I hear you. Part of my comment was about appreciating excellencce or a craft. But there's a difference between the ego and burning need for external validation for having partaken in something, gone somewhere, gotten into something or whatever vs appreciating someone's dedication and product.

Consider the people who go to Santorini to take the exact same photo, the vanity climbs of Mount Everest or going to some three Michelin star restaurant where your primary concern is posting about it on IG.

It all just seems so... desperate. Like hollow people trying to fill thsemvels with something, anything, so they can feel something and that something is simply the envy of other equally hollow people.

I might even call these "experience vampires". There's a difference between that and appreciation.

Take this soy sauce maker, the people I'm talking about will buy a bottle of soy sauce and then post all about it on social media. Others might talk to the master crafter about their history, how they got started, what they think goes into a good soy sauce, etc. Do you see what I mean?

I'm not normally one for stoicism. I tend to find people who crow about Marcus Aurelius tend to be at the entry for the alt-right pipeline more often than not. But in this case, I seem to find myself siding with the stoics.

>burning need for external validation

Eh, being an "influencer" is kinda dumb, but your estimations of the motivation of people who post a lot on social media might be exaggerated.

The best sushi restaurant in town doesn't have any more or less quality because people make a lot of instagram posts about it.

Annoying people liking a thing doesn't ruin it. Just don't pay attention to them and don't worry about what they're doing.

If you don't like how people are spending their lives give them less head space, don't spend too much time judging them, classifying them, or trying to fix the social ills causing their existence.