To Feel Angered by People Taking So Many Photos for the 'Gram...?

[LilacCatt]

I am feeling so nostalgic right now for life pre-social media and pre-smart phones.

I am mid 30s. When I was 17 I had MySpace. When I was 19 I had Facebook. I deleted social media when I was 21 and have been without ever since. I use WhatsApp and occasionally have a peruse of Mumsnet.

Anyway.

Lately (for the past few years), I feel like whenever I visit a remotely interesting place (days out are my favourite thing to do) I am just so distracted from my own enjoyment by people around me posing for photos. Sometimes I see people doing really cringey things such as taking a few steps forward whilst getting their photo taken as if "candid", then quickly checking the result, and then going back to their original spot to take the same few steps forward whilst posing again.

Oh my god. This is all with people around them who are trying to enjoy the moment of the place of interest.

I feel it really repulses me, and actually angers me.

But I can't articulate WHY that is.

I don't want to be a bitter or angry person.

So I just want to explore this emotion a bit more, and open up the floor for a debate here.

Am I being unreasonable to have the inner emotional reaction when I see this sort of thing going on around me?

Should I live and let live?

Is it a symbol of everything wrong in society???

Questioning myself and my thoughts.

Thanks.

You went along with it?! I worked at a Insta-worthy visitor attraction about 8 years ago. We'd usually take photos if visitors asked us politely. Only one time was the photo deemed Not Good Enough and I was asked to take it again... "No thanks, I'm not your photographer!"

I can only imagine the hordes of nutty aspiring influencers bothering my former colleagues with this nonsense now.

When the entire point of the experience is the 'gram then there is no purpose other than self-obsession.

I'm reminded of the cartoon in which the diner asks the waiter, "Is the raviolli photogenic?"

I found it really rude. The person on the bus had no idea it was happening

Yes I agree. My 16 year old was at the gym the other day and an older man was pissing around on a piece of equipment taking photos and filming himself, when my son went over to use the equipment thinking the the guy had finally finished he came running over and started to aggressively shout at my son. Wish gyms would put a stop to this but they want the free publicity.

I just think twat and move on

However I did tell a man at ballet last month to put his phone down so rude!!!
And he wasn't even young

I get where you're coming from OP. As a PP has mentioned I don't stop if someone is taking (insta) photos anymore, I just walk through the frame. And I'm not even sorry ;)

These airheads don't give me the rage though, I kinda feel sorry for them. What is missing from their life that they have to have an insta perfect life?

I have a bestie whose daughter is a very famous influencer, and I don't envy either of them at all. The daughter gets very angry if mum isn't looking as glam as possible when they meet.

I actually sometimes enjoy watching them. It's like being in a human zoo.

As another PP suggests it may be worth you digging deep and finding why it annoys you so much!

Interesting discussion though.

As a side note I went to school in a very touristy place and the Japanese and American tourists loved to take photographs of us in our school uniforms! Probably wouldn't be allowed now!!

However I do hate how vain everyone is. When I grew up the worst thing you could be was a poser and I detest that posers are the norm now.

This is what I find weird, growing up vanity, vacuousness, bragging, etc were seen as negative & in real life I think to some extent they still are but on SM these are all positives 😆

I think this also- like who plays it back at home and watches it ?!

The one I find most annoying is couples.

Every couple I know who looks incredibly loved up on social media has issues. The photos/videos are entirely for the benefit of other people

*holiday photos I find less annoying that the cloying coupley ones tbh.

And I have a lovely DH - I'm not bitter at seeing other couples, it's just the show offy ness of it all I hate

The worst is…. When a few in your group put photos on it and you don’t know or look good! I hate having my photo taken and only a few make it on to my profile . I will go away with my friends for a weekend- say to a spa and one will always be photo ing something and then I’ll be looking all double chinned and oily from a massage and I find it up loaded to social media the next day !!! I now ask people to take my photos down!

I was at a concert recently and the girl beside me spent the WHOLE concert filming herself dancing and staring at herself on the camera. She could've saved herself a fortune and just did that at home. She wasn't even watching the act at all, it was so bizarre.

The difference was, we took a photo and that was that. We didn’t know how it would turn out until we had the film developed. Nowadays people keep taking it 20 times because they see some imperfection.

Yes all this!!

I was recently at a theme park, parents getting on rides ignoring young children then getting there phones out putting it on selfie mode video then recording the whole ride with them looking at there child through a phone screen with a manic grin on their face.

Ride ends, phone put away and child ignored again 🤷‍♀️

I can appreciate how you feel OP. I recently went to a local event, which was lovely, but it was so annoying as we had to shuffle along at a snail's pace, and keep stopping while those in front of us took photos of absolutely everything, including the inevitable selfies.

Photography (mainly film) is a hobby of mine, but I stopped taking my camera with me a lot of the time - I would rather live in the moment and enjoy it. Spending all your time taking photos actually means you miss out on a lot, but people these days just don't seem to get that.

I don’t feel rage just bemusement. And it’s so widespread- such weird behaviour. People have even fallen off cliffs to their deaths prancing round for the perfect shot. It feels very …unbritish.

The wonderful opportunity of technology to improve everyone's life has turned into a narcissism fest and entered us all into an eternal high school popularity contest.

A lot of us have felt grief about the direction of society and what's been lost

You're at the anger stage of this grief, I just laugh about how ridiculous it is now. Try joeybtoonz on youtube or other people who mock it, may help.

This is being called out a lot. Look up Joey Swoll, some of the videos he's posted up on tikok of people behaving like this are a real eye opener.

If you're going to spend so much time clenching your arse over what other people are doing with their own time and energy, at least do something productive like photobomb as many of them as you can.

Who cares? The fact that you're allowing them to distract you from your far more authentic enjoyment of the location is your own problem. I like to live in the moment too, so I do. You, apparently, spend all your time being angry at people who don't like to experience places just like you do. Doesn't sound much like living in the moment to me.

I feel such an old woman sometimes (I'm mid 40s) that I feel like when I'm in London I'm constantly in fear of photobombing someone's pic, or worse inadvertently being in their video*. The other day I realised I had probably ruined someone's tiktok video just leaving the self check out area of tesco where they were filming a dance routine!

*I don't want to be the star of "look at the oblivious middle age woman interrupting our video!"

I don't know how other people were taking 50-100 pics a day back in the day, it would have cost a bomb to have them all developed! 🤣

You want to talk to my DD (13) this gives her the RAGE. She calls it 'main character syndrome'.

I agree that it is more than just self obsession. It's like everything is only interesting because of how it looks these days. Like those 'experiences' you go to where it turns out just to be selfie taking and everyone seems ok with that. Just empty.

By the same token if you don't have an image of yourself looking good in front of something you may as well not have seen it, even if it's the most interesting place on earth.

It's not their problem

Put sewage in the sea it's ruined, you won't enjoy it

Put a load of narcissistic twats at a tourist location, same thing

OP is also at the tourist location, ergo is part of the tourist overcrowding problem.

Whether she's taking pictures of it or not isn't really relevant.

It's not an overcrowding problem it's a people behaving like narcissistic twats and not appreciating or respecting the place problem. You can't bypass this anger just by saying, oh I'll be in the moment and all these twats will go away.

Agree OP. The whole way it has gone makes me feel depressed and shows people in a very vain, shallow, self obsessed way.

It's like when I see young women and they are so fake looking now with their tans and their big lips and fake eyelashes and hair extensions and nails done. Most of them are far more attractive with their natural selves (I know this is not all young women!) If you watch any film from the seventies or eighties you will see that woman looked so 'real' and 'unperfect'. Of course they wore makeup and some were very pretty but they were natural pretty. Older women seemed to be around more and were given better parts than they get now.

Also if you look back to TOTP from the seventies, eighties you see bands who are not necessarily attractive to look at but actually could sing and wrote their own music. Being a musician was about the music and not looking perfect and miming along to a song someone else has written.

I feel like life has been sanitised to make it look instant and perfect but removing the real stuff. So yes some of our photos used to be crap and it could be annoying but they captured the actual moment when your hair was sticking up in the wind or whatever. Yes we took photos but generally of other people or nice sights and it would be one or two. We didn't take them of ourselves and spend ages posing for them.

Leaving school (and going to uni) in the 80's my generation was very much the era of career woman and woman were striving to become lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers and pilots and those less ambitious or less academic still wanted a career as a nurse or a hairdresser or a florist. Now obviously lots of women still have good jobs nowadays but lots seem to be aiming to be 'an influencer' or making money posing online modelling.

The whole things makes me feel sad and I am glad I grew up when I did.

There are lots of good things about the internet and our phone cameras etc but it has just gone too far.

Even our real food has become the ultra processed 'fake' food.

Rant over.....