My 2 cents;
I guess in simplest parallels, the youtube, insta and facebook exploring angle is essentially like learning the guitar in order to show off and gain a USP, whilst the exploring angle on here is more like learning the guitar to write your own songs in your own style to share on a cassette tape with your close circle.
It is pretty explainable: the entirety of the game on the big 3 social medias all comes down to generation X going to whatever lengths they can to get their next hit of today's youth's most sought after drug: attention. On youtube, and particularly the '_____explores, exploring with _____' side of youtube, the dealers of this drug are kids a lot younger than you and I. Big youtube "explorers" can essentially go and be a tourist, get their iphone out, do some no-dignity and elementary personality narrative, and 11-14 year olds will be fixated. Just one example out of thousands you could possibly refer to for your EPQ: a youtuber with a following goes to Chernobyl, gets their selfie stick out, does a "HEY GUYS. OK TODAY, IT'S WHAT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR, I'M PUTTING MY LIFE ON THE LINE, I'M ACTUALLY GOING TO GO INSIDE THE RADIOACTIVE ZONE", like thousands of people do on official tours every year, and there're dozens of thousands of 12 year old boys living in deep British suburbia who have never felt adrenaline in a slightly alien zone before are absolutely losing their shit watching it. The vlogger is then laughing all the way to the bank, and doesn't have to get up every day and work a 9-5. He repeats this process: the innovativeness of his content within the hobby of documenting abandoned places or passion for the romantic story and 'if walls could talk' factor whilst he is within these environments is utterly irrelevant to his modus operandi.
Then, you've got passionate explorers, who will, for example, spend several days trekking across a desert in Kazakhstan and risk arrest, for the memories, the thrill and passion of crossing a frontier into a sight very few people have laid their eyes upon. All such an experience doesn't go on youtube, or insta, or facebook, for the drug of attention, it goes to a personal diary, to their memory, to fuel an actual passion for disused and forgotten environments of the man-made material world. And I'd say they'd do the likes of it all over again for 100% adventure and passion, 0% attention and online following. Similarly, the dozens of Victorian-era County Asylums around Britain: were they all comprehensively documented by actual passionate explorers for facebook likes? Or for history's sake - to allow future generations to see the architectural details, decay process and the idiosyncrasies of a set of buildings integral to the story of healthcare in this country, and that no one will ever be able to lay eyes upon again? What do you think...
Most people you'll find on this site are actual fiends for abandoned places, whereas social media 'explorers' are much more like fiends for attention. We share it for documentation's sake, amongst like-minded people, to add to the rich tapestry of visual archiving of unique and forgotten man-made sites.
There's also the problem of, how we say in London, 'baiting out' places on youtube that were previously reserved for more intrepid and passionate explorers, that has already been discussed in this thread I believe. An example is one of my old favourite abandoned places: the Nestle Tower in the middle of Croydon. It haD a very indiscrete point of entry that would only really be sussed out by a savvy explorer passionate enough to be amidst the environment within, not just some kids trying to make shoddy vlogger content for Youtube moving in a cumbersome group. But, eventually, word spread of said entrance to some lil' vloggin brats. They went in, made a complete balls up of treading lightly, got caught by security, ratted the clandestine point of entrance, and that was game over for Nestle. Had probably seen 10+ refined explorer visits over the years, but only took one vlogger kid to fuck it all up. Amongst the general audience of such vloggers will also be rowdy raucous kids of the same age the likes of which I wouldn't personally want to tussle with, who will follow the way in to a given abandoned building broadcasted by the vlogger and proceed to vandalise it.
Insta seems to be to be more of a middle ground between the vlogger and the passionate explorer. I've never had an account, nor browse rooftoppers' pictures, so I don't have much authority to talk about the whole game on there. But it seems on face value anyway that rooftopping is the majority of the supply that supplies the drug of attention. Russian girls will be dangled off skyscrapers for selfies, for example, and tbh I have no idea whether they're in it for the thrill of being there or the thrill of the likes. Could be a mix.
That's all she wrote I think.
Good EPQ topic choice still, I remember doing mine and what a hoop-jumping exercise it was... There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
