the article about ruining the "best burger" place reminds me of the broccoli tree
petapixel.com/2018/03/08/bro…
petapixel.com/2018/03/08/bro…
massively iconic things (Eiffel Tower) serve as a kind of buffer; they are built to absorb attention at scale, and gain more aura from more attention
you can always participate in "eiffel tower" without feeling like you are possibly ruining it for others
the more famous the icon is, the more it can rub off on individuals; when I share a photo of me at the Colosseum, I become the weird anomaly, the "punctum," in it for the people I share it with—and I stand out more the more insignificant I am relative to the monument
outright tourist traps (DeLillo's "most photographed barn") also serve this purpose; catch basins for attention and notoriety to protect things that weren't made to scale or are vulnerable to it
text-relations.blogspot.com/2011/03/most-p…
text-relations.blogspot.com/2011/03/most-p…
lots of media/communication business models are now built with scale alone in mind; they are also built to assimilate anything into their distribution systems, regardless of whether scale will ruin them—they impose scale on fragile phenomena
Facebook, Instagram, etc. are optimized for turning literally anything into the most photographed barn in America, which makes it "impossible to see the barn"
as a post circulates more widely, its apparent content is effaced, and it becomes "about" what pathways of attention it could open and how much attention it could absorb
making something popular is an efficient way to extinguish its meaning; social media distribute the tools to deploy it, to let anyone impose scale on anything. a sort of DDoS attack on reality
