Anonymous
02/19/2023 21:46
Subject: travel jealousy
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Social media has really driven this craze
No. Humans are driven to travel and roam, stupid. They’ve always done it.
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
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.
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.
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.
Anonymous
02/19/2023 18:32
Subject: Re:travel jealousy
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:You don’t have to pay a lot of money to have a fun trip.
For 2 summers we rented a $6K house with 2 other families in the outer banks, each paying $2K for the week. One of my kids still says it is his favorite vacation.
My neighborhood friends and I also try to camp one weekend a year together and the kids also have a blast. It is not necessarily my cup of tea but I am willing to do it once a year.
$2k for a week is pricey
We did have a pool and hot tub at the house and we were a couple of blocks from the beach. You could probably do it cheaper farther from the beach, fwiw.
Anonymous
02/19/2023 15:13
Subject: Re:travel jealousy
Anonymous wrote:You don’t have to pay a lot of money to have a fun trip.
For 2 summers we rented a $6K house with 2 other families in the outer banks, each paying $2K for the week. One of my kids still says it is his favorite vacation.
My neighborhood friends and I also try to camp one weekend a year together and the kids also have a blast. It is not necessarily my cup of tea but I am willing to do it once a year.
$2k for a week is pricey
Anonymous
02/19/2023 13:26
Subject: travel jealousy
Anonymous wrote:For a lot of us who travel a lot we feel pressure to get those trips in while our kids are still home. My own experience is that real family vacations end when the first kid goes to college. So maybe a lot of the families are doing more now because they know time is limited.
My parents took us on some trips. My real travel adventures happened once I was going alone and paying for it by myself. In my experience, family trips tend to be well organized, staying in hotels/rentals, traveling in rental cars with little spontaneity and less interaction with strangers.
Anonymous
02/19/2023 13:17
Subject: travel jealousy
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Social media has really driven this craze
No. Humans are driven to travel and roam, stupid. They’ve always done it.
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
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.
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.
People like this will travel to other countries and come back talking about how eye-opening it was to see poverty there. Meanwhile they live in DC and get mad about tent encampments lowering their property values.
Most travel does not broaden perspectives. It makes people feel more sophisticated, which is different.
??? Nobody I know does that. Do you only know Mormon missionaries or something? The people I know are going places way better than here, they’re having incredible experiences, they’re not poverty tourists on mission trips.
I know people who travel to South America, Africa, and Asia, and will see amazing things but also note the poverty and claim it as "eye-opening" even while closing their eyes to homelessness and poverty in the city where they live, absolutely. I have literally seen people post photos of poor neighborhoods in countries they visit and talk about how enlightening it was, and then come home and complain about tent cities here in DC. Many people are oblivious.
I also know a lot of people who talk about the importance of travel to "broaden horizons" but then mostly do ski trips, cruises, and luxury resorts. All of which are great, but if you are trying to justify tons of travel despite environmental impact by arguing that travel is a public good because it broadens perspectives, then going skiing in Utah or lying on a beach with a bunch of other UMC Americans in the Caribbean is not going to do it.
The point is not that travel is bad. I love to travel. But the idea that I'm performing some kind of public service when I travel? It's dumb. I mostly travel for myself and so do most of you. Some travel is enlightening. But so are books. Foreign films. Volunteering. None of those carry the class status of being widely travelled. So yes, I roll my eyes at people who are like "the environmental impact of travel is irrelevant because travel broadens perspectives."