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Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". It is for some a way to portray that you're not materialistic, but still dunk on all the po

Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". It is for some a way to portray that you're not materialistic, but still dunk on all the poors and other outgroup members while blowing thousands of dollars on what is ultimately a luxury. The sub-category of "travel as wasteful mating signal & ritual" deserves another novel on top of this. It didn't help that for several years (though it has thankfully tapered off) there was a constant stream of "lifestyle" articles proclaiming that mass tourism "experiences" to capture some photo-totem were the scientifically confirmed path to happiness.

siphon22 7y ago
It's a meme to make fun of Americans in "flyover countries" for not having passports. People who have only lived in the place they were born are made fun of for not being traveled, and therefore not cultured. Is it a surprise then that more and more people want to travel in order to signal that they aren't an uncultured, passport-less hillbilly? The key thing to note here is that someone who does not have any regard for their environment and other people will be the same whether they're in Kansas or in Paris. Often, they'll be even worse, since it's not home that they're trashing up.
- squirrelicus 7y ago
  Flyover suburbanite here: I never understood travel culture, but I've seen it contribute to depression in my friends and neighbors because they somehow have been convinced that a meaningful life requires global travel, but find it difficult with mortgages and children. I view travel culture as very toxic as a result. "I just want to see the world" I hear, a yearning for an experience that, when pursued, might temporarily stifle midlife crises but ruins marriages just as often. I feel so deeply sad for people who don't realize that everything they need is in front of them.
  - siphon22 7y ago
    You are right. People typically won't know how good they have it until they are separated from it, either temporarily or permanently.
  - modernthumb 7y ago
    I can see your point but as a passportless 21 year old I can't help but feel I'm missing out on something. I've never really experienced anything outside of the US. It's such an exciting prospect to visit somewhere exotic that looks nothing like the place I've always known, has completely different food, language, animals. Maybe the joy is temporary but it's still joy and I hope if I ever get the chance to travel it's an experience that I'll be able to look back fondly on, or worst case use the knowledge to reflect and come to a conclusion such as yourself.
    - vinceguidry 7y ago
      Don't let anyone or anything stop you from traveling. I once dropped everything and took a 2 month long trip to Colombia. I wanted somewhere close, out of the country, non-Anglo, not in the Caribbean or Central America, which I judged to be too dangerous / touristy at the time. Colombia was safe and interesting. I took Spanish classes and bounced around different cities for a few months. In the beginning it was about exploration and at the end it was about discovering my priorities in life. The genesis of the trip came about when I started talking to someone at a language school about taking language classes. He started asking me why, then said, "just go there. You'll never get a better chance than when you're young." He was 100% right.
    - kd5bjo 7y ago
      As someone who has travelled some, the tragedy of the modern tourism industry is that it has homogenized so many places that it’s hard to tell them apart. I first noticed it when I took a Caribbean cruise a decade ago. The port areas are dominated by tourist culture instead of local culture, and you’re hard-pressed to tell one from another. Here in Iceland(1), shops downtown are regularly being replaced by copies of the same gift shop you’ll find everywhere in the world, and there is active discussion about coming up with “tourist-friendly” English names for landmarks because the Icelandic ones that have been used for hundreds of years aren’t enticing enough. The tourism industry has figured out how to give people a good show, but it’s ultimately a shallow experience. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing: like everything else, travel needs welcoming, entry-level experiences. The trouble comes when it gets so prevalent that it starts to warp and destroy the local culture in order to sell more spectacle. (1) Full disclosure: I first came here as a tourist, and would never have moved here without that initial exposure, so I can’t completely comdemn the tourism industry.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > I never understood travel culture, but I've seen it contribute to depression in my friends and neighbors because they somehow have been convinced that a meaningful life requires global travel ... I view travel culture as very toxic Sure, traveling just to achieve certain bragging rights is superficial and silly, but that doesn't mean travel itself isn't valuable. Similarly, reading books just to say you've read the most or the hardest is silly, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read. Traveling allows you to viscerally see how people live and value things differently from you. There is much to be gained from it if you do it for the right reasons.
    - aikinai 7y ago
      Very very few people “viscerally see how people live and value things differently” when they travel. And they can’t without an order of magnitude more time and money to spend on that travel. Actually living in a different place will certainly do that, but “travel” almost never will.
      - speedplane 7y ago
        > Very very few people “viscerally see how people live and value things differently” when they travel. ... Actually living in a different place will certainly do that, but “travel” almost never will. Take one extreme case: a typical college grad doing a euro-trip to 10 countries in 14 days. They will certainly not be able to experience those cultures deeply, but compare that person to someone who never went to Europe, never saw their respect for the past, train travel, food cultures, and the high value they place on vacation. Even consider those young travelers that mostly stay within the confines of their hostel and their group activities, or in a national bar where things appear familiar and comfortable: they are still better off than if they just stayed home and had not seen any of it. Certainly, 10 days of travel is not much, but it's a lot more than 0 days. For some, those 10 days may be truly meaningful and eye-opening, for others, a familiar party with different scenery. Traveling is generally uncomfortable and different, and the experience can add something to even the most shallow traveler. (caveat: It happens, although uncommon, that travel can be a detriment. Particularly, when someone goes to a country that is poorer than theirs, and attributes their lack of development to some genetic or racist defect. While this is possible, I do think it's exceedingly rare. When one sees how other people live up close, it's natural to look for the patterns and similarities rather than come up with differences.)
- guelo 7y ago
  Why are so many of you people in flyover country always feeling so agrieved about everything? This has nothing to do with putting you down. A bunch of u s urbanites are also annoyed by this phenomena.
  - siphon22 7y ago
    I'm from California ;). I'm just saying, urbanites have no one to blame but themselves for the influx of shitty, uncivilized tourists everywhere. After making fun of people for not being traveled and not having a passport, did you really not expect more and more people wanting to travel so that they don't get made fun of or because they really fell for the thought that traveling would make them a better person?
    - guelo 7y ago
      Ok but there's plenty of broke people or just uninterested in traveling in the big cities.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into regional flamewar.
paganel 7y ago
> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". The German film-critic Siegfried Kracauer wrote a very interesting essay against tourism as a mass phenomenon in the 1930s or so, just as the phenomenon was about to be born. Really interesting piece, you can find it in an essays book called "The Mass Ornament", and the book itself can be read in here [1] (warning, big PDF) [1] https://monoskop.org/images/0/0f/Kracauer_Siegfried_The_Mass_Ornament_Weimar_Essays.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/0/0f/Kracauer_Siegfried_The_Mass...
arvinsim 7y ago
> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". It is for some a way to portray that you're not materialistic, but still dunk on all the poors and other outgroup members while blowing thousands of dollars on what is ultimately a luxury. The sub-category of "travel as wasteful mating signal & ritual" deserves another novel on top of this. We are definitely getting to the point where since everyone is doing it, it's not special anymore. Much like a bachelor's degree used to be something sought by companies. But now, they are considered the baseline.
J-dawg 7y ago
Absolutely. It seems to have become popular to value "experiences over things" as if that's somehow virtuous and makes you better than materialistic people who just want to accumulate stuff. It's really just another branch of the same kind of materialism. The mating signal thing is crazy too. I recently dabbled in dating apps (hopefully, never again). It seems virtually every woman on there is obsessed with travel (has "wanderlust", or wants to visit "30 countries before 30", or "couldn't live without my passport", along with a bunch of photos of them posing in front of familiar stock-photo tourist sites). It's almost always like this: an obsession with travel itself, rather than a passion for a particular culture or region or language or activity that requires travel. (Which might not really be any better, but I'd identify with it a lot more easily). What's driving this? Is it covert (or subconscious) signalling that they want a mate with the resources to fund this lifestyle? Or simply a feeling that this is expected of them to seem fun and interesting? As you said, not nearly enough has been written. I wish a great writer with the requisite knowledge of culture and psychology would dive into this.
- silveroriole 7y ago
  They definitely think it automatically makes them fun/interesting, but it also functions as a way to automatically become an expert on something. I like to watch nature documentaries. Someone I knew started bothering me about how I should travel like them and see REAL giraffes, lions etc rather than just watching. Did they know anything about the animals themselves? No, but they’d SEEN them, which they felt made them an authority. Same with the dullards on dating sites who put up photos with impoverished children - it’s a nice way to signal that you tooootally know and care about such things without actually having to do any boring learning. And everyone who travels will jump at the chance to lecture you interminably about “authentic” food and drink...
  - collyw 7y ago
    Kind of like how people criticize them on internet forums to show how much better they are than that.....
- nkrisc 7y ago
notyourday 7y ago
> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". What are you talking about? Travel is status seeking and status displaying. It showed up after WWII. "I travel" is a polite way of saying "I am rich enough to travel". "I like going to places, seeing new things, meeting the locals and blah blah blah" is a polite way of saying "I'm rich enough to be able to take off work time for going to new places, seeing seeings, meeting the locals and blaj blah blah"
- word-reader 7y ago
  This might be frequently true of travel qua travel, but people also go places for other reasons, like business, meeting & having fun with friends, specific activities that can't be done at home, or just relaxation sans broadcasting it to all their peers and the world.

siphon22 7y ago

It's a meme to make fun of Americans in "flyover countries" for not having passports. People who have only lived in the place they were born are made fun of for not being traveled, and therefore not cultured. Is it a surprise then that more and more people want to travel in order to signal that they aren't an uncultured, passport-less hillbilly? The key thing to note here is that someone who does not have any regard for their environment and other people will be the same whether they're in Kansas or in Paris. Often, they'll be even worse, since it's not home that they're trashing up.

squirrelicus 7y ago
Flyover suburbanite here: I never understood travel culture, but I've seen it contribute to depression in my friends and neighbors because they somehow have been convinced that a meaningful life requires global travel, but find it difficult with mortgages and children. I view travel culture as very toxic as a result. "I just want to see the world" I hear, a yearning for an experience that, when pursued, might temporarily stifle midlife crises but ruins marriages just as often. I feel so deeply sad for people who don't realize that everything they need is in front of them.
- siphon22 7y ago
  You are right. People typically won't know how good they have it until they are separated from it, either temporarily or permanently.
- modernthumb 7y ago
  I can see your point but as a passportless 21 year old I can't help but feel I'm missing out on something. I've never really experienced anything outside of the US. It's such an exciting prospect to visit somewhere exotic that looks nothing like the place I've always known, has completely different food, language, animals. Maybe the joy is temporary but it's still joy and I hope if I ever get the chance to travel it's an experience that I'll be able to look back fondly on, or worst case use the knowledge to reflect and come to a conclusion such as yourself.
  - vinceguidry 7y ago
    Don't let anyone or anything stop you from traveling. I once dropped everything and took a 2 month long trip to Colombia. I wanted somewhere close, out of the country, non-Anglo, not in the Caribbean or Central America, which I judged to be too dangerous / touristy at the time. Colombia was safe and interesting. I took Spanish classes and bounced around different cities for a few months. In the beginning it was about exploration and at the end it was about discovering my priorities in life. The genesis of the trip came about when I started talking to someone at a language school about taking language classes. He started asking me why, then said, "just go there. You'll never get a better chance than when you're young." He was 100% right.
  - kd5bjo 7y ago
    As someone who has travelled some, the tragedy of the modern tourism industry is that it has homogenized so many places that it’s hard to tell them apart. I first noticed it when I took a Caribbean cruise a decade ago. The port areas are dominated by tourist culture instead of local culture, and you’re hard-pressed to tell one from another. Here in Iceland(1), shops downtown are regularly being replaced by copies of the same gift shop you’ll find everywhere in the world, and there is active discussion about coming up with “tourist-friendly” English names for landmarks because the Icelandic ones that have been used for hundreds of years aren’t enticing enough. The tourism industry has figured out how to give people a good show, but it’s ultimately a shallow experience. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing: like everything else, travel needs welcoming, entry-level experiences. The trouble comes when it gets so prevalent that it starts to warp and destroy the local culture in order to sell more spectacle. (1) Full disclosure: I first came here as a tourist, and would never have moved here without that initial exposure, so I can’t completely comdemn the tourism industry.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > I never understood travel culture, but I've seen it contribute to depression in my friends and neighbors because they somehow have been convinced that a meaningful life requires global travel ... I view travel culture as very toxic Sure, traveling just to achieve certain bragging rights is superficial and silly, but that doesn't mean travel itself isn't valuable. Similarly, reading books just to say you've read the most or the hardest is silly, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read. Traveling allows you to viscerally see how people live and value things differently from you. There is much to be gained from it if you do it for the right reasons.
  - aikinai 7y ago
    Very very few people “viscerally see how people live and value things differently” when they travel. And they can’t without an order of magnitude more time and money to spend on that travel. Actually living in a different place will certainly do that, but “travel” almost never will.
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > Very very few people “viscerally see how people live and value things differently” when they travel. ... Actually living in a different place will certainly do that, but “travel” almost never will. Take one extreme case: a typical college grad doing a euro-trip to 10 countries in 14 days. They will certainly not be able to experience those cultures deeply, but compare that person to someone who never went to Europe, never saw their respect for the past, train travel, food cultures, and the high value they place on vacation. Even consider those young travelers that mostly stay within the confines of their hostel and their group activities, or in a national bar where things appear familiar and comfortable: they are still better off than if they just stayed home and had not seen any of it. Certainly, 10 days of travel is not much, but it's a lot more than 0 days. For some, those 10 days may be truly meaningful and eye-opening, for others, a familiar party with different scenery. Traveling is generally uncomfortable and different, and the experience can add something to even the most shallow traveler. (caveat: It happens, although uncommon, that travel can be a detriment. Particularly, when someone goes to a country that is poorer than theirs, and attributes their lack of development to some genetic or racist defect. While this is possible, I do think it's exceedingly rare. When one sees how other people live up close, it's natural to look for the patterns and similarities rather than come up with differences.)
guelo 7y ago
Why are so many of you people in flyover country always feeling so agrieved about everything? This has nothing to do with putting you down. A bunch of u s urbanites are also annoyed by this phenomena.
- siphon22 7y ago
  I'm from California ;). I'm just saying, urbanites have no one to blame but themselves for the influx of shitty, uncivilized tourists everywhere. After making fun of people for not being traveled and not having a passport, did you really not expect more and more people wanting to travel so that they don't get made fun of or because they really fell for the thought that traveling would make them a better person?
  - guelo 7y ago
    Ok but there's plenty of broke people or just uninterested in traveling in the big cities.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into regional flamewar.

paganel 7y ago

> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". The German film-critic Siegfried Kracauer wrote a very interesting essay against tourism as a mass phenomenon in the 1930s or so, just as the phenomenon was about to be born. Really interesting piece, you can find it in an essays book called "The Mass Ornament", and the book itself can be read in here [1] (warning, big PDF) [1] https://monoskop.org/images/0/0f/Kracauer_Siegfried_The_Mass_Ornament_Weimar_Essays.pdf https://monoskop.org/images/0/0f/Kracauer_Siegfried_The_Mass...

arvinsim 7y ago

> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". It is for some a way to portray that you're not materialistic, but still dunk on all the poors and other outgroup members while blowing thousands of dollars on what is ultimately a luxury. The sub-category of "travel as wasteful mating signal & ritual" deserves another novel on top of this. We are definitely getting to the point where since everyone is doing it, it's not special anymore. Much like a bachelor's degree used to be something sought by companies. But now, they are considered the baseline.

J-dawg 7y ago

Absolutely. It seems to have become popular to value "experiences over things" as if that's somehow virtuous and makes you better than materialistic people who just want to accumulate stuff. It's really just another branch of the same kind of materialism. The mating signal thing is crazy too. I recently dabbled in dating apps (hopefully, never again). It seems virtually every woman on there is obsessed with travel (has "wanderlust", or wants to visit "30 countries before 30", or "couldn't live without my passport", along with a bunch of photos of them posing in front of familiar stock-photo tourist sites). It's almost always like this: an obsession with travel itself, rather than a passion for a particular culture or region or language or activity that requires travel. (Which might not really be any better, but I'd identify with it a lot more easily). What's driving this? Is it covert (or subconscious) signalling that they want a mate with the resources to fund this lifestyle? Or simply a feeling that this is expected of them to seem fun and interesting? As you said, not nearly enough has been written. I wish a great writer with the requisite knowledge of culture and psychology would dive into this.

silveroriole 7y ago
They definitely think it automatically makes them fun/interesting, but it also functions as a way to automatically become an expert on something. I like to watch nature documentaries. Someone I knew started bothering me about how I should travel like them and see REAL giraffes, lions etc rather than just watching. Did they know anything about the animals themselves? No, but they’d SEEN them, which they felt made them an authority. Same with the dullards on dating sites who put up photos with impoverished children - it’s a nice way to signal that you tooootally know and care about such things without actually having to do any boring learning. And everyone who travels will jump at the chance to lecture you interminably about “authentic” food and drink...
- collyw 7y ago
  Kind of like how people criticize them on internet forums to show how much better they are than that.....
nkrisc 7y ago

notyourday 7y ago

> Not nearly enough has been written about "travel as status-seeking". What are you talking about? Travel is status seeking and status displaying. It showed up after WWII. "I travel" is a polite way of saying "I am rich enough to travel". "I like going to places, seeing new things, meeting the locals and blah blah blah" is a polite way of saying "I'm rich enough to be able to take off work time for going to new places, seeing seeings, meeting the locals and blaj blah blah"

word-reader 7y ago
This might be frequently true of travel qua travel, but people also go places for other reasons, like business, meeting & having fun with friends, specific activities that can't be done at home, or just relaxation sans broadcasting it to all their peers and the world.