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Comment by autaut | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know if it’s news but she’s kinda right in calling it out for how fake and sinister these trends are and how these people profit from them

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It's the TikTok-effect in action I guess.

I had a fun experience with the Instagram-effect recently. I tried to visit an arboretum earlier this year (don't judge me, it's interesting!) and I couldn't get near the viewing platform because someone had a crew lighting their shots for Instagram. They asked me to wait for a couple of minutes to get finished, which I did. Ten minutes later a crowd had built up on the ramp and I just pushed past and said "all right good work today everyone we got what we need that's a wrap!". It's nuts.

It's also weirdly disturbing to me that the presence of someone with an expensive looking camera was enough for a lot of them to just walk on past instead of enjoying the day out they paid for.

Years ago I was walking with my wife and parents along a path/boardwalk across a marsh to the beach on Cape Cod, MA. At the top of the platform where the wooden stairs went up the dune and onto the beach there were three people standing, one holding a sun shade. We just walked past them, but my Mom chatted them up briefly. Apparently they were doing a photo shoot for a J. Crew catalog, but I never would have guessed that since they just worked around us.

From the perspective of someone who has worked in the film industry: how a crew interacts with and treats bystanders is generally very telling about where they are on the "amateur-professional" scale.

In my experience, professional productions are usually very intentional about not getting in the way of people just trying to go about their day. We were filming at a busy coffee shop in January, and we held for filming whenever a customer wanted to buy a coffee. The producers were pretty serious about not disrupting the business we were filming at.

Last time I went hiking in Yosemite, and there were people who would hike all the way to a pretty spot (like, 4hr+ hike), change into a dress/suit/etc that they had packed, get some pictures taken, change back, and then presumably hike all the way back out.

I mean if you're going to fake it anyway you could've stayed home and just pouted in front of a green screen.

> I tried to visit an arboretum earlier this year (don't judge me, it's interesting!)

Why would you be judged for that? Botanical gardens are great.

I've actually become a bit of a dick in these situations since a trip to Italy, and every time I see a large camera in a public place I walk in front of it on purpose.

I'm a naturally nice guy, but these people were making my vacation less enjoyable for no reason, and I felt an instinctive urge to ruin their experience as well.

There is a difference between the social.media selfie photographers and those people trying to take nice pictures of beautiful places. A big camera usually points at tue latter, phones and lighting and whatnot at the former.

The instagrammers and tiktokers have poisoned the well. If there is a human subject in the picture who is posing, it's now pretty safe to assume it's a social media narcissist, and I see no reason to step around or enable their behavior.

I get that they might be professionals with possibly a good amount of skill, but even then what gives them the right to make any tourist attraction a lot less enjoyable?

Museums are usually closed on Mondays, why not make "photographer Tuesday" a thing for instance?

No. If I want to go on a Tuesday they're getting photobombed and that's the end of it.

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