Selfies at Horror Sites: Dark Tourism, Ghoulish Souvenirs and Digital Narcissism

Abstract

Selfi es at Horror Sites: Dark Tourism, Ghoulish Souvenirs and Digital NarcissismTaking self-portraits at horror sites, like concentration camps, Ground Zero or disaster stricken areas, has become a growing trend on social networking sites. The paper aims to discuss the cultural phenomenon of macabre selfi es in the light of dark tourism and digital narcissism. Horror covered in the media becomes an attractive background for the ultimate selfi es which are a teenagers' way of celebrating life in places of death. These sometimes humorous self-portraits are ghoulish souvenirs providing emotional detachment, and at the same time a link to a greater media narrative. The interdisciplinary study is rooted in photography research, cultural and memory studies, and digital media research. The paper discusses the relationships of dark tourism and the media, kitschy souvenirs and digital memorialization of traumatic events.

“Incômodo e assustador”

“…O registro destas fotografias é discutido na literatura do Dark Tourism, na qual são apontados os aspectos de vaidade, superficialidade e narcisismo dos usuários. Estas fotografias são caracterizadas como uma ferramenta utilizada para ganhar visualizações na internet através de acontecimentos desagradáveis e indicam que a sociedade está presenciando um fenômeno novo, no qual a tecnologia diminui a representação e a curadoria da memória de locais como estes (Hodalska, 2017;Zalewska, 2017).…”

Disaster selfies: How ethical reminders can mitigate morally questionable consumption practices

“…In some cases, the ethical aspects of the postings fall behind users' primed motivations. Users, who aspire to manage and promote their self-presentation in an entertaining way, prime a motivation to create a digital figure who is socializing and having fun, regardless of the background (Canavan, 2017;Hodalska, 2017;Valenzuela et al, 2017).…”

“…Smiling disaster selfies are seen as lack of empathy and obvious disrespect to the tragedy (Price & Kerr, 2018;Zalewska, 2017). Disaster selfies are offensive to a big part of the audience who thinks visiting dark destinations should implicate graveness demanded by the memory of the death (Hodalska, 2017;Zalewska, 2017). Taking selfies during a touristic activity may be taken for granted by tourists; however, when it comes to disaster selfies, a vast majority consider it offensive and disrespectful (Price & Kerr, 2018;Sharma, 2020).…”

“…Dark tourism is one of the sensitive contexts, which refers to visiting places of disasters and death. Taking disaster selfies at dark tourism destinations and posting them online has become a global phenomenon (Hodalska, 2017). For instance, on Instagram, there are countless smiling selfies taken in front of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp under the hashtag #auschwitz, influencer selfies in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone under the hashtag #chernobyl, pictures of visitors posing at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall under the hashtag #nanjingmassacrememorialhall and at other disaster zones worldwide.…”

Jewish Heritage in the Creative Cities of Central and Eastern Europe: Tourism, Technologies and Prosthetic Memory

“…Horror covered in the media becomes an attractive background for the ultimate selfies which are a teenagers' way of celebrating life in places of death. These sometimes humorous self-portraits are ghoulish souvenirs providing emotional detachment, and at the same time a link to a greater media narrative (Hodalska, 2017). The reasons of this behaviour are related also to wish to fix traces of human tragedy and egocentrically to become as a part of bigger historical narrative.…”