually peg the time frame of a photo by the clothes, hairstyles, cars, etc. I have to wonder if, 20 years from now, we’ll do it based on the style of pose and the filters used. There seemed to be specific requirements for pretending to walk down a street, perching up high or sprawling down low.
This is nonsense, of course. Given the volume of media we produce, no way we’d be able to find 20-year-old photos, even if the platforms we post on still – improbably – existed.
Now, while it was pretty much all younger people observed doing these things, this isn’t meant to dump on them. They’re just the most visible evidence of what ubiquitous internet culture has evolved into and the effect it’s had on travel. (Older folks are responsible for the environmental disaster that is the cruise industry, so… yeah…)
I have to think that travel as content affects our brains differently. How we’re looking, why we’re looking, what other senses we’re not engaging, and how we divide our attention has changed. How are we actually absorbing it? Are we even absorbing?
There aren’t many places where photography is prohibited, but perhaps those few places are the best remaining opportunities to see how people actually engage with the environment while travelling. Of course, there is always some guy trying to sneak pictures...
People who have nothing “better” to do actually engage with their environments. They move and read and look and discuss differently. They can’t scout or plan their next post, per se, so they focus in greater detail. They ask questions and point things out to their friends.
Eventually, anyway. I admit that at the top of St. Mark’s Campanile in Venice, the other people up there weren’t really part of my shared experience of a gorgeous view. They were mostly just in the way of my next shot.
It wasn’t until we were all waiting in line to take the elevator back down that I got chatting with a couple of guys who turned out to be from Mississauga. We talked about Toronto sports teams. In Paris, it wasn’t until after we’d gotten all the angles we wanted of the Eiffel Tower that I ended up talking about rescue dogs with a widow from Denver.
Would the world really end if the cropping and filtering and hashtagging didn’t come first? Or is that where it would start, where we would actually begin to travel?
Now, the ultimate solution to the mess we’ve made of travel is to stop doing it. It would solve the environmental issues, the housing issues, the infrastructure issues and the social media issues.
I admit that I’m not quite ready to do that at this point. But there are things we can stop for now. Stop focusing on only the most popular spots. Stop bothering with the places that are so jammed that everyone has to be herded through like livestock. Stop trying to make every recorded moment perfectly On Brand.
Turn off Google Maps. Get lost a bit, take your time. Stop relying on the internet to tell you where to eat. I passed that street a few times. It was always jammed with tourists. Wonder if they’ll remember that sandwich in 20 years? Share a high top at a pizza joint with a Russian girl and a great house Chianti and learn about neighbourhood gentrification in Moscow and her crappy Irish boyfriend. (Optionally, advise dumping him.)
Let’s face it, the online record of our travels becomes a momentary drop in the content ocean. Do we even look back at the record of our own travels? Like all big life events, it will never mean as much to anyone else as it does to you. Travelling to validate is pointless because others will always do it “better.” Travelling to experience is all about discovery and surprising yourself.
Record your adventures, sure, but make sure your senses are recording at least as much as your phone is. Otherwise, in this staged world, you’re just a person getting played.
M-Theory is an opinion column by Melanie Baker. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Communitech. Melle can be reached on Twitter at @melle or by email at me@melle.ca.
