Somewhere between my third iced espresso and my fourth doom-scroll of the morning, I realized my phone had become a passport stamped exclusively in Italian and French. Every grid was a postcard, every story a humblebrag wearing linen. And I couldn't help but wonder: when did our summers stop being places we go and start being places we post?

Photo: Spendido, Portofino

Take Portofino, the patron saint of the soft-launch summer. That candy-colored fishing village has roughly the square footage of a generous walk-in closet, yet it absorbs more cashmere per capita than anywhere on earth. Everyone arrives at Splendido swearing they're there to unplug, then spends ninety minutes negotiating the precise angle at which a Negroni catches the golden hour. Unplugging, darling, has never required this much planning.

Photo: Capri

Capri is Portofino's flashier cousin, the one who shows up to brunch in Dolce & Gabbana lemon print and somehow makes it look like a personality. The Faraglioni rocks, the lurch up to Anacapri, that one shot from the terrace at Da Paolino under the lemon trees: we've all seen it four hundred times, and we will all do it again, because resistance is futile and the limoncello is complimentary. Capri doesn't want you to discover it. Capri wants you to perform it.

Photo: Capri

Then there's Ibiza, which has quietly traded its glow sticks for green juice. The party island grew up, got into sound baths, and now charges you €400 to lie on a Macramé daybed at a beach club while a DJ plays house music. The girls who once closed Pacha at dawn now close their eyes at a wellness retreat in the hills, manifesting. Same island. New filter.

Photo: Côte d'Azur

And Saint-Tropez, oh, Saint-Tropez. The French will tell you it peaked in the Bardot years, and the French are usually right, but try telling that to the flotilla of yachts jostling for a sardine off the coast of Club 55. There is no place on the Côte d'Azur where more money works harder to look effortless. Rosé before noon is not a choice here; it is a civic duty.

What fascinates me is the sameness of it all. Four glittering destinations, one identical carousel: the espresso martini, the wedge espadrille, the back-of-the-boat sunset, the caption that says "take me back" before the tan has even set. We've globalized the holiday into a single, beautiful, slightly exhausting template.

But here's my confession. I scroll, I roll my eyes, I mutter something witheringly French under my breath, and then I find myself googling flights to Nice at 1 a.m. Because beneath the performance, these places are genuinely, infuriatingly gorgeous. Portofino is a jewel box. Capri does smell of jasmine and sunscreen and money. Ibiza's hills really do go pink at dusk, and Saint-Tropez has a way of making you believe, just for one rosé-soaked afternoon, that you too could own a boat named after your ex-wife.

So maybe the joke isn't on the influencers. Maybe it's on those of us who pretend we're above it while saving the location tag for later. The truth is, luxury Instagram this summer isn't selling a destination. It's selling a feeling, that you've arrived, in every sense, and we keep buying, one geotag at a time.

I'll see you at Club 55. I'll be the one pretending I'm not taking a photo. We both know I am.