This summer, a record-breaking, estimated 220 million U.S. tourists—85% of American adults—have been on the move. Many of them will head to Tulum, Mexico, which I also recently visited. Businesses across Tulum cater directly to U.S. tourists’ Instagram accounts. They offer decorative twinkle lights to provide flattering lighting, swings instead of seats, and neon signs—like the bright pink cursive at a bar on the town’s main drag that declares, “I’m in Tulum, Bitches!”

Where tourism was once a way to broaden our horizons and gain a deeper understanding of other cultures, social media, and the global economy together have changed that. The point is no longer just to consume new experiences—it’s also to be able to show that consumption to followers back home. Now, traveling often feels like an Instagram feedback loop. Meanwhile, our search for Instagrammable views has remade whole local economies and environments, and changed the lives of thousands of people in the process.

Tulum is in southeastern Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, in the state of Quintana Roo. The region’s original inhabitants are the Indigenous Maya. The stunning archaeological ruins at nearby Chichén Itzá—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—are an accomplishment of their civilization. The ruins show an astronomical acumen, including an ability to predict celestial events such as eclipses, which they incorporated into their architecture to stunning effect; sophisticated agricultural techniques that allowed them to farm the seaside land; and a road network system that predated the European road network system.

I’m a third-generation Mexican American who’s been traveling back to my family’s hometown of Acaponeta, Nayarit, my whole life. I’ve been to plenty of other destinations in Mexico, too, including Tulum in 1988, when it was still a small fishing village. Then, in 1999, hoping to ride the tourism prosperity wave underway in Cancun, the government rebranded the region the Riviera Maya. Entrepreneurs, developers, and immigrants from the U.S. and Europe soon followed. They set up hotels and residences, and hosted yoga festivals and dance parties. In 2004, the New York Times dubbed Tulum a “countercultural haven,” even as it pointed out the dangers of commercialization.

Since then, development—often fueled by foreign investors—has unfolded without much forethought, government oversight, or planning so fast that it has outrun the local government’s ability to provide basic services like electricity and sewage. You won’t see the squatter camps where imported workers find themselves living on Instagram. And stunning images of divers and snorkelers in the Mesoamerican Reef System, the second largest coral reef in the world, rarely feature the human waste that’s increasingly turning up in its underground rivers. The impacts of tourism will only get worse, with a train project connecting Tulum to Cancun on track to bring more people, plow through the jungle home of endangered habits, and destroy caves that may contain important Maya relics.

In the face of such massive changes, locals find themselves—as Matilde Córdoba Azcárate’s marvelous book about Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula puts it—“Stuck with Tourism.”  Contemporary Indigenous Maya have few options but to work as construction workers, maids, and taxi drivers serving the 22 million people who arrive each year at the nearby #cancunairport. When we spent the day at a beach club, I met Rodrigo, a charming 22-year-old bartender from Tulum. He told me that the days were long, and the tips were often lousy—but he still feared the day when some new best thing would take Tulum’s place. Rosalya, my guide at Chichén Itzá, likewise told us that when she began giving tours 17 years ago—as the first woman to do so—fellow locals critiqued her for joining the tourism industry. But, she said, she didn’t see any other options.

What are the responsibilities of U.S. tourists in the face of this global inequity? Multiple articles published this summer have proposed that we stop traveling. But mitigating the negative impacts of unchecked development requires larger, structural changes, including investment in local markets and government oversight.

While I don’t want to suggest that people simply stop traveling, I do want visitors to understand our impact—especially the very material impact of our use of digital technology. Social media now drives tourism at an unprecedented pace and volume. Government tourism boards hire influencers and celebrities, from Lionel Messi to TikTok’s “Corn Kid” to brand and promote destinations. Travel bloggers and TikTokers make their living using algorithms and hashtags to guide travelers to remote sites of natural beauty or supposedly unknown, authentic restaurants. Businesses race to make themselves ever more attractive to visitors’ phone lenses. As visitors follow and share their experiences in real-time, the images circulate faster and faster, like an accelerant to a bonfire. While governments and developers rake in foreign dollars, locals—many of whom are poor and/or Indigenous in the case of Mexico—pay the price.

But there are other ways to travel, too, including with an understanding of its impact and sustainability, with a curiosity about the history of a place and its people, and by making conscious choices about where your money is going. So instead of staying home, consider another, perhaps equally unthinkable, proposal: traveling without posting to social media. If we focus more on inquiry and less on how our trip looks to others, we can be not just consumers but participants in a cultural exchange with those whose labor makes our experience possible.

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I learned more about how to do that a few months ago, through a show I curated called One World Exposition #like4like. The exhibition, which presented 18 millennial media artists from Hong Kong and mainland China, took place at K11, a shopping mall blended with art galleries. It attracted more than 15,000 visitors within two months. It also went massively viral on social media. During its two-month exhibition period, #like4like appeared in more than a thousand photographs by visitors and became the most hashtagged and geotagged exhibition on Instagram in Hong Kong.

What were the reasons for this success?

One reason is content. In recent years, the heated art market has transformed artwork into a highly profitable commodity, creating a phenomenon of excessive commoditization. Many artworks are produced to be desirable in the art market, resulting in many easy-on-the-eye artworks shown in exhibitions and art fairs. At a time when nonprofit institutions, commercial galleries and auction houses are undergoing a process of corporatization and global expansion, many argue that the disengagement of art has already taken place.

Hearse Delusional Mandala by the artist Lu Yang, shown at the exhibition One World Exposition #like4like. Courtesy of One World Exposition #like4like.

Because the content of the exhibition is widely different from the previous exhibitions at the mall, #like4like has proven that mainstream audiences crave something niche and aesthetically challenging. Apart from the frequent shoppers at K11, the show also attracted massive young audiences who do not typically attend art exhibitions. While the millennial generation has been called “socially conscious, value-driven, and forward-looking,” presenting works that echo the personal values of these youth can potentially turn them into visitors.

But interface is also important. In Hong Kong, where shopping malls proliferate, using them to bring art to the public makes a lot of sense. During the Art Basel month this year, almost every shopping mall in Hong Kong showed art—from masters such as Picasso to the contemporary digital artist Julius Popp. That means that for a Hong Kong audience, seeing art in their everyday lives is nothing new. Curators have to create an interface that transforms the audience’s everyday shopping experience.

When creating the #like4like exhibition, therefore, I integrated technology that encouraged viewers to communicate. While some galleries ban the use of cameras, #like4like used digital culture to promote audience engagement. We provided audiences with the use of Snapchat Spectacles to record and upload their exhibition experience in the “Memories” section of a Snapchat account. #like4like also included “selfie points” with signs, graphics, and mirrors designed to encourage the audience to photograph themselves.

One audience member took a picture of herself licking the mirror as if she was kissing herself; another audience member lay on the floor, initiating Buddha postures in response to a work about reincarnation. Through these immersive and Instagram-friendly exhibition designs, #like4like strived to break away from the uptightness visitors might feel in museums and galleries.

The exhibition also worked to transform the stereotype of selfies—as expressions of digital narcissism and an unrealistic desire for validation through social media. #like4like saw social media as part of the creative potential of self-expression. I wanted the exhibition to provide an interface where viewers could meet themselves.

As they did, they also provided publicity. The rise of social media and digital culture has desensitized younger generations to conventional promotion and marketing. Social power has become decentralized. Digital natives can make formerly fringe groups into powerhouses. Among this “crowdculture”—the term that Cultural Strategy Group founder Douglas Holt coined for the phenomenon—decisions are often driven by word of mouth, particularly if the sources of knowledge and advice are Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs, as they’re called), from politicians to celebrities to social media trend-setters with strong followings. (The Kardashians are KOLs.)

In the commercial world, brands collaborate with KOLs to extend their reach—but the art world has been slower to explore their impact. #like4like became popular among the younger generations in part through the power of the KOLs—which helped us reach a larger, younger audience. For example, one KOL from Hong Kong, called Poortravel, posted a picture of #like4like on Instagram, and within 24 hours, the post received over 9,000 “likes” and 300 comments. As commenters tagged their friends, the very nature of internet communication fostered promotion and engagement.

An Instagram photo taken by a visitor to the art exhibition One World Exposition #like4like. Courtesy of @gnitmiy/Instagram.

Instagram engagement, though, is about more than increasing audience. It’s also about allowing the audience to construct knowledge. Scholar of museum education George E. Hein describes the didactic learning model by which knowledge and information are often transmitted in museums as trying to “instill a specific message in the visiting public.” But this tactic is not the only possibility. #like4like adopts an inquiry-based approach. I crafted an exhibition design that focuses on visitors’ interactions with exhibits. This allows for informal learning among gallery-goers while promoting multiple interpretations of each work by tapping individual viewers’ knowledge and experience.

For example, hundreds of audience members took selfies in front of Chen Wei’s piece “Unprecedented Freedom”—which consists of a neon sign with the title words. “Freedom” immediately caught the attention of audiences, especially in relation to the British colonial legacy in Hong Kong. On Instagram, posts of and selfies with this piece were often captioned with ruminations about what freedom is or comments that directly relate the piece to Hong Kong politics. Other captions were more personal. One spent more than 100 words describing the viewer’s love story. The variety of these posts emphasized that there is no single correct interpretation for this or any work of art.

Now that digital media gives almost every member of a museum audience a platform, museums can welcome visitors as active interpreters. Social media allows “exhibitions” to extend beyond a physical space—to become an open, never-ending event completed by the audience. While opening up engagement opportunities, this phenomenon also reminds audiences that knowledge is always mediated.

The use of social media in #like4like was one of the exhibition’s significant accomplishments. Because of it, I felt like I took more from the audiences than what I offered through my curation. The show taught me that curators can and must use technologies to create more powerful connections among people. Technology can widen the scope of art exhibitions and the power of community engagement.

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As time progressed and my artistic education grew, I pursued other projects, but I didn’t stop taking shopping cart pictures. Whether I used digital, film, or iPhone, my compositions evolved from pointing and shooting to taking my time to capture what is there. You can see the difference: Notice how “The Padilla Family,” which I shot back in 2006, concentrates on the details of the carts as if it were a portrait of a family, while “Instagram #236,” which I Instagrammed in 2013, expands the space and shoves the cart into isolation, creating the sense of abandonment.

Now, thanks to Instagram’s square format for composition, as well as some time in therapy, I’ve come to understand the message behind the shopping carts. Photographing them is a way to articulate, artistically, my struggles with a psychological condition. I have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a condition that fills me with extreme worry even when there’s no reason for it. The disorder stems from post-traumatic stress disorder, which comes from multiple traumatic childhood experiences.

At first, one might consider my images of isolated shopping carts in various locations to be sociopolitical statements about consumerism or cultural identity. But these photographs are intended to illustrate my constant feelings of loneliness and displacement, and a need to hide. They are a personal reflection on how I have dealt with my depression without the use of medications. In short, they are therapeutic.

In my solo exhibition, You Found Me, which first ran at the Chicano Studies Research Center Library at UCLA in early 2014, I was able to be open and honest about my longtime struggle with GAD. And I allowed the public to see who I have become. I am still shooting the shopping carts today. I believe the series will continue as I continue to heal.

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One night eight months ago, I drove home to my East Hollywood neighborhood after working a 12-hour day on a set. I just wanted to lug my 50-pound makeup kit inside, eat dinner, and go to sleep.

I live in a vintage apartment, built in the 1930s, with a far-off view of the Hollywood sign. Back then, it housed writers who worked at Paramount Studios, which is close by. I was told that at the time people thought cars were going to be a fad, so most buildings didn’t bother arranging designated parking.

These days, most homes in my crowded neighborhood have multiple cars. Some are clunkers, and people often park their work trucks on the street. An auto body shop on the corner also likes to leave its vehicles in front of my building. In other words, parking spaces are precious.

On that night, I ended up driving around for three hours and still didn’t find a spot. I sat in my car and cried. I finally parked in a strip mall parking lot, hoping I wouldn’t get a ticket. Even though I went down to move my car the next morning at 6 a.m., I got a ticket anyway. And someone left his or her tray of takeout rice, beans, and tacos on my roof.

I can’t say if parking in L.A. is worse than other cities. All I know is that since moving here I am so much more aware of it than ever before. I was dumbfounded by the lack of parking, and how inconsiderate people could be. I remembered all the “pet shaming” photos I saw on the Internet—funny photos of dogs or cats after they had done something particularly naughty with handwritten signs saying things like “I eat the trash” or “I hump stuffed animals that look like me.” I thought it would be amusing to do a similar site for parking, because I couldn’t be the only person who was frustrated about the way other people parked.

Leaving notes on people’s cars didn’t work. They would just get crumpled and thrown on the ground. I wanted to raise awareness, maybe embarrass a few people and make them think twice about being inconsiderate. I was pissed off, and felt helpless, so I started taking pictures and launched an Instagram account, ParkingSpotShaming.

The first photo I posted was from the parking lot at my gym. When I went to leave, I realized I was blocked in because the black Prius that parked perpendicular to me didn’t pull far enough into its spot. If I backed out, I would hit the Prius. Luckily, when I was taking the picture, the driver of the PT Cruiser parked in the spot just to the right of mine showed up. I was able to get out by turning sharply to the right and squeezing through the spot he left. If that driver hadn’t arrived, who knows how long I would have been stuck there.

Those early days also featured pictures of a repeated nemesis: a blue pick-up truck that rarely moves from right in front of my apartment. It only moves from one side of the street to the other when it’s a designated street cleaning day and staying parked on a particular side of the street would mean a ticket. Plus, the truck always leaves awkward amounts of space in front and behind it so that it takes up a space that could fit at least two cars (my personal pet peeve!). On the rare occasions it takes up only one spot, the owner parks so close to the other cars that the ones in front and behind it can’t get out. Since it never moves unless it’s street cleaning day, they are literally stuck for several days.

Four weeks after the launch of ParkingSpotShaming, local blogs began to post about my site. Now, I receive up to 50 submissions a day by email and direct message on Instagram. More come through tags on Twitter or posts on Facebook. I get so many submissions that I can vary the kinds of bad parking jobs I see.

Browse the Instagram account and you will see a photo of a black sedan whose driver scraped against the side of a silver SUV, making it impossible for the passenger side doors to open.

And a photo of a Smart Car parked crooked, and spilling over onto a sidewalk. “How is this even possible?!” one commenter wrote. “It’s the #SmallestCarEver!”

It’s hard to say that there is a particular type of driver who parks poorly. I’ve received pictures of Bentleys and Honda Civics. I’ve found bad parkers in the Hollywood Hills and in Westchester. I’ve found them at all times of day. And there’s a range of bad parking: creeping too close to the lines, going well over them, blocking other people in, parking in illegal zones, and sitting in handicapped spots without permits.

I do tend to get a lot of submissions from shopping centers, airports, and malls. In places that are constantly busy, people seem particularly unconcerned about how much of an inconvenience they are causing another person. Maybe they’re late because of traffic, but some Angelenos seem to have a real sense of entitlement. That may be the same reason I see so many SUVs parking in spots marked “compact.” Those spots aren’t for everyone just as skinny jeans don’t flatter every body type!

I don’t want someone to target a car by its license plate or vandalize it, so I started blacking out license plates early on. In the first photos, I used a drawing app to scribble over the plates. Then I discovered I could put emojis over the photos, which meant I could have a little more fun with them. I’m particularly proud of the Range Rover with the bullseye over the license plate. The parking spot is way off, so calling it a bullseye is just silly.

ParkingSpotShaming has given me and others an outlet to share our gripes, absurdities, and wisecracks. Otherwise, we’d all just be shaking our fists at the sky by ourselves. Now we can all look forward to one-upping each other with an even more ridiculous parking photo because there seems to be no limit to how selfish people can be. The craziest parking I’ve seen was submitted to me, and it was a white Bentley that literally parked sideways, taking up spots 132 and 133 at Burbank Airport.

The site is anonymous, and I often wish that I knew how to get in touch with the owner of a badly parked car right away—so I could make them move it. But since I can’t do that, I’m hoping that ParkingSpotShaming will make that person who parks his Hummer in two spots think twice about doing it. We will find you and make fun of you. As one post on my account says, “Your parking is bad. And you should feel bad.”

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