I'm not criticizing the act of taking photos while traveling (or, even when not traveling). It is a craft, an art, and a way to record history. I've got no problem with that. The issue is when the act of taking and posting those photos is simply about self-validation that we have a problem. Spending your holiday constantly checking your phone to see if people have liked your latest photos doesn't seem very relaxing.
This is how those people go through daily life. For them, vacation is about relating to other people--the people they are with and their friends and family elsewhere. They want to share everything they are involved in, and in part they want to make themselves look good. So they take photos and they immediately share them.
This may not seem relaxing to you, but I don't see how it's a problem. It's how they want to spend their vacation--and even if it is not relaxing, it's what they want to do. What's the problem?
A complaint seems to be "people are spending too much time photographing and not enough time experiencing the place." Photographing and sharing is precisely how many people experience the place, along with sharing those photographs and by seeing the photographs of others. Those people are sociable and like to share. That's not bad.
Personally I am not like that. If one wants a quiet vacation experience without big crowds, it is easy to get. For instance I often hear Yellowstone is crowded. While there I never understood this perception--it seemed expansive and quiet to me as we plied the roads and hiked down the trails. Then we saw Old Faithful. It was like going to the shopping mall. Same goes for this guy seeing this place in Cambodia. I'd bet anything that if he just strayed a couple thousand feet from whatever vista this was, he would have experienced "the real place," whatever he wanted that to be.
These sociable folks who want to share photos are like that every day. They're not going to change because they're on vacation, nor should they. Similarly the people who just want to experience wherever they are without sharing it with everyone are going to be like that everyday. They don't change while on vacation either. There's nothing wrong with the folks who want to share and pieces like this one are nothing but a bunch of snobbery. If the writer wants to spend his/her vacation being a snob, well, ok. The folks taking the photos and sharing them are probably enjoying their vacations. Hopefully he is enjoying his by being a snob.
The problem is that it's unhealthy to be wholly focused on only 1 aspect of your life. Plenty of people become depressed by not feeling socially validated on social media.
I suspect most of these people are already depressed, and the validation they find in social media staves off the more severe feelings.
Or it's become something of an addiction to them, and a lack of validation (either a lack of "likes" or an inability to post) results in withdrawal, which can cause depression and shares some behavioral symptoms with depression.
But "we" don't have a problem because we don't do it. And "they" don't have a problem either, because they choose to do it (unless the behaviour is compulsive in some way).
That's not how I would spend a vacation myself, but it's their vacation and their time. If they enjoy the attention, what's wrong with them enjoying it?
