This Vigilante Shames Influencers For Bad Behavior In National Parks
It's one thing making yourself look stupid with your complete lack of tact or self-awareness, but something else entirely when you damage the environment while doing so.
The Instagram account Our Public Lands Hate You is part of a trend of shaming irresponsible behavior on America’s public lands. The account's vigilant exposure of misbehaving influencers has so far lead to some of them losing deals with brands, as well as investigations from the National Park Service.
"I started this account about a year ago after a backcountry hike in Idaho where I noticed a ton of disrespect towards our public lands including people carving their names into trees, camping in off limits areas, having fires where they weren't allowed, leaving campfires burning unattended, shortcutting switchbacks, and other behavior that degrades our public lands, Steve, the man behind the account, told.
"After seeing the results of that disrespectful behavior, I decided to create an IG account to share the damage that I was seeing and vent my frustration in the hopes of bringing awareness to the issue and getting people to be more aware of the impact of their actions. The reason I choose IG as my platform was because I had noticed an increase in the number of "influencers" using our public lands as a backdrop to advertise products, services, and themselves, and much of the content these influencers were sharing featured illegal and/or environmentally harmful content."
"I believe that rather that influencing people toward good behavior, many influencers are only thinking about how they can create the most visually appealing content that will garner the most likes and make them the most money. Anything relating good stewardship of the land they are using to create their content appears to have become an afterthought for the vast majority of influencers. I also think that many influencers believe the rules don't apply to them for some reason."
"With over 58,000 followers, the goal of the account is twofold. First, we provide educational content using good and bad examples to SHOW people how to become between stewards of their public lands and provide visuals about what good behavior and harmful behavior looks like. Second, we reshare harmful and illegal content, primarily from large influencer accounts, that is publicly posted to social media so that that everyone can see what these influencers are promoting, and leave respectful, educational comments if they see fit. If influencers are not capable of holding themselves accountable for the respectful treatment of our public lands, then all of us, the people that own those public lands, have a right to voice our opinions and let these influencers know how we feel about their actions."
So: Stop following these so called "influencers" and start following an artist or a designer instead. Then you'll see less things to remind you of whatever you don't like about yourself and more things making you realize what humans can actually create. Maybe you'll even be inspired to create something yourself.