"Hipster Barbie" Proves How Easy It Is to Fake Compelling Travel Photos

Humor
by Alex Scola Sep 7, 2015

IF YOU ARE A MILLENNIAL and spend any time on social media, you probably have at least one friend (or maybe you *are* that friend) who is constantly uploading travel adventure selfies purely for the sake of showing off. The whole institution of the “travel selfie” has become a stale process of flaunting where we are, where we’ve been, and what we’re doing — just, you know, without you. “Look at how interesting I must be, because of this cool place I’m at,” they scream, often successfully filling the rest of us 9-to-5ers and laptop-jockeys with insatiable wanderlust and excessive FOMO.

But finally, someone has taken a moment to provide commentary on this absurd culture of “I’d rather show everyone how I’m living than actually live,” by starting a parody account on Instagram geared toward illustrating just how easy it is to fake the #AuthenticLife.

Meet the internet’s favorite “Hipster Barbie,” @SocalityBarbie.

Run by an anonymous wedding photographer in Portland (because, of course it is), Socality Barbie takes exactly the kind of travel shots we’re all damn tired of seeing in our feeds.

https://instagram.com/p/6p02z3HjKz/

In fact, when describing the impetus for the project in an interview with Wired, the photographer noted: “People were all taking the same pictures in the same places and using the same captions […]”

https://instagram.com/p/5-MeDJHjOM/

https://instagram.com/p/5aJ5qxHjKu/

“I couldn’t tell any of their pictures apart,” she said, “so I thought, ‘What better way to make my point than with a mass-produced doll?’”

“I get it, it’s pretty to look at,” the photographer added in the interview. “But it’s so dishonest. Nobody actually lives like this. And it’s so overdone that it’s becoming boring.”

https://instagram.com/p/5z-1T_njMx/

If Socality Barbie can teach us anything, it’s that we *must* remember that photos can always be posed, and that the best parts of actually traveling are the ones we seldom manage to capture on film — because we’re too busy experiencing them.

 

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