Have you ever heard of the word Instagrammable? Apparently, it is a word now. If you do a quick Google search on that, you'll find that there's more than 1.6 million hits on this word. And I am not surprised if it continues to increase. According to the Urban Dictionary, it refers to a photo or picture that is worth posting on Instagram. And the weird thing is, this criterion is used by plenty of people nowadays to determine where they would go for a vacation, or which restaurant they would eat in. And to be honest, I just find that absurd.
See, this implies that people think you should provide pictures or your vacation or dinner didn't happen. This also implies that your primary motive to go to a restaurant or a vacation is to show off. And I think that's not a healthy attitude to have.
Let's talk about taking vacations for example. When you visit a place you haven't been to before, do you visit it so that you can upload a photo of it in Instagram and broadcast to the whole world that you have been to that place? If that is the case, then wow. How narcissistic of you to assume that everyone should care about your vacation. Sure, I take vacations, and yes, I post pictures about it, but not only do I post pictures of it hugely delayed, and I also don't select my destinations depending on whether there are pretty pictures that are going to come out of it or not. Believe me, I've been to places where there aren't any pretty pictures that resulted from my visit. And what happened to the idea that you go to a destination to experience it?
Same thing with restaurants. I used to take pictures of my food. I used to take pictures of every item I ate in restaurants. But later on I realized that the food won't be tastier if I took a photo of it. So yes, I still take photos, but I only do it for special occasions, say when I am in a Michelin-starred restaurant, and not every time. In any case, I keep it in mind that I am there primarily to experience the food, not to take a photo of it.
So yeah, maybe this rant is my reaction to the observation that people are getting more and more visually oriented, to the detriment of other sensations. But to be honest, there are plenty of other experiences out there that are worth it, even though it doesn't paint a pretty picture.
