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> “You can’t talk about overtourism without mentioning Instagram and Facebook — I think they’re big drivers of this trend,” Mr. Francis said. “Seventy-five year

by kartan 8y ago

> “You can’t talk about overtourism without mentioning Instagram and Facebook — I think they’re big drivers of this trend,” Mr. Francis said. “Seventy-five years ago, tourism was about experience-seeking. Now it’s about using photography and social media to build a personal brand. In a sense, for a lot of people, the photos you take on a trip become more important than the experience.” The article falls directly into the "good old days" fallacy. No, people in the past were not looking for "more authentic experiences". I bought in a flea market a photo album of a trip of some Swedish couple in the 60s. It is awesome. It could be posted picture by picture on Facebook and nobody will notice. Except by details like that the plane tickets, included in the album, were printed by a mechanical typewriter. Also includes tourism flyers, tickets for the theatre, and a menu from a restaurant. Sounds familiar? Because people are people in all places at all times. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days

bogomipz 8y ago
>"The article falls directly into the "good old days" fallacy." This type of dismissal - that people discussing change are nothing more than baseless nostalgics, is really becoming it's own tired trope. The article gives quite concrete examples of recent-ish developments that are an annoyance to both other residents and other travelers. Large groups of selfie sticks, outsized queues, neighborhoods bereft of actual locals, etc. The article also discusses sustainability which is a pretty important topic on a planet with 7.6 billion people. How is that a fallacy exactly? An increasing population and a global expansion of middle class people, two elements that factor a booming tourism industry are very rooted in fact.[1] >"No, people in the past were not looking for "more authentic experiences"." Nowhere in this article is that claim even staked. It's also very odd that you then go on to mention a couple who brought back some small keepsakes and mementos from a trip as evidence of this. People keep reminders from local events in their life as well and it has nothing to do with "authenticity." [1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/global_20170228_global-middle-class.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/global_...
dbs 8y ago
I fail to see your point. I too keep travel pictures with stuff like tickets, flyers etc. The purpose is not to build a brand or show off but to better remember the experience later.
- INTPenis 8y ago
  I think that was the point. I also fail to see what this article is stating. That people are travelling to build a personal brand. Maybe some people but nobody in my circle. Everyone I know travel because they want new experiences. They save little items and trinkets from those experiences to remember them. Not to post them on social media.
  - dfxm12 8y ago
    To take that thought a step further, posting pictures on social media is the way we remember things now. We certainly don't take photos exclusively to print out and store in offline albums.
    - maccard 8y ago
      Plenty of people do take photos to store offline* and to print out. My parents have a big house filled with photo albums that they have to store. We have a small apartment that makes it impractical to store multiple boxes of photo books of families throughout the years. * Assuming by offline you mean not-shared, rather than literally offline. Anyone with a smart phone is most likely backing up their photos to iCloud/Google photos.
- kartan 8y ago
  > I too keep travel pictures with stuff like tickets, flyers etc. The purpose is not to build a brand or show off but to better remember the experience later. That is my point. In the past, people did the same things, if that does not make them superficial we are neither. We should not judge our contemporaneous travellers so lightly.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
It does get a bit disgusting when people are taking selfies with shit eating grins at the WTC memorial. All for the status boost in their corner of the graph.
- always_good 8y ago
  How often do you see this happening? And how do you know why they are grinning?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- wtdo 8y ago
  What else do you expect people to do there? Most people are fully aware that what happened there is a tragedy. Most people also have an instant-no-thought habit to smile when having a picture taken. Is it really any better for them to take a picture and be solemn? Is that enough or do they need to express deep sadness for these pictures? Would others claim these sad emotions are just for show anyway? And if so, should we expect people to just not take pictures at all at the WTC memorial? And if so, at what point in time can we start taking pictures at a place with our normal happy faces? People are there. They are happy they are there, even though 'there' (where ever 'there' is) may be a place that causes them to have emotions on the sad part of the emotional spectrum. Think of funerals. It's a sad place to be (perhaps sadder since the person who died is someone well known as opposed to a lot of unknown people, but I won't judge either way). Family and friends are together, which usually makes people happy. It's a mixed bag of emotions. If someone happens to smile in a picture there it's probably more to do with habit of smiling for pictures or happiness to be with family and friends (perhaps first time in a while) than it is for being happy the deceased is deceased or for social status boosts.
- fipple 8y ago
  Would you take a smiling photo at the Lincoln Memorial. It is also a monument to a murder victim.
AJ007 8y ago
I don’t know if it was meant to be a subtle joke, but tourism 75 years ago (in Europe or otherwise..) seriously?
- gdy 8y ago
  I've heard Russia was very popular among German tourists at that time
- watt 8y ago
  Russians still like to joke that their grandfather went on sightseeing trip in Germany - in a tank.
- gdy 8y ago
  Germans were dying to see Russia
- astura 8y ago
  Youre getting downvoted (likely because you didn't explain yourself) but you have a point - 75 years ago was 1943, it was the tail end of WWII and Europe was a literal battleground
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - giggles_giggles 8y ago
    Tail end? D-Day wasn't until the summer of 44
    - astura 8y ago
      What a weird, overly pedantic, comment to make. Hilter invaded Poland in Sept 1939 and VE-Day was May 8, 1945; so the war in Europe lasted 68 months. 75 years ago the war was 47 months old, or 69% complete. I consider the final 30% of something the "tail end." It's weirdly pedantic and downright antisocial to go around arguing "tail end" means something else, especially when its entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Since the internet is for cats I did some quick Googling and looks like, on average, a cats tail is around 34% of their total length (body plus tail) so saying the final 30% of something is the tail end is objectively accurate. Unless you want to go around arguing that some cats don't have tails.
nitwit005 8y ago
You can look back to the early days of tourism when gentlemen going on their "grand tour" often commissioned paintings of what they'd visited so they could show off how cultured they were. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art/paintings-in-depth/the-grand-tour https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art...
- chrisco255 8y ago
  Yeah I'm sure the very rich had that luxury back in the day... But nowadays anyone can do it.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    That's the point! With the subpoint that it scales...badly. It's not like you can spin up 20 more instances of the historic city center when you get 20x the usual traffic. Result: cities literally divided against themselves, transformed into a tourist-factory-slash-amusement-park that nobody lives in, segregated from the actual living city. What, me bitter about my hometown being disneyfied? Nooooosir...
    - chrisco255 8y ago
      Being a 3rd generation Floridian...I can sympathize.
Karrot_Kream 8y ago
While I do have friends who simply travel to build their brand around it (every year in my circles there's a set of "cool" destinations that you post pictures from, where somewhere like Iceland is cooler than Rwanda), I think tourists have and will continue to have the same behavior. As a tourist, you have a limited amount of time to explore. Sure you can "go off the beaten path", but that represents a risk, and while the experience may be interesting, you could also end up in a boring villa/Airbnb with nothing more than mediocre food and unfriendly people. Wasting your limited vacation time on a subpar experience is a pretty dismal proposition, so most people will take a trip to a place that's easy to navigate as a tourist while still giving enough of the local flavor to impress. There's something to be said for trying to preserve local flavor while accommodating tourists though, and that's a line each tourist spot will have to find for themselves. Some will probably inevitably become expat party towns, while others will probably strike the right balance.
- foobarge 8y ago
  > where somewhere like Iceland is cooler than Rwanda You are technically correct.
e67f70028a46fba 8y ago
> The article falls directly into the "good old days" fallacy This comment falls directly into the "things never change" fallacy. This fallacy can be applied whenever anyone complains about any change anywhere. Picking one sample piece of anecdotal data from another period that can roughly be lined up with some other vague impressions of today does not refute the claim. I have no strong opinion on overtourism or the effects on it by social media, but I'm willing to listen to people who discuss it without dismissing them.
- kartan 8y ago
  > This comment falls directly into the "things never change" fallacy. That sounds interesting. I looked for it, and I just found references to the "tradition fallacy" that only deals with resistance to change. Can you provide a link? > Picking one sample piece of anecdotal data from another period that can roughly be lined up with some other vague impressions of today does not refute the claim. I provided an anecdote example as a means to be more pedagogic. It is easier to understand concepts from the concrete to the abstract. So you are completely right, my anecdote does not refute the claim.
  - pasabagi 8y ago
    I guess the oldest quote would be in the bible, as "there's no new thing under the sun". In any case though, I don't really understand the point of using 'fallacy' aside from cases where it's an actual logical fallacy. You can probably cover every habit of thought and discourse under a banner of fallacy, if you pick out the ways in which they are used badly - since people tend to think badly due to misapplied habits.
chrisco255 8y ago
That's probably when modern tourism began, in the post-war 50s and 60s. You had a bunch of things coming together: commercial airliners, cruise ships, better highway systems, etc. Disney World launched in the 60s to capitalize on the trend. I agree "people are people" and they don't change as much as we'd like to think...but I do also think that modern tech has made travel more frictionless than ever. You have GPS in your pocket, you can Yelp for good locales and restaurants, you can book flights in minutes, hail rides from an app, Google anything you're confused about, etc... So the number of people travelling nowadays is probably at an all time high.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Fun factoid. Before World War 1 passports, as we know them, did not exist through nearly all of the world. They were a 'temporary security measure' like so many things... It wasn't until 1978 in the USA that entering or leaving the nation requiring a passport was legally encoded (though we'd been using them since the early 19th century). That's why reading of e.g. scientists from before the early 20th century you'll regularly see them being born in one country, educated in another, opening a business in another, and so on. The reason I'd agree with your timeline is one thing you did not mention -- wealth explosion. Purely recreational international travel is and always has been relatively expensive.
  - chewz 8y ago
    The passports are much, much older then WWI - however railroads in late XIX century made travel requirements more relaxed as the administration were not able to catch up with technology. Also XIX c. passports were without biometry (ie without photography of the holder). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport
- ijidak 8y ago
  I'm not sure about overtourism, but just got back from a trip to Europe. Almost the exact same countries as a trip 13 years ago. The difference was AMAZING. Technology has made traveling so easy by comparison it's SHOCKING. 1. No more staring at signs and menus in confusion. Snap a picture with Google translate and viola. 2. Related to #1, no more getting lost using public transit or walking because you can't read street signs. Google Maps with walking directions, transit directions was a LIFE-CHANGER. 3. No more being LIMITED to phrases in your phrasebook. Again, Google translate. 4. No more worries about being taken advantage of by local taxis or figuring out local taxi customs. Uber and Uber clones. 5. No more getting trapped at tourist trap restaurants or overpriced "officially" reviewed restaurants. Google search again. 6. Waze can help you navigate to the most secluded spots, even when the local signs become sparse. I could keep going... Actually, it's amazing how much it was Google and local clones of Uber. Yelp and Uber aren't as popular in the countries we visited as I expected. Honestly it was almost a little too easy, in some ways I didn't feel like I was in a foreign land... I felt at total ease in any neighborhood, because even if no taxis were around, just hail a ride. Rented a car multiple times and drove around because Waze was great everywhere if Google Maps broke down. Overall I LOVED that technology has made experiencing a foreign country almost trivially easy. Technology absolutely lowers many barriers to travel. The difference between this trip and my last trip was unbelievable.
zamalek 8y ago
Social media has just distilled this pointless behavior into the purest form possible. The behavior is just like the good old days, but the tools aren't (you'd have to invite people around to show off your photo album persona). There were (and still are) tribespeople that demonstrate this behavior with affluence: living an outwardly great life (by having cows, goats and what-have-you on public demonstration) without substance. Politicians and celebrities are no different. This exaggeration of this behavior has increased contrast. It is both easier to identify and self-identity people who aren't victim to this pattern. There were never the good old days, speaking in a formal logical manner. However, in the good new days it is easier to identify this bullshit and pry oneself away from it.
draw_down 8y ago
Comparing the past to the future is not necessarily a fallacy. If it were, everything would be constant for all time. I hope we can agree that’s not the case.
jhoechtl 8y ago
Social media makes self-portrayal certainly easier which makes it a worthwhile assumption that presentation effect is more rated than the experience. Guess with howany people the photo albumhas been shared compared to the social media post?
fipple 8y ago
It’s a matter of scale. The number of people like your Swedish couple was much lower than the number of people like them today. Film wasn’t free like Instagram is.

by kartan 8y ago

bogomipz 8y ago

>"The article falls directly into the "good old days" fallacy." This type of dismissal - that people discussing change are nothing more than baseless nostalgics, is really becoming it's own tired trope. The article gives quite concrete examples of recent-ish developments that are an annoyance to both other residents and other travelers. Large groups of selfie sticks, outsized queues, neighborhoods bereft of actual locals, etc. The article also discusses sustainability which is a pretty important topic on a planet with 7.6 billion people. How is that a fallacy exactly? An increasing population and a global expansion of middle class people, two elements that factor a booming tourism industry are very rooted in fact.[1] >"No, people in the past were not looking for "more authentic experiences"." Nowhere in this article is that claim even staked. It's also very odd that you then go on to mention a couple who brought back some small keepsakes and mementos from a trip as evidence of this. People keep reminders from local events in their life as well and it has nothing to do with "authenticity." [1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/global_20170228_global-middle-class.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/global_...

dbs 8y ago

I fail to see your point. I too keep travel pictures with stuff like tickets, flyers etc. The purpose is not to build a brand or show off but to better remember the experience later.

INTPenis 8y ago
I think that was the point. I also fail to see what this article is stating. That people are travelling to build a personal brand. Maybe some people but nobody in my circle. Everyone I know travel because they want new experiences. They save little items and trinkets from those experiences to remember them. Not to post them on social media.
- dfxm12 8y ago
  To take that thought a step further, posting pictures on social media is the way we remember things now. We certainly don't take photos exclusively to print out and store in offline albums.
  - maccard 8y ago
    Plenty of people do take photos to store offline* and to print out. My parents have a big house filled with photo albums that they have to store. We have a small apartment that makes it impractical to store multiple boxes of photo books of families throughout the years. * Assuming by offline you mean not-shared, rather than literally offline. Anyone with a smart phone is most likely backing up their photos to iCloud/Google photos.
kartan 8y ago
> I too keep travel pictures with stuff like tickets, flyers etc. The purpose is not to build a brand or show off but to better remember the experience later. That is my point. In the past, people did the same things, if that does not make them superficial we are neither. We should not judge our contemporaneous travellers so lightly.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

It does get a bit disgusting when people are taking selfies with shit eating grins at the WTC memorial. All for the status boost in their corner of the graph.

always_good 8y ago
How often do you see this happening? And how do you know why they are grinning?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
wtdo 8y ago
What else do you expect people to do there? Most people are fully aware that what happened there is a tragedy. Most people also have an instant-no-thought habit to smile when having a picture taken. Is it really any better for them to take a picture and be solemn? Is that enough or do they need to express deep sadness for these pictures? Would others claim these sad emotions are just for show anyway? And if so, should we expect people to just not take pictures at all at the WTC memorial? And if so, at what point in time can we start taking pictures at a place with our normal happy faces? People are there. They are happy they are there, even though 'there' (where ever 'there' is) may be a place that causes them to have emotions on the sad part of the emotional spectrum. Think of funerals. It's a sad place to be (perhaps sadder since the person who died is someone well known as opposed to a lot of unknown people, but I won't judge either way). Family and friends are together, which usually makes people happy. It's a mixed bag of emotions. If someone happens to smile in a picture there it's probably more to do with habit of smiling for pictures or happiness to be with family and friends (perhaps first time in a while) than it is for being happy the deceased is deceased or for social status boosts.
fipple 8y ago
Would you take a smiling photo at the Lincoln Memorial. It is also a monument to a murder victim.

AJ007 8y ago

I don’t know if it was meant to be a subtle joke, but tourism 75 years ago (in Europe or otherwise..) seriously?

gdy 8y ago
I've heard Russia was very popular among German tourists at that time
watt 8y ago
Russians still like to joke that their grandfather went on sightseeing trip in Germany - in a tank.
gdy 8y ago
Germans were dying to see Russia
astura 8y ago
Youre getting downvoted (likely because you didn't explain yourself) but you have a point - 75 years ago was 1943, it was the tail end of WWII and Europe was a literal battleground
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- giggles_giggles 8y ago
  Tail end? D-Day wasn't until the summer of 44
  - astura 8y ago
    What a weird, overly pedantic, comment to make. Hilter invaded Poland in Sept 1939 and VE-Day was May 8, 1945; so the war in Europe lasted 68 months. 75 years ago the war was 47 months old, or 69% complete. I consider the final 30% of something the "tail end." It's weirdly pedantic and downright antisocial to go around arguing "tail end" means something else, especially when its entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Since the internet is for cats I did some quick Googling and looks like, on average, a cats tail is around 34% of their total length (body plus tail) so saying the final 30% of something is the tail end is objectively accurate. Unless you want to go around arguing that some cats don't have tails.

nitwit005 8y ago

You can look back to the early days of tourism when gentlemen going on their "grand tour" often commissioned paintings of what they'd visited so they could show off how cultured they were. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art/paintings-in-depth/the-grand-tour https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art...

chrisco255 8y ago
Yeah I'm sure the very rich had that luxury back in the day... But nowadays anyone can do it.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  That's the point! With the subpoint that it scales...badly. It's not like you can spin up 20 more instances of the historic city center when you get 20x the usual traffic. Result: cities literally divided against themselves, transformed into a tourist-factory-slash-amusement-park that nobody lives in, segregated from the actual living city. What, me bitter about my hometown being disneyfied? Nooooosir...
  - chrisco255 8y ago
    Being a 3rd generation Floridian...I can sympathize.

Karrot_Kream 8y ago

While I do have friends who simply travel to build their brand around it (every year in my circles there's a set of "cool" destinations that you post pictures from, where somewhere like Iceland is cooler than Rwanda), I think tourists have and will continue to have the same behavior. As a tourist, you have a limited amount of time to explore. Sure you can "go off the beaten path", but that represents a risk, and while the experience may be interesting, you could also end up in a boring villa/Airbnb with nothing more than mediocre food and unfriendly people. Wasting your limited vacation time on a subpar experience is a pretty dismal proposition, so most people will take a trip to a place that's easy to navigate as a tourist while still giving enough of the local flavor to impress. There's something to be said for trying to preserve local flavor while accommodating tourists though, and that's a line each tourist spot will have to find for themselves. Some will probably inevitably become expat party towns, while others will probably strike the right balance.

foobarge 8y ago
> where somewhere like Iceland is cooler than Rwanda You are technically correct.

e67f70028a46fba 8y ago

> The article falls directly into the "good old days" fallacy This comment falls directly into the "things never change" fallacy. This fallacy can be applied whenever anyone complains about any change anywhere. Picking one sample piece of anecdotal data from another period that can roughly be lined up with some other vague impressions of today does not refute the claim. I have no strong opinion on overtourism or the effects on it by social media, but I'm willing to listen to people who discuss it without dismissing them.

kartan 8y ago
> This comment falls directly into the "things never change" fallacy. That sounds interesting. I looked for it, and I just found references to the "tradition fallacy" that only deals with resistance to change. Can you provide a link? > Picking one sample piece of anecdotal data from another period that can roughly be lined up with some other vague impressions of today does not refute the claim. I provided an anecdote example as a means to be more pedagogic. It is easier to understand concepts from the concrete to the abstract. So you are completely right, my anecdote does not refute the claim.
- pasabagi 8y ago
  I guess the oldest quote would be in the bible, as "there's no new thing under the sun". In any case though, I don't really understand the point of using 'fallacy' aside from cases where it's an actual logical fallacy. You can probably cover every habit of thought and discourse under a banner of fallacy, if you pick out the ways in which they are used badly - since people tend to think badly due to misapplied habits.

chrisco255 8y ago

That's probably when modern tourism began, in the post-war 50s and 60s. You had a bunch of things coming together: commercial airliners, cruise ships, better highway systems, etc. Disney World launched in the 60s to capitalize on the trend. I agree "people are people" and they don't change as much as we'd like to think...but I do also think that modern tech has made travel more frictionless than ever. You have GPS in your pocket, you can Yelp for good locales and restaurants, you can book flights in minutes, hail rides from an app, Google anything you're confused about, etc... So the number of people travelling nowadays is probably at an all time high.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Fun factoid. Before World War 1 passports, as we know them, did not exist through nearly all of the world. They were a 'temporary security measure' like so many things... It wasn't until 1978 in the USA that entering or leaving the nation requiring a passport was legally encoded (though we'd been using them since the early 19th century). That's why reading of e.g. scientists from before the early 20th century you'll regularly see them being born in one country, educated in another, opening a business in another, and so on. The reason I'd agree with your timeline is one thing you did not mention -- wealth explosion. Purely recreational international travel is and always has been relatively expensive.
- chewz 8y ago
  The passports are much, much older then WWI - however railroads in late XIX century made travel requirements more relaxed as the administration were not able to catch up with technology. Also XIX c. passports were without biometry (ie without photography of the holder). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport
ijidak 8y ago
I'm not sure about overtourism, but just got back from a trip to Europe. Almost the exact same countries as a trip 13 years ago. The difference was AMAZING. Technology has made traveling so easy by comparison it's SHOCKING. 1. No more staring at signs and menus in confusion. Snap a picture with Google translate and viola. 2. Related to #1, no more getting lost using public transit or walking because you can't read street signs. Google Maps with walking directions, transit directions was a LIFE-CHANGER. 3. No more being LIMITED to phrases in your phrasebook. Again, Google translate. 4. No more worries about being taken advantage of by local taxis or figuring out local taxi customs. Uber and Uber clones. 5. No more getting trapped at tourist trap restaurants or overpriced "officially" reviewed restaurants. Google search again. 6. Waze can help you navigate to the most secluded spots, even when the local signs become sparse. I could keep going... Actually, it's amazing how much it was Google and local clones of Uber. Yelp and Uber aren't as popular in the countries we visited as I expected. Honestly it was almost a little too easy, in some ways I didn't feel like I was in a foreign land... I felt at total ease in any neighborhood, because even if no taxis were around, just hail a ride. Rented a car multiple times and drove around because Waze was great everywhere if Google Maps broke down. Overall I LOVED that technology has made experiencing a foreign country almost trivially easy. Technology absolutely lowers many barriers to travel. The difference between this trip and my last trip was unbelievable.

zamalek 8y ago

Social media has just distilled this pointless behavior into the purest form possible. The behavior is just like the good old days, but the tools aren't (you'd have to invite people around to show off your photo album persona). There were (and still are) tribespeople that demonstrate this behavior with affluence: living an outwardly great life (by having cows, goats and what-have-you on public demonstration) without substance. Politicians and celebrities are no different. This exaggeration of this behavior has increased contrast. It is both easier to identify and self-identity people who aren't victim to this pattern. There were never the good old days, speaking in a formal logical manner. However, in the good new days it is easier to identify this bullshit and pry oneself away from it.

draw_down 8y ago

Comparing the past to the future is not necessarily a fallacy. If it were, everything would be constant for all time. I hope we can agree that’s not the case.

jhoechtl 8y ago

Social media makes self-portrayal certainly easier which makes it a worthwhile assumption that presentation effect is more rated than the experience. Guess with howany people the photo albumhas been shared compared to the social media post?

fipple 8y ago

It’s a matter of scale. The number of people like your Swedish couple was much lower than the number of people like them today. Film wasn’t free like Instagram is.