While vacationing in Paris this summer, I had my first (and unsurprisingly unpleasant) experience of watching an “influencer” (or an aspiring one, at least) take photos for social media.
I felt embarrassed for her as she pranced around, directing her boyfriend to photograph her from specific angles, twirling her dress purposefully in an effort to feign a candid-looking picture, but more than embarrassed, I was annoyed. I, like most everyone else in the vicinity, wanted only to enjoy the Egyptian obelisk in Le Place de Concord, not watch some random woman pout and pose and dominate the scene for several minutes.
It isn’t that I’m against posting photos on social media. I’m plugged in just as much as the next twenty-two-year-old and enjoy keeping up with high school friends through Instagram, occasionally sharing my own pictures. I don’t think doing so is a bad thing.
The issue arises when others don’t acknowledge that in pursuit of their perfect, shareable photo, they are being inconsiderate of others. Take, for instance, my visit during the same France trip to the Palace of Versailles. I waded through one gaudy room after another crammed with people complaining about others being in their way, these same people going on to be an inconvenience by blocking exhibits or standing in doorways, all in an effort to secure the perfect photo of that aesthetic section of wallpaper or gold-overlaid doorknob. It isn’t as though they are going to pull out a picture of said doorknob thirty years from now and feel so excited and grateful that they captured its image. It’s because Aunt Betty will give it a like on Facebook or that one girl from summer camp will stumble across it on Instagram and be envious.
Taking photos for your feed is not only inconsiderate of those who have to wait for you, watch you make kissy faces at the camera, get that detail of that one floorboard just right…it can be in incredibly poor taste. There are some places that you don’t need to photograph and shouldn’t. Same France trip, the Catacombs: I watched a couple take a photo in front of a tower of skulls, the= girl’s hand placed on his chest, her foot kicked up a la Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries. Anne Frank house, the Netherlands: In front of signs that clearly asked to be respectful and not take photos, a woman whipped out her phone to snag pictures of the annex’s kitchen, asked her son to pose in Anne and Margot Frank’s bedroom. To render the final resting place of thousands of unknown people a photo op, to make a visit to a building where people lived in constant fear of being murdered a postable moment is, no question, wrong. Not only that, but again, it is inconsiderate to those who came to learn and pay tribute to what they see.
Perhaps you are not as inconsiderate in your photo taking as the people I encountered in France, but think about whether you do this on a smaller level, like holding everyone back from eating for a moment so that you can take a photo of the brunch spread for Snapchat.
And think too, about why you are taking the picture in the first place. Are you really going to care to see it decades from now? Is it worth interrupting the enjoyment of others? Doing something in poor taste? Getting semi-aggressively elbowed by me in the Palace of Versailles during my European vacation? Of course not.
