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Comment by DanAndersen | Hacker News Reader

The hedonic rush of social media is an unfortunate aspect to modern travel. Vacations and trips have always had the aspect where the traveler plans how to tell friends/family about the trip after the fact. However, I've caught myself mentally planning out a social media post about something I'm seeing right at the moment.

I wonder how we would treat our travels differently if somehow we were not allowed to share anything visual with other people. There's something diminished that happens when it becomes so easy, so low-effort, to capture something about a place you're in. You don't have to observe or be in the moment; you just run from place to place collecting views you can horde in exchange for likes and clicks. It's a mechanization/industrialization of experience.

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I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, I find it silly that literally millions of people take the exact same shot of things like the clock tower in the old town square of Prague and then post them online for a few cheap "likes."

But if I didn't shoot a few photos there, I might not remember the great meal I had seated at the base with a few friends that was such an enjoyable time. Small details fade, but photos I personally took jog the memory.

For me the fact there are 1 million pictures of that clock online is irrelevant. People follow others on Instagram either because they are interested in what the person does or they find the other places and pictures interesting which have been posted in the past and would like to see more.

No one can see everything in the world so it is more like curating it, you follow a bunch of curators, see a bunch of stuff, for some stuff a photo is enough, for others it makes you want to see it yourself.

I have had loads of travel ideas from Instagram and have visited lots of places after seeing posts on Instagram.

This tempts me to go grab a set of "Prague tourist photos" and just make up a fake trip. Just be upfront: I didn't take a trip to Prague, but here's what it would look like it I did. Just as curated, just as personal, just as compelling as any brochure. Oh look this guy who's into craft beer and chess history wrote up a hypothetical trip to St. Petersburg, check it out.

Or better, a startup idea: tell us where you're going on vacation and we'll produce your social media posts accordingly. You just enjoy your vacation and we'll get you all the likes.

tell us where you're going on vacation

Or tell us where you want to pretend you went and we provide a fake vacay with which to wow your pseudo friends.

Bonus points: You can market your service as "eco friendly" and actively encourage people to admit they used it. There can be footnotes cataloging how much smaller their carbon footprint is for having only pretended to go.

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