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A lot on social media is staged to look good. Now we see where people are using toxic and unsafe environments to stage pictures. What does this say about us? Those of us who build the tools leading people to do this and those of us who do go to places to do selfies like that?

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How is this a staged picture if it's actually an interesting location and view? It's not like they're pretending they're actually at the maldives.

they are definitely pretending they are somewhere they are not

mmmm no they are not. The place is literally (colloquially) called "Novosibirsk Maldives" and many of the posts acknowledge their location and even tag the power station in the post: https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/199067307495333/...

Sure, "so fake just to appear so cool" is one aspect to it. There are surely users who scroll by and don't see a caption that the pretty lake is toxic.

But "do something stupid/dangerous to show how brave you are" is part of human nature.

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