Are you a purveyor of 'travel porn' without knowing it?

Image: Alexander Spatari / Getty Images​

Before, there were slideshow evenings, where you had to watch the whole vacation of your next-door neighbors ("it'll just take five minutes"). The arrival of social networks has pretty much spelled your freedom from those annoying evenings and the pain of lengthy image projections since now everyone just posts their pictures online. Except that since the advent of Instagram, in fact, it's become somewhat of an ongoing slideshow party, morning, noon and night, weekends included. And the travel porn trend, which consists in posting or looking at a mass of photos that are carefully staged, and filtered, comes with its own risks for all involved.  

Identity distortion
Constantly posting reworked, retouched photos can have consequences on your identity. Because, by focusing on the presentation of the experience, more than the experience itself, you put a distance between what you should be experiencing and yourself. You erect a film between your perception and reality, as if every sensation and emotion had to be immortalized or transformed into social network art rather than lived.

When getting likes means existing
Furthermore, it is possible that in addition to the landscapes you find yourself in, you want to show off your body. If your intention is to arouse desire, you may be consciously or subconsciously posing in sexualized postures in order to grab attention and approval (via likes) of your friends and/or followers. And like a big burger dripping with grease, accompanied by the hashtag "foodporn," you unintentionally become a creator of "travel porn."

The abundance of tourism and body images that you flood the networks with can also leave a bad taste in the form of envy. Because, rather than sharing an experience, you erect a barrier: on one side those who can travel and afford a dream life and on the other side, everyone else. And instead of making friends, you're alienating people... Something to think about.