No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram

by Sarah Frier

Every day, Camille Demyttenaere and her husband, Jean Hocke, choreograph experiences entirely for the purpose of posting them on Instagram. Once, through the open door of a dark teal train curving through a jungle in Sri Lanka, Demyttenaere lunged out the side of the train into a passionate kiss with Hocke. She leaned forward, both arms fully extended behind her while hanging on to the side of the train with both hands, on top of him, with her knee up near his biceps, as he leaned out and back, his left arm dangling, holding on with only one hand, hovering over treetops. “ONE OF OUR WILDEST KISSES,” the travel influencers, who go by @backpackdiariez, said in the May 2019 caption. Commenters reacted immediately. “Are you really ready to die for a pic????????” one said. The media picked up the story internationally, writing about travel culture and the dangerous lengths people were willing to go for the ’gram. Several of them cited a study that logged 259 deaths during attempted selfies between 2011 and 2017, mostly by people in their early twenties taking unnecessary risks. Ironically, the outrage was the best reaction the Belgian couple could have hoped for. Now, with their profile posted in more news sites, they increased their exposure and gained about 100,000 followers with a tripling of views for their Instagram stories. Their inbox overflowed with offers from tourism boards and hotels, which had discovered their profiles in the international coverage of the incident.