Zombie Tourists in the iPhone Era
Humans have always felt compelled to collect, record, and preserve. Glass cases in archives and museums hold precious material objects of cultural or historical import; scrapbooks, picture frames, and Facebook photo albums hold our cherished personal memories. In the Age of the iPhone, capturing memories just got a whole lot easier. You can snap a selfie or take a video with the mere tap of the screen and preserve a fleeting moment forever. Oh, the wonders of technological innovation, right?
But what if we’ve become so obsessed with documenting experiences that we forget to live them while they’re happening?
While I was studying abroad in the UK, I saw my favorite band Bastille in concert. This guy in front of me held his iPhone over his head and recorded every song. Every. Single. One. I was both infuriated and puzzled. Not only was he obscuring my vision of the stage, but didn’t he pay good money to see Bastille live? Wasn’t he missing out on the concert? And who wants to watch his shaky, low-quality videos anyway? Were they proof that “Dude, I was there!”?
Even if you’re not one of these offenders at concerts, admit it. You’ve done some version of this too: thinking to yourself “This will make an awesome profile pic!” or “This sunset is totally Instagram-worthy.”
I’m guilty myself; on my first trip to Europe, I took a whopping 2,500+ photos. I wonder how much of my experience was mediated through the viewfinder of my camera.
When I visited the Vatican over this past summer, I made a conscious decision to leave my camera behind. I didn’t want to be fiddling with the flash settings or trying to keep my hand steady. I could always find much higher quality photos online to refresh my memory later if I wanted to. For a Highly Sensitive Person like myself, touring the Vatican was already an overwhelming sensory experience. I felt like a hot, sticky sardine packed among zombies shuffling along predetermined pathways, clutching their cameras above their heads Lion King-style. (Don’t even get me started on tourists who take pictures with their iPads.)
I tried to soak in the splendor of the Sistine Chapel, the decadent texture of the rooms, the immensity of the tapestries, the sour smell of sweat, the uncomfortable feeling claustrophobia—all of which contribute to shaping my amorphous memory of this experience, a mental snapshot in time that is more present and complete.
Don’t get me wrong. Taking pictures is a beautiful way of guarding against the unreliability of human memory and facilitating recollection. Photographs, writing, art—these are all, perhaps, the closest we can ever get to communicating our experiences to others and reliving our memories.
But we all need to stop viewing the world through five inches of screen. The next time you’re on a trip or at a party, a concert, or a big game, make sure making memories doesn’t take precedence over enjoying the moment.
Sometimes, it’s good to unplug and live a little.
I really enjoyed reading your post and I strongly agree with you. The situation you present here is one I have thought of a lot recently. It has happened to me many times: I am so worried about taking pictures that I forget to see with my own eyes the beauty surrounding me. I have started recently with the plan of taking just a few pictures where I am present, in a way to remember (and proof) that I was there, and then just enjoying the views in first person. If I want to see pictures of the places I have been to in the future, I can probably find much better ones on the web.
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Thanks so much for your comment, Gabriel. That’s great that you have started making a conscious effort to remember to enjoy the world around you in person. It’s definitely something I’m working on too! I wonder if you’ve experienced the urge to take pictures even more strongly since you’ve been abroad in America? I definitely felt that way when I was abroad in Norwich, England.
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I completely agree with this. I went to the Vatican a few years ago with my high school and I couldn’t tell you how many people were taking secret pictures of the Sistine Chapel. I have found myself in beautiful places and I have a whole bunch of pictures to remind me of that. But, I almost forget just how pretty those places were because pictures don’t do it justice. People are starting to just view the world within a 5 inch screen, which is pretty sad.
Great post!
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Mary, I really enjoyed reading this post! Looking back to when I was abroad last year, sadly, I did this. I guess I felt like I needed to have photographic evidence of my travels to try and preserve my memories of them. However, I don’t think I was as bad as other people I know. Some of my friends from home have admitted that during their abroad travels, they actually tried to take pictures that they thought would “get the most likes on Instagram.” Frankly, I find that kind of sad that they were so preoccupied with flaunting their lives to other people. In a sense, I feel like that actually taints their memories because instead of remembering their emotional response when visiting the Cliffs of Moher, they instead remembered how they wanted to take pictures to post on Instagram.
Funnily enough, I was also at that Bastille concert at UEA last year. Even though it was an incredible show, I do remember how infuriating it was to have my view blocked by a sea of smartphones. It definitely tainted my memory of the show a bit. Great post, and I look forward to reading more of your work!
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Mary! I enjoyed reading your article. You have a skillful writing style, and besides that the topic is actually something really concerning. People are more worried about taking photographs than about enjoying today’s moment. I agree with you with the fact that taking photographs is a way of recollecting memories of the places where we have been, but we also have to experience fully the moment of being there.
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Mary, I am so glad you decided to write about this subject! I too find it so puzzling when you see a fellow concert goer with their phone in hand the entire show. We all need to remind ourselves to live in the moment and not through a phone screen. I love that you left your camera behind when visiting the Vatican. This is something I have been trying to do on a more day to day level, even just leaving my phone in my apartment when going out to dinner with friends. I also love your point about finding better, higher quality pictures online afterwards, so true. There really is no need to document every moment of our lives digitally. Great post!
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Mary, this was such an awesome post. I don’t think that you could have addressed this “problem” any better. This past summer I went to the Firefly music festival in Dover, Delaware. At this concert, I forgot a phone charger so I didn’t have my phone for 2 days and this was THE BEST THING that happened to me. Instead of trying to snap hundreds of pictures I got to enjoy the concert in the now. It was really refreshing to be “theoretically” phoneless. I find that without focusing on having to record or capture your experience on your phone you can actually enjoy yourself even more at the live venue.
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