selfies good or bad

The Instagrammability of a destination is apparently now the number one motivation for booking a holiday for millennials. The eternal quest for social approval, which the platform was accused of taking advantage of this week by “withholding” likes from certain users to encourage them to log in more frequently – a charge Instagram denies – continues apace.

At some hotels, you can now even pay extra for your very own “Instagram butler”, who will show you all the most picturesque spots and help you and your bum conduct your own photoshoot.

When most travel photographs on Instagram begin to look like fashion editorials you have to wonder whether anyone is learning anything. And when people are taking idiotic risks such as hanging out of fast moving trains or proffering food to tempt wild animals into shot, all for the sake of a photo that isn’t even an original composition, you might start to think that we’re approaching the end times.

Social media encourages the memeification of human experience. Instead of diversity we see homogeneity. It’s extremely boring.