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Take a walk on any given day these days, and instead of staring at your phone, try looking around. If you want to do this on hard mode, leave the phone at home if you can manage. You might discover a fascinating world unfolding around you that many of us miss while scrolling through our digital lives.

At some point in recent history, travel transformed from a luxury into a cultural expectation. The rise of social media has dramatically changed how and why we travel. A 2019 study found that 40% of millennials choose travel destinations based on “Instagrammability” rather than cost or cultural experience1. While technology has proliferated travel information and made the world more accessible, it has also shifted our motivations in subtle ways.

In our current cultural landscape, there’s a fascinating phenomenon worth examining: the growing obsession with self-promotion and personal branding. Perhaps the most visible manifestation is the rise of “influencers”—a term that itself reveals much about our values. What many who adopt this label might not realize is that true influence rarely announces itself so boldly.