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Somebody Is Showing How Instagram Photos Are All Starting To Look The Same And It’s Pretty Freaky
Did you ever scroll through Instagram photos and get a nagging sense of deja vu? There is a reason why. Insta Repeat is an account dedicated to highlighting the 'visual sameness' of many Instagram pictures, tracking the trending hashtags of influencers who see where the likes are and follow along to the same places, strike the same poses, and take identical nature photos.
An anonymous 27-year-old from Anchorage, Alaska, is the brains behind the Instagram trends account. The filmmaker and artist told Photoshelter that “A purpose of Insta Repeat is to critique originality in media creation through the lens (pun intended) of this one ‘genre’ of Instagram photography accounts.”
Living in Alaska, a vast wilderness where so many 'adventurers' come to explore, she was struck by how the same few places and scenarios kept showing up again and again on her feed of beautiful pictures. “I have noticed it in general on a lot of different platforms and media and have been guilty of it myself for sure,” she told Bored Panda. “Artists and creators fall into patterns. But I think that what is happening on Instagram is more extreme.”
She seems to enjoy the irony behind these aesthetic pictures, often tagged with trendy slogans about 'authenticity' and 'creative living,' when contrasted with almost identical photos of other people claiming much the same things. It turns out that while many people may believe that they are pretty special, they are, knowingly or not, following a generic formula that has been laid out and done countless times before. “I chose the outdoorsy type to focus on because I see it a lot because of where I live but more importantly because I think think the "genre" celebrates a "free" and "authentic" lifestyle that is antithetical to the sameness of all the photos.”
It's certainly a fascinating idea and one that exposes some truths about the influencer 'game' that is being played out. She has attracted some negativity for this, but she says the page is not meant to criticize or belittle anyone. “I am interested in exploring the choice to make an image that has, in essence, already been made.”
“The most amazing thing that has happened since starting the account is people engaging in critical debate on originality and the creation of media. There are some really in-depth discussions going on in the comment threads.”
Scroll down to check them all out for yourself, and let us know what you think in the comments!
More info: Instagram
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Tent Hole
I actually think these ones are awesome. A glimpse of very different scenery.
Close Up Of A Hairy Cow
Back Of Head With Outdoorsy Hat
Feet In Front Of Horseshoe Bend
There must be a long line of people waiting at this place to pose for this pic.
Person Centered Inside An Ice Cave
Standing On Top Of A Car In The Wild
They've even got the same car (more or less) This one is crazy!
Person On Suspension Bridge
Person Centered Inside This Particular Cave
My ex was so proud of his “unique” photograph of himself on a large overhang on the Appalachian. Then a year later we saw at the dmv a plate for hikers with a drawing of a man sitting at the edge of the same cliff, same pose, and I laughed.
Posing In Front Of Starry Sky With A Headlamp
Person Centered Rowing In Canoe
Well, in all fairness, it wouldn't be easy to take this photo anywhere else, would it?
Hand On The Steering Wheel
Person Alone, Centered, Looking Up In A Slot Canyon
This is Antelope Canyoun in souther Arizona. It's magnificent!
Person Standing At The End Of A Centered Dock
Person Walking In The Center Of A Lonely Road
Standing On A Rock In Front Of Water
Person Centered In Front Of This Particular Row Of Trees
Standing On A Van In Front Of Aurora Borealis
Forward Facing Medium Shot Windy Hair
This causes me so much irritation just because I hate having my hair in my face.
Person Centered On A Green Pointy Ridge/Mountain
Red House
Person Centered In Front Of A Waterfall
Person Sitting Alone In Front Of A Lake
Wooden Path Centered
Person Centered In Front Of Waterfall
Vertical Phone In The Wild
Skateboarding Person On Lonely Road
Well, should they be riding on a NOT lonely road? Also it is very hard to snag a skateboarding pic from any other view.
Person Centered In Front Of A Forest
Feet In Front Of A Waterfall
Centered Bridge
These are cool. If you manage to catch right the centre of it oooo this is good. The symmetry becomes mesmerizing.
Person Walking On A Centered Wood Path
Ah, I see I spoke too soon in an early posting. Seems they DID do the centred person on the centred walkway after all. I just knew they couldn't help themselves!
Passenger Side Window
Person Centered On Path In The Woods
Medium Close Up Back Of Girls Head
Person Standing In The Middle Of A Centered Snowy Road
Person Standing In The Middle Of A Winter Road
Windy Hair In Front Of Landscape
Person Centered On A Bridge
Person Running In The Center Of A Lonely Road
Finally they made their escape from the serial road killer who picks up random hitch hikers. Run, people, run be free!
Person Centered In Front Of Waterfall
The second on the top with the black Assassin's Creed pose is Gooseberry Falls, Minnesota.
Person In Front Of Waterfall
What about this on? This is all over the place. 55c6e3a3a9...26c00f.jpg
You could do this with every trend. Style, camera angles, photos in magazines. Not super impressed.
These have become like visual cliches. I found some of these fascinating like standing on a car, but others are so overdone, even the compilation loses its power!
Between millions of people using Instagram it'd be weirder if no pics were similar. While some of these are amusing, tbh it seems kind of a waste of time to dedicate your time to figuring out "trends", be it for following them or "shaming" them(or whatever is supposed to happen here). I've stopped using Instagram after a while, couldn't really get in it I guess but when I was using it I'd just snap pics of here and there that I thought were cool to share with friends and look at their photos. Couldn't care less about what someone thinks is a "trendy" photo, let alone waste time on recreating it on purpose. Instagram can be great in the sense of being able to share a beautiful moment with the world, it just sometimes seems that these days people spend more time staging the "beautiful moment to share" than actually enjoying them.
Husband and I have started to travel. Most of the photos we take, we think are unique. Then we see them in ads or other photo compilations and realize we're taking all the "good" photos that everyone else takes. At least we know we stood there to get that photo. And enjoyed our time adventuring. Mind you I haven't posted any of the "copy cat" photos. Just ones that actually "are" unique... hopefully?
But..... you could say the same about selfies/dog photos/sport shots? Honestly if I was lucky enough to get to travel to some of the places in these pictures, I'd sure as hell be grabbing a well-composed shot of the place. If the account owner lives in Anchorage, lucky them. It IS an adventure for a lot of people internationally to travel somewhere like that.
What's going on here is a shared aesthetic, maybe previously only shared between professionals (and amateurs), made public and accessible via the global sharing network. When I think back on some of my old, print photos, they aren't much different than some of these. But, only me and the bottom of my photo drawer ever saw them. Makes me wanna dig through them and see what goodies I can find! :-)
These are some gorgeous pictures and places. I am jealous of all these people and their amazing experiences. I don't think it's "freaky", it just shows that many people appreciate the same beautiful locations that this Earth has to offer. And what's wrong with making your self a centered medium? I know I would want to remember and commemorate my experience if I was part of such scenery.
Most people are not pro photogs who look for different angles that hasn't been done a million times. It's just pics showing you were there, you experienced that moment. Memories are cool even if countless others have that same pic,.
Its not a trend or images looking the same, its a culture of the cliched passed off as greatness. Just as it is in pop music, the mediocre is celebrated as great.
do you konw what would be really amazing? stop taking and uploading Pics and just ENJOY THE MOMENT! it won´t be back, it won´t be the same, the same place, the same people, the same air, the same situation even if you repeat the experience... And another great thing: when you talk to your friends, you are gonna actually TALK about your trip, about what you see, what you feel... instead of clicking like like like...
Instead of follwing an image, go see the real thing. Michael Leunig had the right of it... ( tv-sunrise.jpg )
All things have been done before and all things will be done again. That doesn't negate the beauty and impact these photos have for the people who took them and the people who like them.
This is why you should go back to printing a photo album and keeping the pictures to yourself. As a personal memory. Not as an online social media advertisement. We are with too many people to have original pictures. Or discover something for the "first" time. On this planet at least.
Well, if I were at the certain places mentioned here I would take exact same photos probably. Just I wouldn't post them anywhere, since I don't own any social media account like Instagram, Facebook etc... So they would be just for me and I wouldn't care, if half a million of other people had the same.
I hope that each and every photo this person takes, is completely unique, and that no one has ever taken a similar photo. We live in a digital age, where people carry cameras on them 24/7, and has the means to share those photos on several platforms. Of course there will be similar photos. What a snob.
Just another way to try to put down or ridicule other people. Take their genuinely beautiful pictures, put them next to similar ones and imply they're only following a trend instead on independently having similar wonderful experiences. It's not possible that that can happen?
Sure but they are all different moments in time that can be replicated but never experienced again at that point in time. Forever yours and unable to be truly reproduced.
This could be a competition; themed photos, people get to vote on which one is best
Where's the one where women have one hand on their hair, while standing on their toes? Or doing the peace sign, which always has to have their wrist cocked to the side? :)
LOL rarely will you see a "person centered' in my photos... Though i do take some of my family on trips I love taking pictures of the location more than of people. A lot of times if I ask my husband to stand somewhere it is for scale purposes :D
Pathetic looser idiots... primitive animal "humans"... nothing more... :D
I guess I need to stop taking pictures of my cats and take some tent pictures!
Because all these people are sheep without an original thought in their head
Yes, and every facebook post is the same bunch of c**p as well. It is called SHEEP. Everyone does what everyone else does because they don't want to feel like life is passing them by, all while they waste time trying to recreate everyone else's life and their own passes them by...
i dont see anything freaky in this. maybe they are predictible, but they are all unique with unique people who made unique journeys. if you want to complain about originality of the photo, go and make your own
What's so freaky about it? They've been made by the same corporate slave of the same marketing company...
Things like Instagram are just regurgitation. Sure, we are inspired by what we see, but variety is lacking on the platform of internet picture sharing.
Everything is just a reproduction right now, funnily enough some people travel just to get these pictures!
I simply find Instagram boring. Nice pics but 0 inspiration for me.
This just mean that ordinary people also captures good photograph. I don't think this is freaky.
It all reminds me of this Romanticist painting by Caspar David Friedrich. It's interesting to see links between an art movement of the 19th century, and todays instagram trends, because what does it all say about us and about our times? Caspar-Dav...a367f.jpeg
I find this equally true with adult videos. All of the actors say same lines in the same way. Coincidence?
It seems to me that the same blonde girls are in each set of photos. It's like they all went on the same trip, took pics of each other & went straight to instagram!
It seems to me that each set of photos has the same blonde girls in them. It's like they all went on the same trip & took pics of each other doing the exact same thing!
This is the checklist of what I need to do to be "normal"? I take pictures of three legged figurines.
I don't use Instagram kinda just for this reason... Full of wannabe- influencers posing for pictures. Why??
That's because they are called "cliches" and people are hard pressed to come up with original content.
The first persons to take any of these is original, the rest are imitators. Which tells you a lot about those who do these, particularly in those cases where the locales are the same. Some people saw these and decided to travel to that place, then do exactly what the person before them did. It's just cases of monkey see, monkey do. Or... a really creepy explanation is that these people are all being stalked and photographed by the same person. Probably a serial killer who hides their bodies in those remote locations.
What about this on? This is all over the place. 55c6e3a3a9...26c00f.jpg
You could do this with every trend. Style, camera angles, photos in magazines. Not super impressed.
These have become like visual cliches. I found some of these fascinating like standing on a car, but others are so overdone, even the compilation loses its power!
Between millions of people using Instagram it'd be weirder if no pics were similar. While some of these are amusing, tbh it seems kind of a waste of time to dedicate your time to figuring out "trends", be it for following them or "shaming" them(or whatever is supposed to happen here). I've stopped using Instagram after a while, couldn't really get in it I guess but when I was using it I'd just snap pics of here and there that I thought were cool to share with friends and look at their photos. Couldn't care less about what someone thinks is a "trendy" photo, let alone waste time on recreating it on purpose. Instagram can be great in the sense of being able to share a beautiful moment with the world, it just sometimes seems that these days people spend more time staging the "beautiful moment to share" than actually enjoying them.
Husband and I have started to travel. Most of the photos we take, we think are unique. Then we see them in ads or other photo compilations and realize we're taking all the "good" photos that everyone else takes. At least we know we stood there to get that photo. And enjoyed our time adventuring. Mind you I haven't posted any of the "copy cat" photos. Just ones that actually "are" unique... hopefully?
But..... you could say the same about selfies/dog photos/sport shots? Honestly if I was lucky enough to get to travel to some of the places in these pictures, I'd sure as hell be grabbing a well-composed shot of the place. If the account owner lives in Anchorage, lucky them. It IS an adventure for a lot of people internationally to travel somewhere like that.
What's going on here is a shared aesthetic, maybe previously only shared between professionals (and amateurs), made public and accessible via the global sharing network. When I think back on some of my old, print photos, they aren't much different than some of these. But, only me and the bottom of my photo drawer ever saw them. Makes me wanna dig through them and see what goodies I can find! :-)
These are some gorgeous pictures and places. I am jealous of all these people and their amazing experiences. I don't think it's "freaky", it just shows that many people appreciate the same beautiful locations that this Earth has to offer. And what's wrong with making your self a centered medium? I know I would want to remember and commemorate my experience if I was part of such scenery.
Most people are not pro photogs who look for different angles that hasn't been done a million times. It's just pics showing you were there, you experienced that moment. Memories are cool even if countless others have that same pic,.
Its not a trend or images looking the same, its a culture of the cliched passed off as greatness. Just as it is in pop music, the mediocre is celebrated as great.
do you konw what would be really amazing? stop taking and uploading Pics and just ENJOY THE MOMENT! it won´t be back, it won´t be the same, the same place, the same people, the same air, the same situation even if you repeat the experience... And another great thing: when you talk to your friends, you are gonna actually TALK about your trip, about what you see, what you feel... instead of clicking like like like...
Instead of follwing an image, go see the real thing. Michael Leunig had the right of it... ( tv-sunrise.jpg )
All things have been done before and all things will be done again. That doesn't negate the beauty and impact these photos have for the people who took them and the people who like them.
This is why you should go back to printing a photo album and keeping the pictures to yourself. As a personal memory. Not as an online social media advertisement. We are with too many people to have original pictures. Or discover something for the "first" time. On this planet at least.
Well, if I were at the certain places mentioned here I would take exact same photos probably. Just I wouldn't post them anywhere, since I don't own any social media account like Instagram, Facebook etc... So they would be just for me and I wouldn't care, if half a million of other people had the same.
I hope that each and every photo this person takes, is completely unique, and that no one has ever taken a similar photo. We live in a digital age, where people carry cameras on them 24/7, and has the means to share those photos on several platforms. Of course there will be similar photos. What a snob.
Just another way to try to put down or ridicule other people. Take their genuinely beautiful pictures, put them next to similar ones and imply they're only following a trend instead on independently having similar wonderful experiences. It's not possible that that can happen?
Sure but they are all different moments in time that can be replicated but never experienced again at that point in time. Forever yours and unable to be truly reproduced.
This could be a competition; themed photos, people get to vote on which one is best
Where's the one where women have one hand on their hair, while standing on their toes? Or doing the peace sign, which always has to have their wrist cocked to the side? :)
LOL rarely will you see a "person centered' in my photos... Though i do take some of my family on trips I love taking pictures of the location more than of people. A lot of times if I ask my husband to stand somewhere it is for scale purposes :D
Pathetic looser idiots... primitive animal "humans"... nothing more... :D
I guess I need to stop taking pictures of my cats and take some tent pictures!
Because all these people are sheep without an original thought in their head
Yes, and every facebook post is the same bunch of c**p as well. It is called SHEEP. Everyone does what everyone else does because they don't want to feel like life is passing them by, all while they waste time trying to recreate everyone else's life and their own passes them by...
i dont see anything freaky in this. maybe they are predictible, but they are all unique with unique people who made unique journeys. if you want to complain about originality of the photo, go and make your own
What's so freaky about it? They've been made by the same corporate slave of the same marketing company...
Things like Instagram are just regurgitation. Sure, we are inspired by what we see, but variety is lacking on the platform of internet picture sharing.
Everything is just a reproduction right now, funnily enough some people travel just to get these pictures!
I simply find Instagram boring. Nice pics but 0 inspiration for me.
This just mean that ordinary people also captures good photograph. I don't think this is freaky.
It all reminds me of this Romanticist painting by Caspar David Friedrich. It's interesting to see links between an art movement of the 19th century, and todays instagram trends, because what does it all say about us and about our times? Caspar-Dav...a367f.jpeg
I find this equally true with adult videos. All of the actors say same lines in the same way. Coincidence?
It seems to me that the same blonde girls are in each set of photos. It's like they all went on the same trip, took pics of each other & went straight to instagram!
It seems to me that each set of photos has the same blonde girls in them. It's like they all went on the same trip & took pics of each other doing the exact same thing!
This is the checklist of what I need to do to be "normal"? I take pictures of three legged figurines.
I don't use Instagram kinda just for this reason... Full of wannabe- influencers posing for pictures. Why??
That's because they are called "cliches" and people are hard pressed to come up with original content.
The first persons to take any of these is original, the rest are imitators. Which tells you a lot about those who do these, particularly in those cases where the locales are the same. Some people saw these and decided to travel to that place, then do exactly what the person before them did. It's just cases of monkey see, monkey do. Or... a really creepy explanation is that these people are all being stalked and photographed by the same person. Probably a serial killer who hides their bodies in those remote locations.