Sant

Why spend money on travel? Rather than traveling to Sydney, I could've saved a lot of money by photoshopping myself to a photo of the Sydney Opera House.

SQFAN

I hate selfie sticks with a vengeance. On a recent trip to Rome, selfie sticks sellers were everywhere and sticks pointing at toddler eye level. Gotta watch out for my offspring's eyes.

Now don't get me started on those laser pointers ...

GateHold

Quick, what's the single worst thing to happen to travel in the past twenty-five years? Is it the TSA checkpoint? Airline baggage fees? SARS? Ryanair?

No, it’s the selfie stick.

If you’ve been anywhere lately, you’ve seen them — a great army of expandable bayonets, jamming and poking and prodding their way across the world's tourist sites. And the irony of this proliferation is that the device isn’t designed so that travelers can take better pictures of their surroundings. It’s designed so that travelers can take better pictures of themselves. How and why did travelers become obsessed with self-photography?

I'm a little late to this party, I know, but after two recent trips I couldn't take it anymore and had to publish this story...

http://www.askthepilot.com/selfie-stick-hell/


-- PS

CMK10

I'm with you. I first noticed them in Madrid last year and they've proliferated in horrifying numbers. Not only are they obnoxious, but they remove an interaction from travel I actually like: finding someone to take your photograph. That's led to some great conversations (and far better pictures) than using the stupid stick.

ScottC

Someone sounds grumpy. People have been taking photos of themselves for decades. This just helps them, and prevents someone from walking off with their camera. We just never used to call them selfies. Now the young'uns have taken to making these with a handy tool, it is suddenly off-limits.

The whole interaction you mention about asking someone to take your photo was great when you had a $40 Kodak Disc camera, but when you're wandering around with a $800 iPhone 6 or $900 Samsung S6 Edge, asking a random stranger to take your camera is really not a good idea - hence the selfie stick.

Apparently, bashing the selfie stick is the new "get off my lawn" and calling a 1 meter stick "IT’S THE SINGLE WORST THING to happen to global travel in the past twenty-five years." is the absolute worst most pathetic kind of hyperbole I've seen in 150 years and not even remotely close to being worthy of a blog post, especially when there are 1000's of other blogs who posted the same insane rant.

Just like the previous type of rant where people complained about everyone who was using a dSLR for their photos, and mocked them keeping it on auto, or mocked their choice of lens. People need to back off and mind their own damn business. If things like this bother you, stay home, because you're going to find something that annoys you no matter where you go.

TOMFORD

If people are constantly getting stabbed in the eye by others' selfie sticks then sure, let's call it the worst thing to happen to travel. But why the rant about people want to take better pictures of themselves? And to the second poster - so people not wanting to ask others to take their photo and potentially missing an interesting conversation is the worst thing that happened to travel?

IMO the worst thing to happen to travel is other people bothering me and getting in my damn business just to ask me to take their picture! I also don't trust other people with my camera - what if they drop it, what if they run off, and what if they don't know how to take a good picture? And no, I do not own a selfie stick and never will. If I want to take a selfie, I stand my camera on my tripod or somewhere flat and take a selfie with my camera remote app on my phone.

DonCarpenter

Even worse than selfie sticks is asking someone to use your DSLR to take a photo of you and they don't know how to use a viewfinder.

Loren Pechtel

Yeah--the very few times someone has ended up using my SLR they needed instruction on how to use it even though I had already set it up, all it needed was compose and push the button. I don't think anyone else has ever used my DSLR.

LtKernelPanic

Totally banned at Disney parks starting next week.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015...e-theme-parks/

TMM1982

And foreigners will still walk around and pretend not to understand when security tells them to put the sticks away.

BadgerBoi

In the same way you foreigners behave in museums around the world where those stupid things are banned. Fair enough...

TMM1982

lol I think most people here in the U.S. understand when someone tells us to put something away. And if we don't understand the language, we can typically put 2 and 2 together when someone is waving at us to put an item away.

kyden

I think most of the sticks will get stopped via the bag check.

WillCAD

Actually, TMM, I think what BadgerBoi was complaining about was not that people don't understand when you tell them a rule, it's that some people will pretend not to understand as an excuse for boorish behavior.

Reminds me of a line from the sitcom "According to Jim", when Jim intentionally screwed up the grocery shopping so his wife would stop asking him to do it:

"He's pretending to be a moron to cover up being a jackass!"

HMO

Using Disney as example, I don't believe that there were only foreigners using the stick inside the rides...