New Zealand has chosen a new hill to die on: they are tired of your unoriginal travel Instagrams and they want you to do better.
The most recent installation in the country’s “Do Something New” tourism campaign, as reported on by CNN, features comedian Tom Sainsbury, who (hilariously) plays the part of leader of the “Social Observation Squad” — a division who’s sole initiative is to put an end to copycat, clout-chasing Instagram photos.
“People have been seeing those photos on social media and are going to great lengths to copy them,” Sainsbury says as he seen simultaneously scaling the side of a mountain in an effort to reach a few obvious offenders. “You know them: hot tub back shot, man sits quietly on the rock contemplating, hot dog legs and — a classic one in these parts — the ‘Summit Spreadeagle.’”
And you do know them — we all do — which is what makes this crusade to put an end to “traveling under the social influence” so good.
In the clip by 100% Pure New Zealand, Sainsbury can be seen pulling up on unsuspecting tourists visiting popular destinations in a patrol car, bringing them into custody, and ultimately depositing them in a lesser known area, but not before encouraging them to “share something new.”
The irony of all of this, of course, is that tourists are not allowed into New Zealand at the moment and probably won’t be for the foreseeable future, seeing as the prime minister has made it abundantly clear that she has no intention of opening borders until all New Zealanders are vaccinated.
That said, there are still a few lessons to be gleaned here, chief among them being that a place is not the sum of its most Instagrammable locations. When the day comes that travel should resume and the world should return to some sense of normalcy, please spare us the monotony of all the same played-out, influencer-wanna-be facsimiles on our feeds. Instead, get out there and share something new.
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