The Tyranny of the Vacation Instagram Post

I check into Paradero, the luxury resort located in Todos Santos on the southern tip of Baja California, and it’s absolutely picturesque; the kind of place where everywhere one looks has you going, “Damn!”

Upon pulling up, I’m offered a cold towel, a glass of juice made from local produce, along with a smoking bushel of sage, all presented on a platter. I make my way to my room and gaze out onto a vista of rich brown sand dotted by a bountiful garden and rolling mountains in the distance. The property itself is an architectural feast for the eyes all on its own, with stark concrete buildings that essentially resemble a stylish spaceship that somehow went off course and landed here in the Baja desert.

Yet my first thought when I’m presented with the platter, the vista, and my room isn’t to take them all in with the naked eye. Nor am I “living in the moment,” as someone like Oprah might say. Sorry O, I’m actually doing neither. Instead, I’m fumbling for my iPhone and taking pictures of everything at every angle, both landscape and portrait, all for future Instagram uploading purposes. Before I reach for the fresh glass, I pause to snap it on the platter. When I see those mountains, I’m clicking away as well. Once in my room, my first thought isn’t to put my bags down and unfurl on my bed after a day of traveling. No, instead the knee-jerk reaction is to take a picture of my new digs completely unspoiled, luggage just out of frame as if I somehow came here completely empty-handed. It’s the kind of picture that can easily be found on the hotel’s website. But now, I have a less-good version on my phone. Throughout my entire trip, call me Annie Leibovitz: my camera practically overheats from all the photography.

It used to be that you had a couple rolls of film to take travel pictures, and beyond that you’d do something many humans refer to as just “enjoying” a vacation. (I’m still researching what that must feel like.) But in this current age of social media-saturation, it’s clear that apps like Instagram have an absolute chokehold on traveling in the modern era. Call it Instagramxiety, a term I will soon campaign to enter into Merriam-Webster. No, it’s not enough to actually experience something. In fact, studies have found that nothing matters if you don’t post it to your story or it doesn’t make it on your grid. Or so it often seems.

I can’t count how many pictures of the beach I have on my camera roll. All of them look almost exactly alike: sand, waves, and more often than not, blue sky. Maybe there’s a seagull in the distance for some extra pizzazz. Instead of actually breathing in the salty air and feeling the soft sand beneath my toes, I’m squinting at a phone I can barely see in the blinding sunlight, trying to see if the shot I’m taking of the waves is captured at just the right crest. It was the same scenario during a recent stay at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar, which, despite being located north of San Diego, resembles a palatial European hotel from its sprawling grounds and cavernous interiors. I now have more pictures of the inside and outside of this place than parents have of a newborn baby.