Tourists line up at Roy's Peak

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Tourists line up at Roy's Peak

There is no such thing as a beautiful secret spot any longer. With the advent of Instagram influencers, “outing” (and ruining) cool locations on social media has become increasingly common. We see a neat spot on our feed, so we want to venture there ourselves — along with thousands of others who had the same idea. This photo of the long line of people waiting to capture the exact same photo at Roy’s Peak in New Zealand really highlights this phenomenon.

The social media queue pic.twitter.com/hRj6kBXypS

— Lukas Stefanko (@LukasStefanko) November 25, 2018

TripAdvisor user Kerri wrote, “There were a lot of people at the viewpoint to get that desired photo. It was hard to get a photo without several strangers in it, and a tad awkward posing for a picture with such a large audience.”

According to New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, visitors to Roy’s Peak have increased by 12 percent between 2016 and 2018, because of the spot’s popularity on social media. While taking a photo isn’t harming the environment, the Department of Conservation did warn visitors to be cognizant of the area’s wildlife, and to be mindful of not leaving debris along the trail.

Many, however, don’t approve of this single-minded approach to travel, wishing people would actually stop to appreciate the view instead of posing. In response to the Roy’s Peak picture, one Twitter user wrote, “This really upsets me. What is wrong with these people? If I hiked all the way up and finally got to this view, I would just stare and cry and be thankful I got to see it.”

Many have had similar experiences at popular photo spots, like Redditor MrCoffee999 on their trip to the Fushimi Inari Gates in Kyoto, Japan. “Everyone posing on the way up the mountain made it not enjoyable for us,” they wrote, “having to stop every 10 seconds to wait for people to pose and snap photos.” Redditor hip2besquare18 explained, “I had a similar experience in Santorini at the famous three blue domes. People were patiently waiting in line up to a certain point, but if someone took too long to take their photo, people would yell at them.”