Rather Keen Writing

"That's all a vacation is: Just us eating in a place we've never been."—Jim Gaffigan It was the summer of 1999, and I was eating breakfast at my friend's kitchen table in Freiburg, Germany. Paul had been a foreign exchange student in Pennsylvania several years earlier. We shared a photography class and hung out much of senior year. My high school's German class sent students to Freiburg every year, but that's not why I was there. We had already graduated high school, and in any case I had never taken a German class. I had been (relatively) nearby in Britain for my college's summer abroad program. I was unlikely...

Last week I was scrolling through Twitter when I saw someone share this article on The Atlantic: "The Instagram Aesthetic Is Over: The look made famous by the platform just doesn’t resonate anymore." The accompanying comment in the tweet was a gleeful, "Preeeeach!"  Go read that article and come back here. (I'll wait) OK. So, as someone who spends a lot of time on Instagram I just had to read why "influencers are abandoning the Instagram look" (the article includes that exact phrase in its URL). I have been noticing a growth of ridicule directed at Instagram influencers (I'd say much of this derision is unfair, but...