In the pre-internet era travel was a code word for open mindedness toward other cultures. A fairly standard trope in travel writing was freaking out the reader

In the pre-internet era travel was a code word for open mindedness toward other cultures. A fairly standard trope in travel writing was freaking out the reader to a perfectly acceptable level at the time of writing. This is obsolete today. Due to globalism we're moving our culture over there to replace theirs and moving their people over here to replace ours. Open mindedness is seen as wrong, "no platforming", utter intolerance toward anything non-progressive and if they're equally progressive over there, there's nothing new to experience there. People who would have found travel interesting in 1970 when I was young now experience unusual non mainstream cultures by visiting various 4chan boards and looking for people who still use the N-word in 2017, or who go camping, or are NEETs. What travel as a verb still happens in 2017 is now about western style decadence or social signalling and both are heavily organized. If you want decadence you read the resort reviews about how good the all inclusive drinks are and proximity to nude beaches and dance clubs and such, its all heavily organized and indexed and sorted and CRUD-app-ified. Who wants to read a book about a quirky end user scrolling thru yelp or airbnb? If you want social signalling, perhaps you need that trip to Africa for volun-tour-ism for that ivy league application, you contact people who organize that from top to bottom, social signalling has been pretty well product-ized. Some of the death of old style travel writing is the death of optimism. Sure my grandpa was one of the few who could go to Scotland for a month with my grandma, it was semi-realistic to afford for joe 6 pack. The days of the middle class ever being able to afford that are long gone along with the optimism; retirement means if you economically and physically survive the medical industrial complex, you get cat food and ramen at best, not a semi-realistic a trip to Scotland. When people are banned from an activity its human nature to claim to stop desiring it until it becomes real; millennials are too poor live in the burbs, they've been totally screwed over; response, we never wanted to live there anyway nah na nah na na. Plus or minus some gaslighting by people with a bridge to sell to suckas. Permanent decline in standard of living means you'll never travel internationally except maybe as a refugee, natural human response, I never wanted to anyway, not gonna read the book extolling the virtues and excitement of travel, etc.