Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

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On a recent trip to some more remote areas of Southeast Asia, I had this exact experience.

Since westerners were a rare sight in many of the villages I visited, my friends and I found ourselves constantly being photographed, with the local teens and even older adults alike all posing in selfies with us in the background. I’d say we were photographed roughly 20-30 times per day, for the the month we were there. I’m not kidding.

I’m sure we looked like clowns to them with our height and big noses. I found it hilarious and am glad I brought some amusement to these folks.

Side note: I see every person on this thread thinks they aren’t part of the problem. It’s the other people of course! Tourists complaining about other tourists has a real irony to it. Rich people getting mad they have to share the worlds treasures with a growing population of other rich people. Boo boo. A certain percentage of the population is always going to be assholes, whether they live in a place or are just visiting. Instagram isn’t the root cause to why people suck, this too shall pass.

Instagram, Facebook, and other social media act as behavioural feedback loops.

We're literally talking about behavioural modification here. FB + INSTA may not make people assholes, but they certainly reward certain classes of asshole behaviour.

They're not unique in that, but other asshole-promoting loop systems have been around far longer, so we tend to assume they're how things are rather than questioning them.

Which is why "This too shall pass" may not be a valid assumption.

I also had this experience in Africa. Was in a location where few tourists went, most foreigners were NGO workers and workers in some capacity. Locals would take photographs without even asking. In other parts of Africa, the locals were too poor to have good cameras.

> I see every person on this thread thinks they aren’t part of the problem.

It depends on what problem you're referring to. People going onto private property and damaging locations are a special kind of asshole. They're not regular tourists.

> Instagram isn’t the root cause to why people suck.

That's even more depressing (if true) than this abomination of "social networks" that we are seeing right now.

But still, even if your point might be true, we should stop giving people easy ways to be degenerates. There should be repercussions or something, but good luck codifying it into a law :)

It's a difficult problem.

> this abomination of "social networks" that we are seeing ... we should stop giving people easy ways to be degenerates. There should be repercussions or something, but good luck codifying it into a law

You don't always need laws to stop bad behavior. Influential social shame and scorn are often just as effective.

It would be interesting experiment to link the article as comments in the lavander selfies.

I wonder if they have tried charging 30 Euros for "pick your own lavender"?

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