It’s no secret that it’s been a bad year for social media. With privacy scandals and contentious hearings dominating headlines, however, it’s easy to forget what made logging on so attractive in the first place. But stories like that of Colin O’Brady, the first person to cross Antarctica unaided, and documented with updates and breathtaking photos on Instagram, are a good reminder.
O’Brady, a 33-year-old American and commodities trader-turned-endurance athlete, spent the last 54 days trekking across Antarctica solo. Along the way, he kept up a steady stream of inspirational posts documenting the journey and its challenges – both mental and physical for his 126,000 followers on Instagram.
In his final post of the trip, for example, with the location tag “Antarctica,” he wrote, “Day 54: FINISH LINE!!! I did it! The Impossible First ✅. 32 hours and 30 minutes after leaving my last camp early Christmas morning, I covered the remaining ~80 miles in one continuous “Antarctica Ultramarathon” push to the finish line.” The post was accompanied by a photo of him on the phone with his wife.
Earlier in the trip he posted from the Geographic South Pole with the caption “Dreams to Reality” and closer to the start, on day 18, he invited his followers to imagine the experience. Under the heading “Calm Mind,” he wrote, “Now imagine it’s you in the photo. You walk up to the harness, put it on, clip into the skis, grab the poles, you feel the weight of the sled behind you and you set off into the white darkness. Where would your mind take you for the next 12 hours.”
Those posts offer an otherwise unattainable window into an incredible experience – allowing viewers to follow, in real time, a journey we will likely never take.
But for all of the sunny images, hearts in the snow, and reflections on spending Thanksgiving and Christmas in the snow, O’Brady’s journey was not an easy one. Indeed, in 2016, Henry Worsley, a British explorer, died attempting a similar unassisted solo trip across Antarctica.
That danger, however, underscores the marvel of following updates on social media. After all, on what other platform could you easily scroll through the images and updates posted in real time?
At the end of the day, that is part of the allure of sites like Instagram that will keep people coming back despite the rapid-fire revelations of failure to protect user data and foreign manipulation. As long as there are photos and stories worth seeing, people will keep clicking.
