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Lucas Enrique Fernandez

The Selfie as Travel Writing

Vituperation:

As mentioned by Cardell and Douglas, the selfie has become an increasingly popular mode of visual travel writing. However, in my opinion, this change in the popularization of the selfie has been a negative one. The point was brought up that the selfie allows for the subject (the picture taker) to place themselves around notable travel destinations and landmarks, documenting the travelers journey. Contrary to this, I find that people take selfies to display themselves rather than the beautiful destinations they travel to. Selfies are thankless towards the places they are taken and vain in nature. Many people take these selfies purely for the reason that they can upload it to social media websites and push off empty experiences to their followers. The only kind of post I may hate more than the travel selfie is the food picture people put on their stories instead of just putting their phones away and eating it. When I associate the selfie with travel it makes me think of annoying tourists rather than authentic travelers. They are the type of people who do not genuinely appreciate the culture they are surrounded by, only capturing small glimpses in their camera lens of what they could obtain through their own senses. Instead of making themselves the focus of their travel narrative through taking a selfie, people should instead put their phones down and appreciate the place they decided to travel to.

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