It looks like you’ve already touched a nerve with compulsive travelers. Of course they don’t want to face the idea that they’re boring people. They see themselves as the literal jet set. Yet I feel exactly as you do. Most travelers become the most obnoxious, low class form of vermin: tourists. At the moment, there are violent protests in Mexico City over gentrification. Normal people cannot afford to live in Mexico City because Airbnb has driven up the prices of housing. The entire economy has started to revolve around the tourist class. I don’t agree with them breaking store windows, but I do understand the sentiment behind it. Compulsive travel is what you do when you are empty on the inside. You fetishize the exotic because you yourself are nothing special and do not believe you can do anything to remedy it besides spend more money.
Exactly! In my case, if I ever did travel, the whole purpose would be to learn a language via immersion. If I speak English the whole time, that’s a real problem.
"...because it transports people who have never experienced their humanity where they were, to places where they shouldn’t go. In fact it mainly transports businessmen in suits with briefcases filled with charts, contracts, more mischief—businessmen who are identical everywhere and hence have no reason at all to be ferried about."
i call this style 'cope hostility' and it's so fun, but it's kneejerk grievance mongering, very goofy and obnoxious. you're hurting these travelling people, james. that said, i enjoy reading it because i think it's hilarious, but i just can't stop imagining these travelling people breaking down, sobbing & realizing that you're accurate & feeling awful, jarring desperation, then slowly rebooting their justifications and defenses and ideologies & start planning the next trip...
Oh I loved this! I have felt pretty critical of traveling, and how there are travel influencers who get paid - typically by tourism boards or websites - to boost travel to any given locale. I realized that many people who are obsessed with travel tend to be pretty liberal, and their liberalism just deepens/remains unchanged from all the traveling. So you spend all this time going around the world, obsessed with locals and have learned nothing except that "everyone is the same"???
I do appreciate this post a lot because I have noticed that people think there is something mysterious and necessary about travel, even though in their own personal lives, they aren't very adventurous at all.
Yeah, resonate with the middle class status signalling thing.
I was digital nomading for a few years and I found it intriguing how most of us after a couple of years either settle in one place or rotate between two, maybe three. People don't usually seem to want to just keep traveling.
You pretty much described my boring life. I used to live an exciting and adventurous life. Then I realized, what's the point? Just seek out the daily comforts at home and abroad. It doesnt cost much if done right. If Im going to take risk and stress, I better be getting paid for it.
It looks like you’ve already touched a nerve with compulsive travelers. Of course they don’t want to face the idea that they’re boring people. They see themselves as the literal jet set. Yet I feel exactly as you do. Most travelers become the most obnoxious, low class form of vermin: tourists. At the moment, there are violent protests in Mexico City over gentrification. Normal people cannot afford to live in Mexico City because Airbnb has driven up the prices of housing. The entire economy has started to revolve around the tourist class. I don’t agree with them breaking store windows, but I do understand the sentiment behind it. Compulsive travel is what you do when you are empty on the inside. You fetishize the exotic because you yourself are nothing special and do not believe you can do anything to remedy it besides spend more money.
Exactly! In my case, if I ever did travel, the whole purpose would be to learn a language via immersion. If I speak English the whole time, that’s a real problem.
Reminds me of lines from David Watson's "Civilization is a Jetliner"
https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/314-fall-1983/civilization-is-like-a-jetliner/
"...because it transports people who have never experienced their humanity where they were, to places where they shouldn’t go. In fact it mainly transports businessmen in suits with briefcases filled with charts, contracts, more mischief—businessmen who are identical everywhere and hence have no reason at all to be ferried about."
i call this style 'cope hostility' and it's so fun, but it's kneejerk grievance mongering, very goofy and obnoxious. you're hurting these travelling people, james. that said, i enjoy reading it because i think it's hilarious, but i just can't stop imagining these travelling people breaking down, sobbing & realizing that you're accurate & feeling awful, jarring desperation, then slowly rebooting their justifications and defenses and ideologies & start planning the next trip...
"haha"
Oh I loved this! I have felt pretty critical of traveling, and how there are travel influencers who get paid - typically by tourism boards or websites - to boost travel to any given locale. I realized that many people who are obsessed with travel tend to be pretty liberal, and their liberalism just deepens/remains unchanged from all the traveling. So you spend all this time going around the world, obsessed with locals and have learned nothing except that "everyone is the same"???
I do appreciate this post a lot because I have noticed that people think there is something mysterious and necessary about travel, even though in their own personal lives, they aren't very adventurous at all.
Traveling is nice, its a break from the hellish confines of modern office life. Of course people love traveling.
Yeah, resonate with the middle class status signalling thing.
I was digital nomading for a few years and I found it intriguing how most of us after a couple of years either settle in one place or rotate between two, maybe three. People don't usually seem to want to just keep traveling.
Traveling would be fine if it weren’t for all the people traveling.
You pretty much described my boring life. I used to live an exciting and adventurous life. Then I realized, what's the point? Just seek out the daily comforts at home and abroad. It doesnt cost much if done right. If Im going to take risk and stress, I better be getting paid for it.
I travel to meet a future husband, preferably with EU citizenship
While I know there is a differentiation between travel and movement, doesn’t Reich ala Murder of Christ suggest movement is kind of the key?