THE INSTA-INFLUENCE EQUATION

I read an article today, about a hotel in the Maldives that gets around six requests per day from instagrammers.

Typically it's young people with somewhere between hundreds and thousands of followers, and usually they're asking for extravagant freebies, claiming to be 'influencers'. The hotel owners are getting a bit fed up with it.

That aside though, here's the Generation-Y Insta-Influence Equation: the destination gets free advertising, sent to thousands of people they wouldn't otherwise be able to reach. The insta-travellers get a lovely free holiday (and in some cases thousands of pounds per photo) to lie in a hammock with a half-decent camera and a pair of ray-bans. We all get fresh views of exotic locations. The hotel gets new business, the instagrammers get yet more new followers, and our feed gets brighter in among the turquoise seas and white sands.

But it's not an equation is it? Who loses? Who misses out? What's the balance?

"Hope you all have a beautiful day! xxx" chimes Impossible-Looking-Girl, lounging in front of the misty-mountains of Sri Lanka. It's hard not to read smugness into her lipstick smile, as though she knows we're stuck in an office with broken air-conditioning and a to-do list longer than the flight to Colombo.

"Just chilling today," says Surf Guy, cloudless blue skies reflecting in his expensive-looking sunglasses. Hundreds of people have liked this post - presumably people who like to dream, but wonder how in the world they could also get to be jet-setting 'influencers'.

And that is the problem isn't it? This market was quick to flood itself with beautiful people, and we're probably already there at saturation-point. Who misses out in the equation? Well, all of us - especially us mortal followers.

I'm not impressed by Impossible-Looking-Girl, or Surf-Guy exposing his abs. Actually, if I'm honest, I'm a bit annoyed. There's a little bit of me that feels like this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed, and each snapshot of paradise just reminds me of the enormous gulf between these self-absorbed influencers and the people they rely on - us. Have a great day, indeed; we're in schools, colleges, offices, houses, and sitting on public transport with our headphones in, worrying about almost everything there is to worry about. We'll have as nice a day as we can make it, but we're pretty sure you know it can't be quite as nice as yours, out there on 'Love Island'. But thanks for the reminder.

Travel-writing, as an entity then, seems to be done-for in this insta-world. Judith Chalmers, Bill Bryson, Palin, and Alan Whicker, adventuring heroes from the 1980s, are all long gone - and instead it seems Gen-Y have inherited The Extraordinarily Beautiful People, who've cornered the market.

The hotel misses out too. Eventually, the steady stream of followers who actually pay full-whack to pursue the dreams of their instagram-gods, will trickle away to nothing. That dream will fade fast. In fact, just as that one hotel has already found, instead of inquiries from paying tourists, they're getting inundated by requests from wannabes who want a free-holiday. That equation can't last without finding some balance.

And finally, I think the influencers themselves will lose too. One day when their looks have faded and there are no more all-inclusive-vacations out there, they'll have to take their screaming kids to Butlins, or make the most of a rainy Isle-of-Wight along with the rest of us. And they'll only be able to dream of the things they could have done instead, while they craved followers and dopamine-likes from a faceless crowd of supporters.

At the MTV awards the other week, the Hollywood actor Chris Pratt gave a great speech about success. It was called "9 Rules from Chris Pratt: Generation Award Winner", if you want to look it up on YouTube. It was great! In it, he said this:

"Number 5. Doesn't matter what it is, earn it. A good deed, reach out to someone in pain, be of service, it feels good and it's good for your soul."

Earn it. I like that. I kind of hope some of these professional holidaymakers got that. In fact, I hope we all do. Oh, and if you too find that social media leaves you feeling dissatisfied or annoyed at people you've never met, switch it off and go outside to enjoy the sunshine yourself; get some adrenaline flowing and don't worry about getting people to 'like' it or follow you because of it. It was never really for anyone else to like anyway, was it?