Blogs, Bongos, and Selfie-Sticks
Further thoughts on the narcissistic side of modern travel
First, thanks to everyone who took the time to read my earlier article: ‘Has Travel Become Another Exercise in Narcissism?’
I really wasn’t expecting it to get much mileage, but it certainly seems to have hit a nerve. Many people enjoyed the piece, saying it gave voice to a niggle they’d experienced themselves. Others were less complimentary, branding me, among other things, a “misanthrope”, an “arrogant prick”, a “pretentious douchebag” and (this particularly indignant reader was good enough to email me directly) an “abhorrent, exclusive, travel hipster”.
The piece, I’ll admit, was far from perfect. The first time I’ve ever roused myself to write opinion, there are some things I regret, particularly an overdose of generalization that perhaps gave the impression I was denigrating everyone who’s ever packed a suitcase.
In hindsight, I could have been more nuanced. I guess I was trying to inject a bit of certitude into a subject that is riddled with contradiction. Technology, after all, is a boon and a blight. Tourism can be a force for both good and bad. So I wrote it all with a venom which, in hindsight, might have been off-putting for some readers. I honestly didn’t think many people would read it let alone be wounded.
Now that the original piece has run out of steam — and given the amount of feedback it’s generated — I thought I’d offer some ripostes to the most common criticisms, both to clarify my viewpoint and to admit where I got things wrong…
1. “The idea of travel being a narcissistic pursuit is nothing new.”
This was, I readily concede, a bit of a stream-of-consciousness rather than a carefully considered, empirically-evidenced piece of earth-shattering opinion.
If I’d been writing an academic treatise or a $5,000 glossy magazine cover-story, the perceived lack of originality might have been more criminal. (In fact, this article is the original version of a piece I wrote for VICE, which might go some way to explain the wilfully provocative tone.)
I certainly don’t view myself as “the self-proclaimed overseer of all travel and tourism” (though I did notice that the critic who wrote this was wearing Google Glass in their Twitter profile photo). But I would like to think that five years of observing and writing about travel might have yielded some small insights worth sharing.
Wittering on about how thoroughly marvellous travelling is was never likely to generate much debate.
2. “But surely travelling is marvellous. What’s your problem?”
I didn’t set out to imply that travel cannot be is anything other than one of the most satisfying ways to spend your time. At its best, travel is life-affirming, energizing, even life-altering. It can also be challenging, exasperating and gut-wrenchingly lonely — and there are lessons there too.
Anyone lucky enough to have the funds and opportunity to travel on their own terms has that “Why have I ever done anything else?” epiphany, and feels inclined to scream it from the hills. Successfully extricating yourself from home doesn’t lend itself to humility.
My issue is the creeping sense that some of us are putting the presentation ahead of the digestion. Not all travel merits the kind of back-slapping commentary you get at the hostel bar or on your Facebook newsfeed.
It’s taking photos without properly looking at the object in front of your viewfinder. It’s walking around a foreign neighbourhood consumed with how you can best surmise the experience in 140 characters. It’s sitting on the lakeshore at 6am playing bongos convinced that, because you’re feeling liberated, your inexpert hammering must surely be sublime spiritual sustenance to the twenty other people in the surrounding cabanas.
Those people don’t care that you’ve learned to play the bongos. THEY JUST WANT A LIE-IN!
3. “Leave the tourists alone, you effing snob.”
Some readers (including the Deputy Travel Editor of the Sunday Times) viewed my tirade as an assault on the tourist — sort of an arrogant “traveller’s” dismissal of people who pick ready-made holidays from a brochure. (Several even accused me of hipsterism, which is ironic considering the amount of time I spend railing against the gentrification of my beloved South London.)
The stereotypical tourist, following the pre-arranged itinerary on their package group tour (or merely lying supine on a beach, page-turning novel in one hand, cold beer in the other), really wasn’t in my cross-hairs at all.
Tourism, the way that most of us engage with the world first-hand, is a vital cultural and economic pillar of modern life. In a world that often seems so utterly incapable of mutual understanding it is terrifying to think where we would be without it.
Of course I have my issues with the mainstream market. No-one can pretend that a towering hotel owned by a western consortium in Serrakunda, in a country — The Gambia — with a per capita GDP of $500 a year, where the punters only leave the compound if they want to solicit fumbles from desperate sex-workers… no-one can pretend that brand of tourism is all hunky dory.
But I’d never begrudge anyone for shelving such awkward moral considerations for the two sacred weeks of the year they get to spend on holiday.
Hell, at least conventional poolside tourism is an honest, up-front transaction. Volubly asking for “TWO BEERS” while holding up two fingers rather than bothering to learn “dos cervezas” makes you incomprehensibly lazy. But at least you’re not being disingenuous.
The same isn’t always true of the long-term “traveller” — the gapper, the self-regarding wanderer, the affected free-spirit — who plays at immersion, and pays lip-service to authenticity, but is only really there to pilfer brag-worthy experiences. Which leads us onto…
4. “Who cares if travellers are self-involved? They’re not hurting anyone.”
Forgive me if I take this particular statement and politely attempt to slap you round the head with it.
Crucially — and I wish I’d made this point originally — being a narcissistic traveller isn’t just irksome for other travellers, it can be an implied affront to the country whose soil you’re treading.
Go to Vang Vieng, a once-sleepy backwater in central Laos. Sign up for an afternoon of tubing, which involves sitting in the inner tube of a tractor-tyre and drifting down the Nam Song river, all the while downing shots of Lao-lao whiskey. Once you’re done, if you’re still upright, take a step back and consider what the kids in this devoutly Buddhist and impoverished corner of Asia think about your ‘engagement’ with their town.
Far from cultivating mutual understanding, I’d argue that this kind of travel is potentially toxic, and actively degrades the relationship between visitor and host.
What you’re left with is a situation where local people inevitably start to commodify the outsider, just as the outsider has commodified their river, sunshine and picturesque limestone pinnacles as a pretty backdrop for their revelry.
If this sounds like your definition of travel I’m glad you’re having a great time. I really am. You’re not committing a crime. You’re probably a delightful, fun-loving human being. But can you really claim that what you’re doing is broadening your horizons?
Could it be that what you’re really in love with is absolute hedonistic freedom, not place or foreign culture?
And this, essentially, was the point I set out to make: that while everyone continues to talk about travel being mind-expanding and self-improving, spending months on end ogling pretty landscapes, getting pissed and having the same conversations can also be acutely vacuous.
Many experienced travellers will testify that friendships forged with other ‘travellers’ amid the euphoric freedom of the road often ring hollow when transposed to the more familiar terrain of home.
But then, a “misanthrope” would say that.
5. “Technology is the best thing ever ever ever.”
Some of the fiercest vitriol emanated from those corners of the internet that most love the internet (sheesh, Redditors, what did I ever do to you?). I got the impression I pushed some sensitive buttons when I dissed people who are over-attached to technology.
Technophiles, by definition, have a disproportionate presence on-line, so perhaps it was inevitable that this was going to raise hackles.
So sorry if my assertion that the internet’s contribution to modern travelling pissed you off. We’re obviously from very different tribes. I’m the Luddite who won’t buy a Kindle because I like the feel of a book. My mobile phone is an antique Nokia 100 (pictured) which still runs Snake. I am not alone.
It’s not that I’m blind to the benefits of technology. It’s indispensable for my work. But, like many people, I also resent it, and find myself incapable of quelling the sense that the more indispensable technology becomes the more we strip travel of its spontaneity and increasingly shrink the unknown. And that’s a crying shame.
Perhaps technology, for some people, really is an unqualified asset. Just don’t take photos in public with an iPad — that is unforgivable.
6. “The poor Canadians.”
Several people pointed out that the Canadian couple who seemed to have been lobotomized in their response to crashing glaciers and beaching orcas were, in fact, the antithesis of the wittering over-sharer I’d set off to excoriate.
Certainly, it would be impossible to accuse them of embodying the idea so perfectly skewered by the journalist Elizabeth Drew when she wrote: “Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.”
I suppose their lack of enthusiasm made me ponder why they’d bothered to get on the plane at all, so it was my last kick in the chops to the notion that travel makes you more interesting. On reflection, I withdraw my criticism. Maybe their hearts were leaping on the inside.
7. “This article is narcissism, you incorrigible hypocrite!”
Furiously pointing out the inherent hypocrisy of a travel writer lambasting others for ramming their overseas experiences down other people’s throats really wasn’t necessary.
Here’s an old photo of me abroad, WEARING A VEST WITH A DRAGON ON IT (obscured by kitten).
8. “You clearly hate your job.”
Contrary to some assumptions, I still love my job. There remain, reassuringly, countless places where it is still possible to get lost, to learn, to shape and sharpen your relationship with the wider world, even for a curmudgeonly bugger like me.
So, to the poor soul who wrote a response to this article saying I’d obliterated his dream of getting into travel writing, please don’t despair. Writing about travel, while perhaps a narcissistic activity by definition, can and should be outward looking and fully engaged with people and place. In fact, it was my lurking cynicism about the validity of travelling for travel’s sake that first persuaded me to pick up a pen.
I hope that extra penny’s worth of rumination has helped to clarify my stance on this. But I abide by the original sentiment, which can be summed up thus: if you travel, try and do so with your head out of your ass.
If it encouraged even one person to reappraise their travelling priorities, I’d say it was worth writing.
Next up, ‘why safaris are shit’…
Happy travelling!
For more cynical musings about the state of modern travel, check out Henry’s new piece: ‘The Death of Awe in the Age of Awesome’: https://medium.com/human-parts/the-death-of-awe-in-the-age-of-awesome-846fc4569751.
Henry Wismayer is an award-winning freelance journalist based in London. He writes travel features for over 60 publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post and TIME Magazine .
His website is: www.henrywismayer.com.
