Newsflash - we're knee deep into travel-season and the pressure to post Instagram #content making the most of wherever you are is off the richter scale. Whether it's a snap in front of lush mountains that also handily shows off a new top, or a shot in front of a glassy lake: perfecting an Instagram post on your travels has become a competitive extreme sport. These days it's not just what the picture says about you, but what the background and context evokes (and yes, all of you posting commentaries about the history of the castellated ruins in the captions while swinging your uber-trendy mini bag into front and center, we're looking at you...).
Perhaps the race to compete with Instagram's algorithms is why we've also started to see 'influencer' content creeping onto our feeds that is just... well... not ok.
The most recent photo-trend to capture interest online is of taking photos in front of Chernobyl. The site is the location of one of the worst nuclear disasters in living history - with the 1986 explosion resulting in the deaths of a somewhere between 4,00-93,000 people. But it's recent popularity as a 'destination' visit has been attributed to HBO's miniseries Chernobyl which stars Jared Harris, Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård.
On Twitter, a user called Bruno Zupan highlighted the troubling trend, writing a post stating 'Meanwhile in Chernobyl: Instagram influencers flocking to the site of the disaster.'
Among the 'influencers' posting aesthetically-pleasing pictures of the historical disaster scene are a girl leaning candidly against a blown-out bus, and famously - one user who is now being referred to as 'white thong girl' who took a photo baring a butt cheek beneath a strategically draped Hazmat suit. Zupan's post has now been retweeted over 46k times, even racking up a mention from Chrissy Teigen.
Despite the Atlantic writing an article stating 'There’s Nothing Wrong With Posing for Photos at Chernobyl', I'm inclined to agree with Zupan here - there is, there really is something wrong with this trend for using the scenes of some of the biggest disasters in human history as a nifty Instagram backdrop.
Now, I love (and am guilty) of indulging in holiday posts as much as the next person. Who isn't? It's June - sunny weather is scarce, and so on the odd occasion when we manage to rush out with a bottle of Cote to Provence it's nice to memorialise the occasion with a carefree picture in a floral dress on a bench. If you want to decorate your feed with images of you cheekily glancing over a tanned shoulder with the colosseum handily nearby, creating a beautiful background, who are any of us to judge?
But ultimately, when we're using backgrounds of places like Chernobyl on our social media posts, we're using those pictures to share a message about ourselves - to show what cultured holidays we're having, or how well travelled we are, or how thoughtful and intellectual we are compared to the next person, with their prosecco and beach shot. We're using the scenes of these epic disasters in as props in the stories we're telling about ourselves.
Ultimately, historical disaster sites don't exist to provide scenic foil for social media posts. They are the locations of real pain, real tragedy and in many instances, the real and terrible loss of many lives.
And yet there's a big difference between that, and using a location like Chernobyl as a backdrop or prop for a post. Because ultimately, that's what happens when these locations become wallpaper for our Instagram feeds and texture to make our content more interesting, relatable and intellectual (and this is true regardless of how many followers you have).
It's not just Chernobyl that's the defining example here either: it's become not uncommon for Instagrammer's to post images of themselves at The World Trade Center 9/11 memorial, Holocaust Memorial's and Auschwitz.
Perhaps we're all a little guilty of using a historic backdrop as more compelling scenery and context for holiday Instagram posts: but we should all take this as a lesson to be mindful before clicking the upload button.
There are many ways to respect and honor victims of historical disasters without using the sites of those disasters as a prop to remind the world how smart/thoughtful/well travelled you are.