Promises were made to get serious about this blog, but unfortunately I have been heavily focused more upon my health; spending a lot of the time in the gym or walking around outside, to a greater extent that I expected to be able to do so. Maybe I wasn’t able to keep the momentum when it comes to getting serious about this blog.
Sometimes the greater challenge is knowing about what to write about next. When you are in a gym or exploring those parts of the city that you are yet to familiarise yourself with, there just isn’t time to sit down and type. Today however, it is a day where has been forced to rest and for that reason alone, the iPad comes back out to play.
When one is out and about walking, there is often the odd chance to grab a photo of something. Some photos may be included in the articles, yet others will go on the app that everybody uses to show off photos – Instagram. Let’s face it, nobody is going to use Flickr anymore, unless they are a semi-serious photographer.
This blog also has its own Instagram account and there’s no need for me to hate upon Instagram too much I believe, as right now it is serving a purpose and performing its designated function as a place to store and display photos. For other users, it may have a very different kind of purpose in today’s narcissistic, lost society; attention is the currency that many of us seem to trade in and I for one am also guilty of sharing one too many food photos.
While it seems not so appropriate to resort to slut shaming, it must be acknowledged that when one looks at other locally based Instagram accounts, there are a lot of young women that do take the practice of ‘self-branding’ a little too far. What has surprised me is that the vast majority of such users tend to be Asian; the stereotypes of modern day Western women are contradicted to an extent.
For legal and ethical reasons, examples of such accounts will not be displayed. However, such is the small size of the expatriate community almost anywhere in the world compared to the local population that away from the virtual world, many of us can become very recognisable.
Therefore, you may find yourself going to bars and seeing faces that look familiar despite the fact that you do not know the person all that well. It cannot be denied that this feels rather awkward and creepy despite the fact that these people willingly consented to others seeing them and their daily lives online; in many cases they even encouraged it as they seek to become influencers of some kind. Although not easily impressed by Instagram thottery, I can feel a strange sense of guilt and shame due to the fact that I can recognise people from their Instagram accounts. It should not be like this.
This is leading me to question that value of Instagram as a user as it seems to be most narcissistic, attention seeking network of them all. Sure, deep philosophical debate is not going to take place when the primary forms of communication are images and short videos, but apart from food porn and attention whoring, little else of value is offered.
In addition, one may easily sense that almost everybody’s travel photos are far too similar. For every second usage of #danang, the photos are often the same, the same ‘Golden hands bridge,’ different user. Everybody seems to seek to create an image that is ‘Instagrammable’ rather than a representation of their unique and different travel experiences.
So when I post a really rough rough the edges, badly lit, fuzzy picture at night, or a photo of one of Da Nang’s famous attractions with dirty, overflowing dustbins in the foreground; I feel no shame in posting it. Without intending to sound falsely artistic or pretentious, I feel that this is more raw and ‘real.’ I am not one to show my face either. Not only is this blog not all about ‘me,’ but you may find that my face is not that ‘Instagram friendly’ anyway. So, dirty dustbins, it is.
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