Recently I started an Instagram account called “I Love Tourists.” I was so excited about it… so, so excited. Because I really do love tourists. They are so earnest and excited (and tired, and thus really grateful for interactions that might lighten the load).

I end up in conversations with them all the time, randomly. I guess I like being needed. I like giving advice. I like suggesting weird things that they might not otherwise find in a guidebook.

Once I even insisted that an elderly (tourist) couple and their eight-year-old granddaughter jump in my car, and I drove them to The Dancing Crab, a DC restaurant they’d been to earlier in life and were trying to no avail to find and introduce to their granddaughter. I could tell from a block away that they were lost and befuddled, looking at the map as they were, so I pulled over to offer help and ended up driving them. The last thing I said was, “Maybe you shouldn’t get in strangers’ cars as a general policy but I’m glad you took a risk on me.” But I digress.

The point is I LOVE tourists, and I end up sharing food, rides, advice, benches — all kinds of things — with them.

So naturally(?) I thought it would be fun to chronicle these conversations on Instagram. But it’s not, actually. I want to find a work-around or a different angle, because I like getting people to think about tourists (whom many find annoying) in a different light — as carriers of enthusiasm, as bringers of delight, as sources of money for our local businesses even.

But what was once a spontaneous conversation has become a conversation with an agenda. I immediately wonder, “Should I ask to take their picture and share their story?” and “Will this kill the moment to pull out a camera?” or “Is this the sort of person who likes or hates Instagram?” And it becomes more about me fulfilling a goal and less just about whatever is happening between us on the sidewalk. In fact it sort of ruins the sidewalk moment.

The only people who are easy to approach just for the Instagram moment are groups of Swifties in front of Taylor’s home in New York. They definitely want to be on Instagram. Everyone else… well, I’m not so sure.

Once a woman approached me in Central Park in New York, asking to take my picture for an Instagram account that featured real people reading real books in the wild. It’s obviously a rarity to find such a situation. I was glad to have my photo snapped, but it was the reason for the interaction, not an add-on to a conversation we were already having.

So much these days is mediated through something besides our senses, our intuition, our presence with the person in front of us. I’m not sure I want more of that, even in service to celebrating people. But I really was excited to find and celebrate tourists and introduce them to others. Perhaps, as I said, there’s a more creative approach.

I realize I don’t even want to link you to the account because then, well, I’m using this missive on my ambivalence to increase my platform. It’s one big, icky circle of referrals and links.

Any ideas? How do you see it?