TOURING WITH INSTAGAZE

What is Instagaze? The way in which people perceive

something, trace their presence at a place and conveys it to a
mass audience differs from person to person. There are
hundreds of viewpoints for the same thing by various people.
Each eye develops its own experience, its own perception. One
of the most important part of this process is Instagram. It is a
platform which has become a means of communication for
millions of its users. It is a great means of connecting like-
minded people.
Instagram is basically an artistic version of Facebook. It gives
you that creative liberty to design your feed and put your ideas
out there. It helps you to explore the areas you are interested
in, find inspiration to extend the boundaries of your creative
space. it acts like a window from which you can peep into the
vast world of networking and ideas of other people. You get to
know others perspectives on various concepts and ideas which
also influence you to shape your thought around things. Social
media has this unbelievable power of influencing people. You
can voice out your opinions, support each other, try to bring an
actual change using this network.
But are you really touring/exploring through this Instagaze
of other users?
This exploration and touring that we are talking about, it is
limiting us in a way that we are now clouded by these ideas and
every single person is creating their own versions of it,
eventually giving the same conclusion.
“One photographer said that he was ‘selling dreams’. Others
said they were reinforcing long-established images of the Lake
District. ‘Tourists are looking for some of the images that they
have had presented to them in the many writings of the Lake
District.’ ‘People have a tendency to think that they know what
they want to see.’”
- Carol Crawshaw and John Urry
This is one of the example of how people are not using their
own imagination and are just copying others ideas and style. In
order to create something unique, they just copy pieces from a
spectrum of ideas and make something different.
Is it really exploring if we are in the middle of a confined space,
knowing the fact that there is a much larger, infinite space out
there, outside the Insta world? Are we satisfied with the results
we are getting out of this touring through millions of other’s
eyes?

Instagram, being one of the most powerful medium of

communication also has it’s ugly reality which goes behind the
beautiful façade. It is now used for showcasing the “high
standard life” and boosting the narcissism among people. The
main motive of this app is now lost and all we have are the
staged photographs used to enunciate the aesthetics and
richness of the picture, faking the reality and giving false
perceptions to other people. We have come to this time where
people instead of searching for something on Google, searches
about it on Instagram using relevant hashtags. They know that
these pictures that we see on Instagram are processed and
selected out of hundreds of shots but still, they choose to
believe in them. For example, we see people posting their
pictures while travelling and we are tempted to go visit that
place. We imagine our trip to be as same as the pictures that
we are seeing and this creates expectations in our head, which
in reality may not be fulfilled when you actually go to that place
but still you’ll post a happy picture of yourself being in that
place tempting others and this loop never ends.
Also, apps like Instagram are now used for publicity stunts, to
get public attention by spreading fake news. There are
organizations set up for making photos and videos viral on
Instagram. It doesn’t matter, how good your work is. You’ll
always be remained hidden inside if you can’t pay for being
promoted. These fake news do nothing but just create these
false perceptions in the minds of people. People start believing
in them and be a part of the endless loop.
Isn’t Instagram being used just as another platform of
creating these illusions, giving false perception, false hopes
to people?
It takes minutes for something to be a trend or a viral sensation
on the Internet. People are fooled with these trends and takes
part in spreading it even more just because everyone else is
doing it. There is no sense of judgement left then and everyone
becomes a part of this foolish process. It’s not that it’s not a
good thing. It gives you a podium to stand up and voice out
your opinion and try to bring an actual change. But mostly it’s a
way of spreading false perceptions. For example, the #MeToo
movement. So many victims came out and told their stories to
the world but there were so many people who told false and
fabricated stories trying to gain attention out of it. You don’t
know what to trust or whom to trust because there is no way to
find out if the said or the showed thing is true or not.
Another example of false perception would be that how some
bloggers and influencers fake their photos and write all things
good about the picture. They fake their trips to certain places
and give good reviews because they are being paid for it. They
are, in a way, creating this false image of a place and letting
people expect certain things from that space. People also
believe them because they are established and influential
people on Instagram.
Whenever you have an opinion about something and you are
pretty sure about it but you see what other people feel about
the same and those views are totally opposite than yours and
then you start contemplating your thoughts. You doubt
yourself and in most cases, change your perception because
majority of people are thinking differently. It’s not that you’re
wrong but there sets in a fear of being different from others
and the need to justify as to why you think in such a way.
People feel targeted when they have varying opinions which
sometimes also results in cyber bullying.
So if we are so much surrounded by these false ideas and
perception, are we really exploring what Instagram has to
offer or are we just being a fool out of it?
If the Insta world that we are living in is so fake and fabricated,
we are just being the puppets of this huge social system. We
are behaving how Instagram is expecting us to behave.
Despite the apparent popularity of sightseeing among the
travelling public, this type of tourism is commonly denigrated.
The experience is generally taken to be irreducibly superficial,
both because it only involves the sense of sight and because
the tourist follows well-trodden routes leading to very familiar
viewing points.
- Carry Crawshaw and John Urry
The experience of a certain idea or a place is already designed
for us and we follow it, believing that it’s unique but in our
subconscious mind, we also know what the truth is.
Then there are people who don’t follow these fabricated
patterns and create their own experience. They are those “social
rebels” who goes on hunting things which are not very popular
as to set a trend and put it on their social media accounts so
that they can tell people stories which no one has ever heard.
Eventually, these stories also becomes a part of the social
system and people start going out, seeking “that” experience
and here begins the endless loop one more time.
If you think of the time when there was no Instagram, no
Facebook, people actually cared enough and went out for some
real exploration. You will hear thousands of different stories
from your grandparents about their experiences in life. Of
course, there were other means of communication at that time
and they too had some pre conceived notions about a
particular idea or a place but now we have visuals which
actually takes away everything. These visuals are right in front
of us and there is a vivid imagination, playing everything in our
head that we ought to do.
It is pictures rather than propositions, metaphors rather than
statements, which determine most of our philosophical
convictions…the story of the domination of the mind of the
West by ocular metaphors.
(Rorty 1980:12–13; and see Chapter 1 above)
The pictures says it all. But the truth behind this beautiful
façade is that no matter how bad the actual experience is, no
one shows that to the world. If someone is investing their time
and money into doing something, of course they want to brag
about it and this is one of the byproducts of using Instagram.
Instagram has made people so narcissistic that everyone just
wants to talk about themselves and flaunt their perfect lives.
People tend to make their social life so happening and happy
but what happens in real life, no one knows about that.
Instagram has a lot of amazing features and is a very good
platform for social networking but it has its downside too. The
fact that people know about both it’s sides but still they use it
irresponsibly is something to wonder about. To efficiently
explore through this Instagaze, you need to be a healthy
Instagrammer first. Also, you need to look beyond this Insta
world and try to experience something so surreal that only you
know how it feels and that feeling is yours. You share it with
people but it should be something that you created. That is
how we’ll have different gazes which will actually be different
from each other. That is how one will get a true chance at
exploring!
- Palak Kothari