Opinion: Photography has ruined travel

It is creeping up on reasonable members of the civilized world, turning us all into beaming, giggling fools, our faces locked into clownish grins and our brains distracted at the slightest click.

The bane of 21st-century life is the phone camera, a product of such technological prowess and immediate convenience that no one would blame you for "just trying it."

One click leads to another; if you don't like the first hit you delete and try again.

The real victims of this click-happy menace are travelers, CNN Travel reports.

Not just the travelers who hope to see a spectacular waterfall in Chile only for the view to be blocked by hundreds of beaming addicts, but also those camera-phone addicts who are themselves travelers.

Because much like the wretch who drinks to be happy, the snappers are deluded: they think their photos are creating memories, when in fact they are sabotaging them.

I was one of them.

My junk was the real deal. Class-A stuff, the cocaine of the photography world -- the digital SLR.

With this oversized device I felt confident. I felt virile. It made me feel superior to the beaming, giggling amateurs fumbling about with their pathetic phones and small, flaccid point-and-shoots.

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