Do you feel that all travel photos on Instagram are the same? A person with arms spread wide standing at the edge of a cliff. Someone’s arm reaching out into a beautiful scenery. A girl with a fedora hat in a flower field… Yeah, 100% Pure New Zealand feels the same. So, they made this hilarious ad to make people stop traveling under the social influence and encourage them to shoot something new.
The video star is Tom Sainsbury, the Social Observation Squad (S.O.S) member by day and a comedian by night. He was patrolling some of New Zealand’s top tourist spots, trying to stop people from taking a bunch of tourist photos that all resemble each other. “I’ve been alerted to a situation that’s been happening a lot lately,” Tom says at the beginning of the video. “People have been seeing those photos on social media, and they’re going to great lengths to copy them. You know them: Hot tub back shot. Man sits quietly on the rock contemplating. Hot dog legs…” The last one cracked me up, since every summer my Facebook and Instagram feed is full of photos of “hotdog legs.” Although, in the summer of 2020, those “hotdog legs” were baking in the backyards and local beaches by the river, but that’s a different topic. Funnily enough, New Zealand borders are still closed. We can’t travel to many other countries either, so this is probably not the best time for a video like this. Still, we travel locally, and I believe we’ve all seen many look-alike photos from our own countries. If I see another Golubac Fortress photo, I’m going to lose my mind. So, no matter if you travel across your country or abroad, try to get away from social media influence that’s been affecting all of us, at least to some extent. Think differently, visit new places, and don’t forget the most important thing: be kind to nature and the people around you. [via CNN Travel]
