I have a favorite ice cream shop that is within walking distance of my home; it’s a frequent destination whenever they are in operating season. For reasons that will be apparent shortly I am abstaining from naming them, so for now I will simply refer to them as “the shop” or “shop.” Regardless, beyond having my favorite ice cream in the Twin Cities, the shop also has a lovely interior and patio. Outside the shop is decorated with potted plants that are well tended and beautifully arranged, with vines reaching up the stucco walls that are illuminated in the evening by warm lights, flickering off of the stained glass that pockets the walls.
I am describing the patio so vividly because this shop does not allow its patrons to take pictures in the business. The signs had not previously been there from my recollection, though in discussion with a long-time employee it was brought to my attention that this has been a long standing policy. I had asked them where the policy had come from, given that I had not seen in previous summers I visited their location. I was told that while the policy was something implied in the past, the enforcement of said policy changed due to the beautiful space becoming so popular and such a destination for enterprising posters. The attention and subsequent surge of people prioritizing photoshoots created disruptions in the flow of foot traffic that jeopardized American Disabilities Act, or ADA, compliance.
This is a complicated situation to navigate. While I have some reservations about the lack of context in the signage (though they have posted about it on their social media), I also understand that people hardly read those signs. Worse, they get upset when the sign tells them to do something—or not to do something. Seeing people respond with confusion or frustration when asked to not take a photo has stuck with me. In a time where so much of our daily lives and culture are based around what we do online, to the point where businesses will beg for posts and reviews, why ask for no pictures?
Introspection into the question of why sharing stuff online brings the question of the point of social media in the first place. I often come off to my family and friends, that I have a particular bone to pick with social media. My complaint has less to do with social media as a whole, but rather what those social media platforms are built to do, or their purpose. This purpose can very easily be summarized simply; they are to generate profit for the company that operates the platform. This purpose can put the relationship between platform and space at odds, resulting in spaces needing to bend to the whim of the social media platforms in order to create a place that is pleasing said platform’s algorithms.
The success of this pivot to please is reflected in interactions with that place through the platform, posting images of and attention those interactions bring. Driving this interaction provides a further push to bring business and attention to things that people collectively decide matter, or at least the algorithms decide the people care about enough. I do not mean to put the blame on the algorithm. A purpose of that algorithm is to manage the narrative of a large amount of individual contributions in such a way that develops and promotes a zeitgeist that is born out of the relationship of content curation and content consuming. At this, that system often performs well, sometimes spookily well, such as now infamous time of Target’s shopping algorithm detecting a pregnancy before the family was aware of it. However, at the end of this goal, is the intent to drive more attention to what is seen as worth paying attention to for the benefit of the viewers.
However, does this come with consideration of the cost of that funnel? We can see instances in which it does not. There has been and continues to be an ongoing discussion on the effects of overcrowding at national parks. From the damage it does to the location to the danger it puts the people visiting in, a rush of people going to a spot does not come without a mixed bag of consequences. I specifically use the term “mixed bag” because I do not want to say that it is all bad. University of Wisconsin Press’s Land Economics journal published an article in 2024 on how social media influences visitation to public lands, showing that there is indeed a correlation between posting about a place and visiting it. Other research shows similar findings, such as the National Academy of Sciences, published a month before the previous research, shows a connection between previously established amount of visitation to a park and social media exposure effecting changes in visitation. However, this study notes that the effect is much stronger when the location already has a larger presence, and that it does not seem to have much of an effect on less visited locations, such as in a comparison of effect between Joshua Tree National Park and Voyagers National Park. This can also be seen in news covering how much trash is left or forgotten at national parks, such as this article highlighting trash collected at Yellowstone.
I have heard this effect that social media and algorithms have as “flattening”, first mentioned to me in this context in the book Filterworld, and I would say that is an appropriate name in cases such as this. When trying to cater to a large audience, when trying to attract and maintain the attention of as many people as possible, a system will work to find what the most alluring, captivating thing is to the most amount of people, and then promote that so that it can do it’s desired task. Other topics get flattened under the weight of the most useful one. I understand that is a dramatic way of describing it, and I do not want to give the impression that this is an entirely bad thing, as those same research papers earlier note too that visitation overall increases. This same increase can be applied to other locations, such as the ice cream shop. But when it comes to such a degree that it risks the safety of people with disabilities, when it puts nature and person at risk from overcrowding while leaving other sites forgotten, I can’t say that it is at a pure good. If we flatten the experiences we have to a homogeneous curation of destinations that are most photogenic, then we lose out on the potential for other experiences and sensations. A restaurant might not have the desired appearance to satisfy the photogenic eye of a feed, but does that diminish the feeling of two regulars coming and showing an engagement ring?
This is not to say that I have a solution to this system, nor do I necessarily think any one of us should be trying to fix it ourselves. What I write this for is to put a thought into the mind of the reader, one of additional considerations when going through our daily lives. What is the purpose when we take a picture, and who is it for when you post it?