Ibiza then vs now: an influencer film set

Ibiza has had enough of influencers: was the 90s island better?

The contrast between the Ibiza of the 90s and the one of today is already a summer classic, and it has resurfaced with force on social media. It pits two images against each other: the island as a hedonist refuge and the island as a set for choreographed dances with phones held high. At the heart of the complaint is a repeated scene: people more focused on the audience's reaction than on the music.

From Barcelona's upper class to the outskirts with 50,000 trinc

There is a shift in social profile that has nothing to do with aesthetics. The criticism holds that Ibiza has gone from attracting a traditional upper-class crowd, with old family names and reference neighbourhoods like the Bonanova in Barcelona, to filling up with digital nouveau riche: people who now think they are somebody because they have reached 50,000 trinc on social media and turn the island into a film set. The complaint extends to behaviour: some describe them as "robots", as if the pressure to be on camera had erased any trace of spontaneity.

Nostalgia and its antidote

The sceptical reaction was not long in coming. Against the idealisation, people point out that the Ibiza of the 90s was not exactly a café gathering with the cream of the Spanish intelligentsia. It was a different crowd, but with the same drive for fashion and appearances. The underlying argument: people are the same, only the shop window has changed. And back then, just as now, some preferred a few beers and a lobster stew at village festivals over the Ibiza scene.

The question gets stuck on an uncomfortable point: is today's digital superficiality worse than the analog superficiality of three decades ago? Measuring authenticity is not an exact science. But the suspicion that the problem is not Ibiza but the human need to show off hovers over the whole conversation.