We want travel tragedy, not heavily edited holiday photos

OPINION: I scroll, eyes now glazed over.

A stream of powdery white sands, too-bright pastel piazzas and sapphire seas. Another commute glancing mindlessly at a screen.

It’s too pretty to look away of course, but too perfect to properly engage with, so I scroll on through these manicured images – one bare foot on the sand and the other suffocating in business sock and scuffed shoe trudging into work.

It’s escapism of sorts, but a kaleidoscope of colour and tanned, smiling, slim people who seemingly drink cocktails and play with their curated cuisine, but look like they never actually eat it makes for a fairly simplistic story: We went to Bora Bora/Lombok/El Nido – it was amazing. It never rained. The freshest fish. The sunniest sun. The funniest fun. We swam each day…with turtles…and dolphins…and pina coladas…and here’s two hours of GoPro footage all about it. Yawn.

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This is the modern-day equivalent of the family all gathered around to watch a slideshow presentation of grandma’s coach trip to North America. There’s only so many “uh-huhs” “mmmmmmmhmms” and “oh, wows” I can handle.

No. Instead give me trials, tribulations, tantrums and tragedies. We don’t want a photo of your third plate of Louisiana hot wings, I want the story of your ill-fated roadside chicken stand visit and how its digestive effects meant you almost missed your ferry. I know it was really lovely that the hotel gave you a plate of chocolates because you name-dropped that it was your honeymoon several times in the booking process, but I’ll be a more receptive audience when you get to the part about the hotel room’s musty smell and how the bedbugs completely ruined the newlywed vibe.

No, I can’t get enthused about your Cornish cream tea, but the weird trip you had after some Ayahuasca tea a sharma man gave you in the Peruvian Amazon, that’s the start of a good story. Fine, you have accumulated a lot of Facebook “likes” on that post on the tally of countries you’ve visited, but we’d really love it if we could compare tallies of flights we missed. I know, I know. It wasn’t your fault. 

Social media has produced polished portrayals of travel – without the queues, squabbles, bill shocks, rain, hangovers, illness or injury. If travel was as it is on Instagram, we wouldn’t need umbrellas or travel insurance. Crowds are allowed (for ambience) at concerts, clubs and city streets. They are erased from cutesy towns, temples, islands and national monuments. Dodgy taxi drivers never exist in this Photoshop-ed version. But it gets dull quickly.

Although any tourist misadventure is a nightmare at the time and now met with a plea from my wife, “don’t you dare write about this”, these are the best stories and are always – when told correctly and after a period of grieving – met with laughter and schadenfreude. “Oh, Josh, that would happen to you!”

Truth is, it happens to all of us, and we should stop pretending it doesn’t. Travel is so much more entertaining and enthralling than the white beach one-upmanship played out on social media.