‘Yes, and?’
I can’t honestly recount how many times (in my time penning lifestyle listicles) I used the catchword “Instagramable.” Initially, that descriptor existed as a sign of mental exhaustion; what little creativity I had left for the day had been long spent — which meant I had surrendered to using clickbait slang.
Perhaps the most disappointing: That phrasing, to my dismay, had a profound resonance with readers. And in fact, I had even dedicated entire articles to these Instagrammable locations. Because they were popular. Because they “got the views.” Because it appeared it was what people wanted.
But what people wanted wasn’t to photograph glorious views of San Francisco or a quirky rainbow cookie or an awe-inspiring public light installation. No, what they wanted were likes comments and followers. Effectively: Readers — the ones who took those pieces to heart — wanted social media clout, not memories captured in digital stills.
Chasing some ethereal sense of validation through a screen isn’t sustainable. Or rather, it can’t be for an extended period without wreaking havoc on one’s mental health. The blue light exposure alone would be enough to disorientate your sleeping patterns.
Nevertheless, the influencer market as we presently know it rose from this amassing of social media cache, though you could argue that the pandemic has given us a glimpse of its imminent demise.
(Take for example Kylie Cosmetics, the cosmetic company founded by Kylie Jenner — who’s without question the most influential and commercial presence in the beauty space on social media — having suffered sales declines of late. Its once-lauded “Instagram-friendly” pop-ups have, comparatively speaking, floundered over the past two years. And its social media marketing tactics that were largely based on capitalist off Jenner’s Instagram cache have since been deemed out of date and ineffective.)
I do think we’re (at some level) sort of down with considering the Instgramabilty of a location or attraction — a museum, a natural attraction, a large-scale pop-up — before visiting it.
SF’s Museum of Ice Cream, a local hub that was known for attracting influencers en masse, just closed for good in 2021. Was its shuttering at the time a sign that these Instagrammable locations, as well as the social media mavens they attract, are on the decline? Perhaps, yes. Because nothing else has ever since come to replace its outright social media pull.
The evidence is mounting that these types of attractions have lost their omnipresent appeal since becoming popular in the early 2010s.
Exhibits dedicated to smartphone-snapped selfies are on the decline, with no sign of returning to the extent we once saw them at. Goop’s unabashedly Instagram-inspired store in the Pacific Heights neighborhood permanently closed on July 1 that same year. Popular San Francisco Instagrammable museums, like the Color Factory and Candytopia, have also shuttered their locations in the city. As in the case of the Museum of Ice Cream, this also simultaneously put an end to littering the city with misplaced microplastics.
Selfie sticks are increasingly being banned at tourist hotspots, either for safety reasons or to avoid disrupting others. The sales of them, too, have been shrinking since 2016. (On a more anecdotal note, I’ve seen noticeably fewer Instagram-skewed press releases sent my way over the past eighteen months.)
All things considered, I do think the perennial appeal of these types of attractions will linger on; they offer episodes of cotton candy escapism in times marked by viscous strife. Perhaps future iterations of such pop-ups will hyperfocus on that commonality — maybe even introducing smartphone-free policies, beckoning attendees to stay present throughout the experience.
I, for one, would find such an attraction absolutely worth a visit.
What people wanted wasn’t to photograph glorious views of San Francisco or a quirky rainbow cookie or an awe-inspiring public light installation. No, what they wanted were likes and comments and followers.
As for the influencers these Instagram-friendly venues attract, the market they occupy isn’t going anywhere, any time soon. But it does, however, show signs that it’s waning. We’re all feeling a sense of “influencer fatigue” these days — and that’s directly affecting how social media personalities can translate follower counts and views into ROI for sponsored products.
However, those same skill sets influencers have used to turn traditional marketing campaigns on their heads can be extrapolated out to other professions. There isn’t a successful large-scale brand currently operating that doesn’t either have someone curating its social media channels and/or heading its audience development projects. Alas, it’s in those exact vocational environments where influencers can thrive, when and if they decide to extrapolate their career outward. Or when and if the influencer market, itself, crashes.
So, yes: I do think we’re (at some level) sort of down with considering the Instgramabilty of a location or attraction — a museum, a natural attraction, a large-scale pop-up — before visiting it. But may the sheer, unvarnished, near-tangible delight of such places continue onward.
