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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Social media has really driven this craze[/quote]

No. Humans are driven to travel and roam, stupid. They’ve always done it. [/quote]

Some have. The vast majority of human beings live within a few hours of where they were born, and most people never travel beyond their home country or region. We are actually in a very small subset of people within the history of the planet who travel this extensively. It's not "natural" in the sense that people have always done it.

Obviously it's not just social media though. It's the development of plane travel, the rise of the middle and upper middle class (not just in the US but everywhere -- global travel in recent years has been driven by the rise of the Chinese middle/upper-middle class), and the advent of the internet. But social media definitely plays a role now in terms of where people go, and has changed the way people travel and also what their goals are when they do. That's obvious if you go anywhere that is "Instagram famous" -- there are national parks where you used to be able to go pretty much anytime, even peak season, and find affordable lodging and plenty of space. Now you reservation systems that sell out constantly, park rangers who have to impose limits on how long people can spend taking selfies in certain famous locations, etc.

And even if you want to argue that social media doesn't encourage travel, you'd be crazy to think social media doesn't increase "travel jealousy", the phenomenon that is the topic of this thread. There's been travel jealousy of some kind for a long time (like when all the rich people used to leave cities in the summer and go to summer houses while all the poor people just had to get used to the scent of human feces baking in the sun) but the jealousy is a lot stringer now that the rich people can post photos for the poor people to look at. #upwindgoals[/quote]

It’s wild to shame people for travel. It’s a perspective-broadening experience. That’s a great thing to spend your time and money on. Shame influencers for buying 200 pairs of jeans or Amazon hauls, sure. Travel? Get real. [/quote]
I posted earlier in this thread.  But what is the cost of all this perspective broadening (which again doesn’t automatically happen with travel abroad)?  It rubs me the wrong way as a person from a developing country that people like you use other countries as playgrounds to broaden your horizons when most of the time you aren’t doing such a thing.[/quote]

DP. How do you know?  Travel definitely broadens your horizons by encountering and learning about new culture, new foods, new sites/monuments, different religion, history of the country, government, etc..

BTW you come from a place of privilege.  3rd world countries absolutely want tourism, and in fact,  it might be in the top 3 revenue for their economy.  Tourism also creates a ton of easier jobs for these people, even those that don’t speak English who might not work on front lines interacting with tourists.  But they might drive the bus, work in the kitchen of restaurants, housekeeping hotels and these jobs are heck of a lot easier than manual labor jobs.

Why don’t you ask the cities, governments, and workers whose livelihoods depend on tourism and what they would do and how much they would make in comparison if it wasn’t for tourism.[/quote]

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