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> the boom in tourism in Japan over the last decade or so has made the beaten path… less than wonderful It's not just Japan. I've been travelling a lot for man

by teerak 4y ago

> the boom in tourism in Japan over the last decade or so has made the beaten path… less than wonderful It's not just Japan. I've been travelling a lot for many years, for work and pleasure, in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. In this time, the experience has become consistently much worse everywhere I go. I personally blame social media and camera phones for this. In the past, a place might be busy, but people were mostly enjoying the place which is all good. Now it's all about people taking the same photo 100 times with slightly different poses. Wannabe influencers using their boyfriends as personal photographers. Youtubers being loud and not caring whether you want to be in their video or not. The list goes on. I'm definitely jaded but between that, airport insanity, and recently covid measures, travelling has never sucked more than it does today.

jeromegv 4y ago
Looks like a lot of gatekeeping on your part. This was the good old days when you were travelling but now that other people travel, they are the worst because they take too many selfies. Negative impact of tourism have been documented for a while. There’s just more people traveling because flights got cheaper. But new travellers aren’t worse than you were, there’s just more of us traveling and it makes our impact more jarring.
- mc32 4y ago
  Doesn’t look like it. Poster differentiates tourists going in to enjoy places and people who fly in to use places as backdrops for something else. In other words the new tourists isn’t going in to enjoy a place for themselves but does it to amuse people elsewhere and couldn’t care much about actually taking in the places they visit.
  - bentlegen 4y ago
    He or she preferred a time when the world was less connected, and one’s ability to travel was dictated more by wealth, status, and education. Think of a time when to pull off a trip to Japan you had to use a travel agent ($) to assist you in even figuring out what hotel to go to and how to get there. You’d rely on print magazines and books to even first decide where to go, and those only had so many pages to print. Rick Steve can only write so much. Now thanks to the internet and other technology advances, travel is more accessible (Google Maps), cheaper (flight and hotel comparison tools), and more people are doing it. You also have entire nations that are traveling now in ways they didn’t 20 years ago (e.g. China). Yes, this all means more crowding and it is less pleasant. But social media is just one small input in all of this. The only way it returns to “how it was” is a return to a more exclusionary travel world. (I expect someone will make a comment about hostels and backpacking. I’m not refuting there were means of travel that were more affordable and accessible. But we’re talking about mass accessibility and availability across all markets.)
    - michaelt 4y ago
      There was a time when you didn't need a travel agent, but before the rise of social media and camera phones. Budget airlines like Easyjet and online travel agencies like Expedia were around a decade before the iPhone.
      - bentlegen 4y ago
        The raw availability of something existing in 1996 (when Expedia launched, a decade before the iPhone) does not mean it was accessible or widespread. How many homes had the internet in 1996? How expensive were the personal computers necessary to access those travel portals? I feel your example only emphasizes the thesis.
        mc32 4y ago
        By that time you could easily buy second hand PCs for a couple hundred or build your own pretty affordably —even on part-time going to college. For the most part you could use the PCs at work as well.
        bentlegen 4y ago
        https://www.statista.com/statistics/269387/revenue-of-expedia/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269387/revenue-of-expedi...
        michaelt 4y ago
        > The raw availability of something existing in 1996 (when Expedia launched, a decade before the iPhone) does not mean it was accessible or widespread. Sure, but the same is true for the iPhone. After all, iphone sales in 2007 were <2 million, not like today when they're >200 million. And that was for a product with no 3G and no app store. So I doubt tourist sites were clogged with Instagram influencers in 2007.
        bentlegen 4y ago
        I acknowledged that social media plays some part; read again. You tell me what’s more impactful. Literal data that says the number of international tourists growing 350% over 30 years (from 400 million global international arrivals in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2018), or some dataless notion that “actually it’s because of selfies”. You can’t build more ancient collisseums and temples. See also why aged whiskey prices have soared. https://ourworldindata.org/tourism https://ourworldindata.org/tourism
- tbcj 4y ago
  It’s not gatekeeping to be nostalgic about a moment in time when fewer people were preoccupied with performing for others. To perform in these public spaces necessarily restricts others own freedom in that space (like movement). Everyone is entitled to these public spaces, but there are those who will be bad actors and encroach on others to achieve their performance. There are way more now than ever in history because it is so easy to do (i.e, cameras used to be more cumbersome and expensive and harder to use). It is gatekeeping to say these people (influencers, youtubers) don’t deserve to be there too because they are doing that in this space. I don’t think that is what was happening though.
- toastercat 4y ago
  When I visited the Great Buddha in Kamakura a couple of years ago, there were dozens of foreign tourists laying down, sitting, or posing on or next to the statue in a way that our native Japanese friend remarked how disrespectful they were being. I don't think it would've been as bad before smartphones and influencer/YouTube culture, but I can't really say.
  - diceduckmonk 4y ago
    > YouTube culture As in YouTuber Logan Paul making a video of Aokigahara "suicide forest", among various other shenanigans in Japan for views? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Paul#2017%E2%80%932018:_Suicide_forest_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Paul#2017%E2%80%932018:_...
    - toastercat 4y ago
      Yes, unfortunately, there are loads of people who look to someone like Logan Paul as someone to emulate and attempt to film their own wacky antics for online popularity contests, at the expense of ordinary folk.
      - diceduckmonk 4y ago
        > online popularity contests It’s more than that. People think there is a financial payoff if they win the influencer game. And when they do make income, their taxable income is likely not going to these countries which they are profiting off of. I guess it’s a sort of negative externality.
        ghaff 4y ago
        I generally agree with the comment upthread that it's as much about accessibility as the influencer angle. Although I might not get the best rate (and it is around the holidays) I could basically book a week in Tokyo without any assistance a few days from now if I wanted to. That said, there is an influencer angle and probably some reasonable number of younger people who see a few people becoming YouTube or TikTok stars and thinking there's a chance they could become one of them.
therealdrag0 4y ago
You mostly complained about other travelers. But what about the rest of it? What about the beaten path is worse besides the travelers?
- huimang 4y ago
  You have to remember, phones = bad, instagram = bad, and taking pictures = very bad. Other people aren't enjoying their vacation precisely to the parent commenter's tastes, so they are bad people who do vacationing badly.

by teerak 4y ago

jeromegv 4y ago

Looks like a lot of gatekeeping on your part. This was the good old days when you were travelling but now that other people travel, they are the worst because they take too many selfies. Negative impact of tourism have been documented for a while. There’s just more people traveling because flights got cheaper. But new travellers aren’t worse than you were, there’s just more of us traveling and it makes our impact more jarring.

mc32 4y ago
Doesn’t look like it. Poster differentiates tourists going in to enjoy places and people who fly in to use places as backdrops for something else. In other words the new tourists isn’t going in to enjoy a place for themselves but does it to amuse people elsewhere and couldn’t care much about actually taking in the places they visit.
- bentlegen 4y ago
  He or she preferred a time when the world was less connected, and one’s ability to travel was dictated more by wealth, status, and education. Think of a time when to pull off a trip to Japan you had to use a travel agent ($) to assist you in even figuring out what hotel to go to and how to get there. You’d rely on print magazines and books to even first decide where to go, and those only had so many pages to print. Rick Steve can only write so much. Now thanks to the internet and other technology advances, travel is more accessible (Google Maps), cheaper (flight and hotel comparison tools), and more people are doing it. You also have entire nations that are traveling now in ways they didn’t 20 years ago (e.g. China). Yes, this all means more crowding and it is less pleasant. But social media is just one small input in all of this. The only way it returns to “how it was” is a return to a more exclusionary travel world. (I expect someone will make a comment about hostels and backpacking. I’m not refuting there were means of travel that were more affordable and accessible. But we’re talking about mass accessibility and availability across all markets.)
  - michaelt 4y ago
    There was a time when you didn't need a travel agent, but before the rise of social media and camera phones. Budget airlines like Easyjet and online travel agencies like Expedia were around a decade before the iPhone.
    - bentlegen 4y ago
      The raw availability of something existing in 1996 (when Expedia launched, a decade before the iPhone) does not mean it was accessible or widespread. How many homes had the internet in 1996? How expensive were the personal computers necessary to access those travel portals? I feel your example only emphasizes the thesis.
      - mc32 4y ago
        By that time you could easily buy second hand PCs for a couple hundred or build your own pretty affordably —even on part-time going to college. For the most part you could use the PCs at work as well.
        bentlegen 4y ago
        https://www.statista.com/statistics/269387/revenue-of-expedia/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269387/revenue-of-expedi...
      - michaelt 4y ago
        > The raw availability of something existing in 1996 (when Expedia launched, a decade before the iPhone) does not mean it was accessible or widespread. Sure, but the same is true for the iPhone. After all, iphone sales in 2007 were <2 million, not like today when they're >200 million. And that was for a product with no 3G and no app store. So I doubt tourist sites were clogged with Instagram influencers in 2007.
        bentlegen 4y ago
        I acknowledged that social media plays some part; read again. You tell me what’s more impactful. Literal data that says the number of international tourists growing 350% over 30 years (from 400 million global international arrivals in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2018), or some dataless notion that “actually it’s because of selfies”. You can’t build more ancient collisseums and temples. See also why aged whiskey prices have soared. https://ourworldindata.org/tourism https://ourworldindata.org/tourism
tbcj 4y ago
It’s not gatekeeping to be nostalgic about a moment in time when fewer people were preoccupied with performing for others. To perform in these public spaces necessarily restricts others own freedom in that space (like movement). Everyone is entitled to these public spaces, but there are those who will be bad actors and encroach on others to achieve their performance. There are way more now than ever in history because it is so easy to do (i.e, cameras used to be more cumbersome and expensive and harder to use). It is gatekeeping to say these people (influencers, youtubers) don’t deserve to be there too because they are doing that in this space. I don’t think that is what was happening though.
toastercat 4y ago
When I visited the Great Buddha in Kamakura a couple of years ago, there were dozens of foreign tourists laying down, sitting, or posing on or next to the statue in a way that our native Japanese friend remarked how disrespectful they were being. I don't think it would've been as bad before smartphones and influencer/YouTube culture, but I can't really say.
- diceduckmonk 4y ago
  > YouTube culture As in YouTuber Logan Paul making a video of Aokigahara "suicide forest", among various other shenanigans in Japan for views? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Paul#2017%E2%80%932018:_Suicide_forest_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_Paul#2017%E2%80%932018:_...
  - toastercat 4y ago
    Yes, unfortunately, there are loads of people who look to someone like Logan Paul as someone to emulate and attempt to film their own wacky antics for online popularity contests, at the expense of ordinary folk.
    - diceduckmonk 4y ago
      > online popularity contests It’s more than that. People think there is a financial payoff if they win the influencer game. And when they do make income, their taxable income is likely not going to these countries which they are profiting off of. I guess it’s a sort of negative externality.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        I generally agree with the comment upthread that it's as much about accessibility as the influencer angle. Although I might not get the best rate (and it is around the holidays) I could basically book a week in Tokyo without any assistance a few days from now if I wanted to. That said, there is an influencer angle and probably some reasonable number of younger people who see a few people becoming YouTube or TikTok stars and thinking there's a chance they could become one of them.

therealdrag0 4y ago

You mostly complained about other travelers. But what about the rest of it? What about the beaten path is worse besides the travelers?

huimang 4y ago
You have to remember, phones = bad, instagram = bad, and taking pictures = very bad. Other people aren't enjoying their vacation precisely to the parent commenter's tastes, so they are bad people who do vacationing badly.