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I have never been particularly fond of Bourdain, nor have I fully understood the widespread fascination with his jet-setting New York hipster persona. He playe

I have never been particularly fond of Bourdain, nor have I fully understood the widespread fascination with his jet-setting New York hipster persona. He played a significant role in popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans: the earnest declaration that "travel is my passion", followed by carefully curated excursions to economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures. The phenomenon is difficult to admire. It resembles a kind of cultural primitivism - an unintentional revival of archaic rituals in which consuming the body of the enemy was believed to confer insight, power, or spiritual essence. In this modern iteration, wealth functions as the enabling mechanism: privileged travelers fly abroad to ingest cuisines, aesthetics, and experiences, mistaking consumption for understanding and appetite for empathy. One returns, enriched - spiritually, one assumes - having eaten well.

zild3d 10mo ago
> economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures. There can certainly be a quite shallow "instagram" quality to some traveler's trips, but it's also clear an economically disadvantaged country benefits mutually from this, and if it wasn't they'd be restricting tourist visas, etc
- david-gpu 10mo ago
  > it's also clear an economically disadvantaged country benefits mutually from this, and if it wasn't they'd be restricting tourist visas, etc Countries are not a monolithic entity. The people in control of the flow of tourists are a tiny minority, and whatever incentives they have to open or close the borders do not reflect what the people who deal with tourists on a daily basis want.
  - landryraccoon 10mo ago
    It depends on the county of course, but in my experience service workers at many “touristy” countries seem to benefit directly from tourism. For example, some of the workers at resorts in Thailand went to college and studied Tourism, a major I didn’t even know existed, and their wages come directly from the tourist industry. What countries in particular are you thinking of where the locals are very unhappy to see more tourists? I’ve heard Japan might be in that category, and the United States certainly feels that way, but did you experience this yourself?
    - lurk2 10mo ago
      Hawaii, Barcelona, and some cities in Latin America like Medellín have had a few incidents to suggest that people are unhappy with tourists there. A city I have stayed in banned AirBnBs to address an affordability crisis. Tons of locals went wild reporting houses they expected to were circumventing the ban. I remember looking at the press release and finding that all of the AirBnBs in the city amounted to less than 2% of the city’s housing stock. From what I can gather, these sort of attitudes are an appropriation of reactionary xenophobia directed to an appropriate target in Barcelona, a cultural inferiority complex in Latin America (which receives virtually no tourists compared to all the expatriates they send to the developed world), and a legitimate existential crisis for the Hawaiians.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - lurk2 10mo ago
    > The people in control of the flow of tourists are a tiny minority The people ultimately in control of this policy are usually elected officials, so I’d (idealistically) say they have at least some incentive to make decisions that the general public wants. Economic benefits by themselves are just one metric by which we can evaluate desirability, but do you have any reason to suggest that existing policy towards tourism is contrary to the prevailing opinion among those who interact with tourists on a daily basis?
    - 10mo ago
lurk2 10mo ago
> He played a significant role in popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans: the earnest declaration that "travel is my passion", followed by carefully curated excursions to economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures. I only dislike these people if they blog about it. None of them are nearly as insightful as they think they are, and most of them aren’t self-aware enough to realize that this whole shtick hasn’t been “cool” since 2010. > mistaking consumption for understanding and appetite for empathy. This disparaging attitude towards tourists is in vogue among Europeans right now; there’s a group of anarchists in Barcelona that have spent the last year or two scrawling: “TOURISTS GO HOME, REFUGEES WELCOME” on the sides of buildings. The theory goes that tourists are a net negative to cities because they cause neighborhoods to gentrify and displace those who intend to actually live within the city. The money coming in is a negative because it causes the city to deploy resources intended to cater to tourists, the tourists fundamentally change the character of the neighborhood by their very presence (the cannibalism you are alluding to), the tourists are rude, the tourists look funny, etc. Disdain for tourists is just a socially-acceptable way for progressives to practice the xenophobia that is now in vogue among reactionaries. They can’t blame all of their problems on foreigners writ large like the reactionaries do, so they “punch up” at the only sort of foreigner that is likely to make a positive contribution to their country.
- kaashif 10mo ago
  I suppose the idea is that even if tourism brings in billions of euros, makes up 15% of the economy, and provides 150k jobs in a country where youth unemployment is rampant and jobs are hard to come by... No, actually, I find it impossible to make sense of that.
  - lurk2 10mo ago
    In my experience the majority of xenophobia is driven by a fear that one is not being afforded proper respect. Sometimes this fear is well-founded; half of the countries with citizens wealthy enough to engage in mass market travel (e.g. Germany, Israel, Russia, China, UK, etc.) have their own reputations for being Ugly Americans. Not every tourist is respectful, and even those who are polite may be disrespectful inadvertently. Casual xenophobia is endemic to most societies; it’s quite normal to distrust the unfamiliar, and it strikes me as being a natural topic of conversation, and one that does quite well when sensationalized by journalists. I think most cosmopolitan westerners have this idea that xenophobia is the exclusive purview of a racism that originated in Europe and is now resurging in the Anglosphere, but from what I have observed, most of the world is like this and probably always has been.
decimalenough 10mo ago
Your snark is misplaced to such an extent that I suspect you have not actually read his books. Bourdain is genuinely obsessed with food, and when Kitchen Confidential entirely unexpectedly became a megahit and shot him from borderline poverty to wealth and fame, he was genuinely delighted to be able to (I quote) "travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want." His admiration for (most) other cultures is genuine and many of his favorite destinations are also places that can hardly be called economically disadvantaged (Singapore, Japan, France, etc). > popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans So would it be preferable if they stayed at home, didn't share any of their wealth with less developed countries, and marinated in completely ignorant bliss of the world outside the USA instead?
- birdie2 10mo ago
  I think the point is that the attitude of enjoying rather than assimilating is not appreciated. There’s no equivalent for this feeling in the U.S. We had Japanese tourists in the late twentieth century that were known for taking pictures of everything, but they were respectful and were localized to tourist destinations. Migrants from Mexico and Central America that have moved here but haven’t assimilated are not the same either, as they moved here for opportunity and don’t have the time or resources to learn English, so it’s quite understandable that many stick to themselves. As an American that has travelled overseas years ago, I understand that others in the world could do without us visiting. They just want to have their normal day to day without an American speaking American English and commenting on things like an American and tipping wait staff, asking for ice, expecting things that aren’t provided, generally acting more entitled, etc. When I visited, I just didn’t fit in, even though I wanted to. I was taught only a little bit (over multiple years) of a few other languages in school, but primarily Spanish, without any real immersion, which was useless. I didn’t grow up traveling and interacting with people from other countries in Europe, and without that experience or ability to speak in the country’s language, I wasn’t prepared.
  - Angostura 10mo ago
    > As an American that has travelled overseas years ago, I understand that others in the world could do without us visiting. They just want to have their normal day to day without an American speaking American English and commenting on things like an American and tipping wait staff, asking for ice, expecting things that aren’t provided, generally acting more entitled, etc. It’s perfectly possible to visit and be aware of local sensibilities. Plenty of Americans manage it and are perfectly charming visitors. You don’t have to adopt all of culture’s behaviours to not be obnoxious
varjag 10mo ago
Come on, this is just contrarianism without substance. Or as we used to say in less pretentious times, "this thing is lame now".
- fancyfredbot 10mo ago
  Nah it's still kinda fun.
keiferski 10mo ago
Most of his rise to fame came from working in real kitchens, then exposing the underbelly of such places. He also really didn’t spent much or any (?) time in the kinds of expensive places you’d need to be obscenely wealthy to afford.
- tayo42 10mo ago
  Alot of his shows we're pretty doable finance wise for people to replicate. He did like 3 episodes about El bulli though
NoboruWataya 10mo ago
I do think a lot of what you are talking about can be traced back to Bourdain, but in fairness I don't think it was his intention, and indeed he was dead by the time it really took off. Instagram is at least as much to blame. A lot of it is people who like Bourdain's aesthetic and want to replicate it, but they don't know much about food, they've never worked in hospitality in their life and they're afraid to go to the sketchier parts of town. Like with so many things travel- and tourist-related, it's okay for one person to do it and tell us about it, but when a million people all try to do the same thing it causes problems.
- antonymoose 10mo ago
  > A lot of it is people who like Bourdain's aesthetic and want to replicate it, but they don't know much about food, they've never worked in hospitality in their life and they're afraid to go to the sketchier parts of town. I can kind of relate to the GP, I went back and rewatched a lot of Bourdain’s shows recently and I felt a kind of revulsion I hadn’t previously. I don’t think it’s necessarily fairly aimed at Bourdain himself but at the kind of person that has since latched onto his vibe and meme’d it to death on social media. Yet another iteration of the mall goth in a Misfits t-shirt that doesn’t know who Glenn Danzig is, only this time Bourdain is a very clear icon behind the style to cringe at in hindsight.
naian 10mo ago
[flagged]
- _zagj 10mo ago
  He was a product of his era and environment. Frankly, finding a boomer Jew like him, who grew up in NYC in the 50s and 60s, who doesn't harbor a significant degree of suspicion and animus (along with covert envy) towards white people (and WASPs in particular), is the exception, not the norm, and he was especially vocal about it because he had a "tryhard" mentality and a desire to be seen as a radical, even as his wealth compounded.
fancyfredbot 10mo ago
I'd like to congratulate you on reaching such a level of empathy and understanding that not only do you dislike Bourdain, you find yourself unable to understand why anyone would think differently! There's a point worth making about poverty tourism here but I'm not sure the tourist should be our major concern.
_zagj 10mo ago
One of his most famous quips was: > Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride. Then he died alone, in a hotel room in France, supposedly by his own hand, with the belt of his silk bathrobe as the implement--despite being a heroin addict most of his life and thus ever cognizant of the possibility of a fatal overdose, and having friends, like Mark Lanegan, who died (painlessly) from a fatal overdose. But no, instead of OD'ing, he supposedly chose to "unalive" himself with his bathrobe. And he left no note. And he tweeted this out a month earlier: https://x.com/Bourdain/status/998954845146177536 https://x.com/Bourdain/status/998954845146177536
bonesss 10mo ago
Bourdain didn’t initiate the cultural practice of going on safari and congratulating one’s self. The Michelin guide was founded in 1900. Bourdains travels also weren’t the curated tourist jaunts you’re describing. They often showing the grim and lesser known sides of conflicts and situations while presenting genuine local cuisines. It’s what the unconcerned tourist aspire to, not what they do.

zild3d 10mo ago

> economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures. There can certainly be a quite shallow "instagram" quality to some traveler's trips, but it's also clear an economically disadvantaged country benefits mutually from this, and if it wasn't they'd be restricting tourist visas, etc

david-gpu 10mo ago
> it's also clear an economically disadvantaged country benefits mutually from this, and if it wasn't they'd be restricting tourist visas, etc Countries are not a monolithic entity. The people in control of the flow of tourists are a tiny minority, and whatever incentives they have to open or close the borders do not reflect what the people who deal with tourists on a daily basis want.
- landryraccoon 10mo ago
  It depends on the county of course, but in my experience service workers at many “touristy” countries seem to benefit directly from tourism. For example, some of the workers at resorts in Thailand went to college and studied Tourism, a major I didn’t even know existed, and their wages come directly from the tourist industry. What countries in particular are you thinking of where the locals are very unhappy to see more tourists? I’ve heard Japan might be in that category, and the United States certainly feels that way, but did you experience this yourself?
  - lurk2 10mo ago
    Hawaii, Barcelona, and some cities in Latin America like Medellín have had a few incidents to suggest that people are unhappy with tourists there. A city I have stayed in banned AirBnBs to address an affordability crisis. Tons of locals went wild reporting houses they expected to were circumventing the ban. I remember looking at the press release and finding that all of the AirBnBs in the city amounted to less than 2% of the city’s housing stock. From what I can gather, these sort of attitudes are an appropriation of reactionary xenophobia directed to an appropriate target in Barcelona, a cultural inferiority complex in Latin America (which receives virtually no tourists compared to all the expatriates they send to the developed world), and a legitimate existential crisis for the Hawaiians.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- lurk2 10mo ago
  > The people in control of the flow of tourists are a tiny minority The people ultimately in control of this policy are usually elected officials, so I’d (idealistically) say they have at least some incentive to make decisions that the general public wants. Economic benefits by themselves are just one metric by which we can evaluate desirability, but do you have any reason to suggest that existing policy towards tourism is contrary to the prevailing opinion among those who interact with tourists on a daily basis?
  - 10mo ago

lurk2 10mo ago

> He played a significant role in popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans: the earnest declaration that "travel is my passion", followed by carefully curated excursions to economically disadvantaged countries, enthusiastic consumption of the local cuisine, and a subsequent return home marked by self-congratulatory reflections on how much they have supposedly "learned" about other cultures. I only dislike these people if they blog about it. None of them are nearly as insightful as they think they are, and most of them aren’t self-aware enough to realize that this whole shtick hasn’t been “cool” since 2010. > mistaking consumption for understanding and appetite for empathy. This disparaging attitude towards tourists is in vogue among Europeans right now; there’s a group of anarchists in Barcelona that have spent the last year or two scrawling: “TOURISTS GO HOME, REFUGEES WELCOME” on the sides of buildings. The theory goes that tourists are a net negative to cities because they cause neighborhoods to gentrify and displace those who intend to actually live within the city. The money coming in is a negative because it causes the city to deploy resources intended to cater to tourists, the tourists fundamentally change the character of the neighborhood by their very presence (the cannibalism you are alluding to), the tourists are rude, the tourists look funny, etc. Disdain for tourists is just a socially-acceptable way for progressives to practice the xenophobia that is now in vogue among reactionaries. They can’t blame all of their problems on foreigners writ large like the reactionaries do, so they “punch up” at the only sort of foreigner that is likely to make a positive contribution to their country.

kaashif 10mo ago
I suppose the idea is that even if tourism brings in billions of euros, makes up 15% of the economy, and provides 150k jobs in a country where youth unemployment is rampant and jobs are hard to come by... No, actually, I find it impossible to make sense of that.
- lurk2 10mo ago
  In my experience the majority of xenophobia is driven by a fear that one is not being afforded proper respect. Sometimes this fear is well-founded; half of the countries with citizens wealthy enough to engage in mass market travel (e.g. Germany, Israel, Russia, China, UK, etc.) have their own reputations for being Ugly Americans. Not every tourist is respectful, and even those who are polite may be disrespectful inadvertently. Casual xenophobia is endemic to most societies; it’s quite normal to distrust the unfamiliar, and it strikes me as being a natural topic of conversation, and one that does quite well when sensationalized by journalists. I think most cosmopolitan westerners have this idea that xenophobia is the exclusive purview of a racism that originated in Europe and is now resurging in the Anglosphere, but from what I have observed, most of the world is like this and probably always has been.

decimalenough 10mo ago

Your snark is misplaced to such an extent that I suspect you have not actually read his books. Bourdain is genuinely obsessed with food, and when Kitchen Confidential entirely unexpectedly became a megahit and shot him from borderline poverty to wealth and fame, he was genuinely delighted to be able to (I quote) "travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want." His admiration for (most) other cultures is genuine and many of his favorite destinations are also places that can hardly be called economically disadvantaged (Singapore, Japan, France, etc). > popularizing a now-familiar posture among affluent Americans So would it be preferable if they stayed at home, didn't share any of their wealth with less developed countries, and marinated in completely ignorant bliss of the world outside the USA instead?

birdie2 10mo ago
I think the point is that the attitude of enjoying rather than assimilating is not appreciated. There’s no equivalent for this feeling in the U.S. We had Japanese tourists in the late twentieth century that were known for taking pictures of everything, but they were respectful and were localized to tourist destinations. Migrants from Mexico and Central America that have moved here but haven’t assimilated are not the same either, as they moved here for opportunity and don’t have the time or resources to learn English, so it’s quite understandable that many stick to themselves. As an American that has travelled overseas years ago, I understand that others in the world could do without us visiting. They just want to have their normal day to day without an American speaking American English and commenting on things like an American and tipping wait staff, asking for ice, expecting things that aren’t provided, generally acting more entitled, etc. When I visited, I just didn’t fit in, even though I wanted to. I was taught only a little bit (over multiple years) of a few other languages in school, but primarily Spanish, without any real immersion, which was useless. I didn’t grow up traveling and interacting with people from other countries in Europe, and without that experience or ability to speak in the country’s language, I wasn’t prepared.
- Angostura 10mo ago
  > As an American that has travelled overseas years ago, I understand that others in the world could do without us visiting. They just want to have their normal day to day without an American speaking American English and commenting on things like an American and tipping wait staff, asking for ice, expecting things that aren’t provided, generally acting more entitled, etc. It’s perfectly possible to visit and be aware of local sensibilities. Plenty of Americans manage it and are perfectly charming visitors. You don’t have to adopt all of culture’s behaviours to not be obnoxious

varjag 10mo ago

Come on, this is just contrarianism without substance. Or as we used to say in less pretentious times, "this thing is lame now".

fancyfredbot 10mo ago
Nah it's still kinda fun.

keiferski 10mo ago

Most of his rise to fame came from working in real kitchens, then exposing the underbelly of such places. He also really didn’t spent much or any (?) time in the kinds of expensive places you’d need to be obscenely wealthy to afford.

tayo42 10mo ago
Alot of his shows we're pretty doable finance wise for people to replicate. He did like 3 episodes about El bulli though

NoboruWataya 10mo ago

I do think a lot of what you are talking about can be traced back to Bourdain, but in fairness I don't think it was his intention, and indeed he was dead by the time it really took off. Instagram is at least as much to blame. A lot of it is people who like Bourdain's aesthetic and want to replicate it, but they don't know much about food, they've never worked in hospitality in their life and they're afraid to go to the sketchier parts of town. Like with so many things travel- and tourist-related, it's okay for one person to do it and tell us about it, but when a million people all try to do the same thing it causes problems.

antonymoose 10mo ago
> A lot of it is people who like Bourdain's aesthetic and want to replicate it, but they don't know much about food, they've never worked in hospitality in their life and they're afraid to go to the sketchier parts of town. I can kind of relate to the GP, I went back and rewatched a lot of Bourdain’s shows recently and I felt a kind of revulsion I hadn’t previously. I don’t think it’s necessarily fairly aimed at Bourdain himself but at the kind of person that has since latched onto his vibe and meme’d it to death on social media. Yet another iteration of the mall goth in a Misfits t-shirt that doesn’t know who Glenn Danzig is, only this time Bourdain is a very clear icon behind the style to cringe at in hindsight.

naian 10mo ago

[flagged]

_zagj 10mo ago
He was a product of his era and environment. Frankly, finding a boomer Jew like him, who grew up in NYC in the 50s and 60s, who doesn't harbor a significant degree of suspicion and animus (along with covert envy) towards white people (and WASPs in particular), is the exception, not the norm, and he was especially vocal about it because he had a "tryhard" mentality and a desire to be seen as a radical, even as his wealth compounded.

fancyfredbot 10mo ago

I'd like to congratulate you on reaching such a level of empathy and understanding that not only do you dislike Bourdain, you find yourself unable to understand why anyone would think differently! There's a point worth making about poverty tourism here but I'm not sure the tourist should be our major concern.

_zagj 10mo ago

One of his most famous quips was: > Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride. Then he died alone, in a hotel room in France, supposedly by his own hand, with the belt of his silk bathrobe as the implement--despite being a heroin addict most of his life and thus ever cognizant of the possibility of a fatal overdose, and having friends, like Mark Lanegan, who died (painlessly) from a fatal overdose. But no, instead of OD'ing, he supposedly chose to "unalive" himself with his bathrobe. And he left no note. And he tweeted this out a month earlier: https://x.com/Bourdain/status/998954845146177536 https://x.com/Bourdain/status/998954845146177536

bonesss 10mo ago

Bourdain didn’t initiate the cultural practice of going on safari and congratulating one’s self. The Michelin guide was founded in 1900. Bourdains travels also weren’t the curated tourist jaunts you’re describing. They often showing the grim and lesser known sides of conflicts and situations while presenting genuine local cuisines. It’s what the unconcerned tourist aspire to, not what they do.