As a culture starts to produce wealth for it's middle class, it's inevitable that they go out and have a look at the world.. it's as natural as any curiosity. It's also natural that the world, especially the tourism workers of the world, pick up on their unique behaviors and make fun of it.... When I was a kid, it was the Japanese, and we loved how they acted so polite, amazed, and pointed a camera, if not two, at absolutely everything! It was a joke in the city I grew up in that you had to watch out for them otherwise you would run them over because they were so stunned they would be oblivious to their surroundings.. it was hard not to like them, it was hard not to make fun of them... Americans had their era.. it's part of where the nickname Ugly Americans came from... we had a heyday, and our middle class suddenly wanted to see Paris and all the other stuff we had heard about, read about, and seen at the pictures and on the Television... Paris didn't appreciate it, although of course they took our money...
This is not to be confused with great migrations for work, like the Polish to England, the Moldavian to anywhere, The Filipinos to the Middle East, and the Mexicans to the US.. that's a whole other thing.. and I am not talking about places where people go for second homes, like the English to Spain, Midwesterners to the west coast of Florida, or Italians to Croatia. I'm talking about what language the guy complaining at the front desk is most likely to be speaking right now.. The latest are the Chinese, and they re crating quite a stir. There are 23 million Chinese a year visiting Hong Kong alone, and there is even a trend to have their kids there for legal reasons... the Hong Kongers have picked up on it and even have a funny nickname for the Chinese guys who recently made a lot of money and dress head to toe in gaudy designer fashions ( if you bump into one, you will never forget it.. they look like all the colors of the rainbow).. Hoe Hoes... I remember when the Russians were doing the same things just 10 or 20 years ago.. taking over France and buying everything that wasn't tied down.
Here is a listing of tourist crushes and their times..
The English The Victorian Era
The Ugly Americans 50's 60's (and to present, but we have cleaned up our rep a bit since the bad old days..
The Japanese 1980's
The Argentines prior to 1998
The Koreans 90's and 00's
The Taiwanese 90's and 00's
The Russians mid 90's
The Chinese 2012 to present
The Indians 2016-?
Observations on Travel: A Blog about Problems, Politics, People, Sociology, and Opportunity in Travel
Friday, February 14
The Ghettoization of Leisure, creation of a Parasite Class, and why amazing places Jump the Shark
Follow if you will the milestones of a nice place turning into a tourist shit hole..
Modern people today often live isolated lives of quiet desperation, as the saying goes... they work towards unobtainable goals of wealth, prosperity and family achievement. The majority of modern educated people in the early 21st century live in places that are convenient to the aggregation of wealth, not aesthetic pleasure, and if aesthetic pleasure is there, it's often seen more as a calculation of home value than something to actually enjoy. They might work to purchase Aesthetics, the assumption being that it must be earned, but even if they choose a place to live they weren't born, it is usually a place where they can utilize their skills to maximize their income or some notion of a balanced lifestyle of career and pleasure that is still based on some unexamined concepts of pleasure. Anyhow, they live in a place they don't usually enjoy completely they don't find relaxing because of the pace of life they set, or because it was never home in the first place, or because they are taught that leaving places of comfort makes you sophisticated or broadens you, or because they are taught to assume that where they are isn't as good as where they could be, so they begin to resent it, and it usually has a difficult winter as most more economically and culturally sophisticated places do. In other words, there is some climate challenge that has led people to band together in cooperation, that made the culture sophisticated and gave it buying power, but it doesn't necessarily have recreational charm, or charm that they would admit, because it's sophisticated to take where you live for granted, to underestimate it (the French drive this insecurity into us! it's no Paris... I'll be honest with you.. Paris sucks.. stay home and find what's nice there..). To find that charm, they work had to acquire capitol to reward themselves for being good, like a pat on the back for your first potty trained dump, Freud would say, to use the wealth of transportation options available to them to travel to places that are considered to be a relief from their self imposed life of aggregating wealth..
This is where our victim steps in.. the poor unspoiled place with some unique attribute that appeals to these bedraggled consumers who need simple reasoning to penetrate their marketing addled minds. It usually involves a change in weather, a pleasurable activity, like boating, fishing, sight seeing or sitting n the beach, and a destination that solicits them with marketing, some geographic uniqueness, and infrastructure to make them feel at home, even when they are trying to escape home... this is where the idiocy really starts.
The place has some redeeming quality that explorers find charming.. a ruin, a beach, a superlative mountain or lake... the tip of a peninsula that promises remoteness, escape, a nice harbor... The explorers are usually canny people used to going places off the beaten track, and they have low commitment to their place of origin.. the might come for a job, just exploring, some military deployment or charity work, or maybe they are a pilot or someone else who has a chance to see things from a unique perspective to spot value in places.
The explorer makes a commitment to a place, and becomes like the first molecule in a long chain of destruction.. the dust in a raindrop, sorry to say... They move in, and almost inevitably, they want to change something to make life more convenient like where they live.. they make a hotel, or just a hostel or guest house.. they become a leader and a point of entry for reliable information for other foreigners seeking to 'know what's going on' and not be ripped off, not be alone, and not get sick, even though they came here to get away from it. So this person from elsewhere exists to be a bridge, between their social isolation in this new unspoilt culture that seemingly doesn't know how to run it's self properly, because they haven't answered certain basic developmental questions, and the visitor, which the explorer was before, so they have empathy, which the locals are assumed to lack because they are unconsciously adapted to the challenges of the place.
Well, the entrepreneurial types come in.. that explorer has proven the place is safe, and the entrepreneurial types come in and in their munificence, start turning that previously unspoilt place into a hybrid of the world the travelers come from and what it was (if you have heard of it, assume it is already fucked..), while selling it without admitting the impact they are having. They come with the self righteousness of the enlightened, and they try to 'train' the locals to 'handle' the tourists that they are soliciting to come and introducing to the area and culture for their own profit... thus begins the race to mediocrity.. because the place looses it's old sense of identity, and their value system is undermined by the obvious proof that the outside influences solve basic problems better, but that they are here seeking something that must be of great value, therefore we as the hosts must have something of great value that we can now exploit to obtain the conveniences that they bring. Just look at them, the first tourists tend to be these beautiful glamorous looking Europeans with leisure minded charm, and they exude confidence that most people in former backwaters can't help but be envious of.. I must have what they come from. The vampire class is born, the parasites, and the longer they make easy money, the worse a place gets... the hustle begins...
The Parasites are people who figure out they can make money, often times cloaked in 'potecting a palce' or alleviating poverty', but often times just providing services or goods to outsiders who take neither the time nor have the boldness to test the true price of things in a new place.. they come, they overpay, and that becomes 'the tourist price'.. two classes develop, those who exploit this for capital gain, and those who continue their old way o life, and the ones who exploit climb to the top by way of possessing capital, and the more a place westernizes, the more it stratifies, the more important that becomes.. now they control medicine, and have cars, and things that were simply a fact of life before become tragedies to both them and the more emotional of their visitors... these visitors create maternal attachments to their hosts, and further conflict them with descriptions of their 'poverty' and 'need', muddying the waters for those who just want to arrive and exchange services and goods for money or barter in the way it has been done for centuries.. there start to be perceptions of unwritten obligations, and so many cultures are attracted that it becomes a tangled mass of confusion with the parasites focusing on providing their services for whomever is most likely to pay, and denying them to those who refuse to pay... in some places they tilt the deck and cartel... you aren't allowed to provide your own transportation, cook your own meals... you have to go through 'guides' or official restaurants.. people try to 'save' the situation, and merely perpetuate it or make it worse...
Eventually a place jumps the shark.. the parasite class becomes so prevalent that the whole experience of the place is lost in a sea of set rate transactions that benefit the parasite class over the traveler... the neophytes come because by now the place has an awesome reputation for convenience, for lawlessness... there becomes a class of young hustlers who will get you any drug or delight you want.. there is no control because money has long replaced lifestyle as the ideal of the place.. ever since that first explorer started to invite more of his kind to 'enjoy' what used to just be enjoyed as part of life', before it was gormandized...
It jumps the shark when greed becomes all pervasive.. when the attempts to keep up with the pace of development become constricted by incompetence and corruption due to the locals never having had the chance to adapt in and of their own to this new burden of visitation.. they were picked not because they were the vanguard of a new organization and civilization, but because they were anything but, and what was quaint and cute before becomes a sad mess.. paradise lost...Florida, Cancun, Acapulco, Phuket, Siem Reap, Santa Marta Colombia... and those who create the problem don't care because they will return after days or a week to their place of aggregation, and it ain't their problem, because they came to this ghetto 'just to have fun', and aren't there to create justice, order, or environmental harmony...
When does it jump the shark... well, when you have a Bob Marley themed bar, in a place that couldn't be further from Jamaica, and the locals start to pretend they are a Rasta.. that's a good hint that things are good now, but gonna suck soon.. they hit on the hippie girls coming to find themselves from the repressive northern European cultures, and they want a piece of brown skin to exemplify some passage to womanhood.. they are happy to trade their fiat for some good times and a bit of a memory blur..
by the time you have a zip line, you are fucked.. there is no charm left.. all that was in and of it's self, little roads leading down to a beach, are likely now traffic choked and where kids used to play in the surf, they are now looking for the next snorkel tour victim so they can get another whiff of meth tonight.. compared to the life they were promised before the first tourists showed up, this is an easy life, but it's not a lovable one.. the money doesn't go where it might have... it's going going gone.. what attracted us was the very lack of structure, and now all there is is the structure that the greedy and the self righteous agreed upon was the only way to handle the influx.. you are mad to not be doing activities, and the time of charm has come and gone... the rules for this ghetto of leisure say to look for what is good by your cultural standards, don't question much, and go home before it would dawn on you how horrible this place has become, how dependent they all are on you instead of just them anymore, like they were for thousands of years before you arrived perhaps, and what a tragedy it all is..
Modern people today often live isolated lives of quiet desperation, as the saying goes... they work towards unobtainable goals of wealth, prosperity and family achievement. The majority of modern educated people in the early 21st century live in places that are convenient to the aggregation of wealth, not aesthetic pleasure, and if aesthetic pleasure is there, it's often seen more as a calculation of home value than something to actually enjoy. They might work to purchase Aesthetics, the assumption being that it must be earned, but even if they choose a place to live they weren't born, it is usually a place where they can utilize their skills to maximize their income or some notion of a balanced lifestyle of career and pleasure that is still based on some unexamined concepts of pleasure. Anyhow, they live in a place they don't usually enjoy completely they don't find relaxing because of the pace of life they set, or because it was never home in the first place, or because they are taught that leaving places of comfort makes you sophisticated or broadens you, or because they are taught to assume that where they are isn't as good as where they could be, so they begin to resent it, and it usually has a difficult winter as most more economically and culturally sophisticated places do. In other words, there is some climate challenge that has led people to band together in cooperation, that made the culture sophisticated and gave it buying power, but it doesn't necessarily have recreational charm, or charm that they would admit, because it's sophisticated to take where you live for granted, to underestimate it (the French drive this insecurity into us! it's no Paris... I'll be honest with you.. Paris sucks.. stay home and find what's nice there..). To find that charm, they work had to acquire capitol to reward themselves for being good, like a pat on the back for your first potty trained dump, Freud would say, to use the wealth of transportation options available to them to travel to places that are considered to be a relief from their self imposed life of aggregating wealth..
This is where our victim steps in.. the poor unspoiled place with some unique attribute that appeals to these bedraggled consumers who need simple reasoning to penetrate their marketing addled minds. It usually involves a change in weather, a pleasurable activity, like boating, fishing, sight seeing or sitting n the beach, and a destination that solicits them with marketing, some geographic uniqueness, and infrastructure to make them feel at home, even when they are trying to escape home... this is where the idiocy really starts.
The place has some redeeming quality that explorers find charming.. a ruin, a beach, a superlative mountain or lake... the tip of a peninsula that promises remoteness, escape, a nice harbor... The explorers are usually canny people used to going places off the beaten track, and they have low commitment to their place of origin.. the might come for a job, just exploring, some military deployment or charity work, or maybe they are a pilot or someone else who has a chance to see things from a unique perspective to spot value in places.
The explorer makes a commitment to a place, and becomes like the first molecule in a long chain of destruction.. the dust in a raindrop, sorry to say... They move in, and almost inevitably, they want to change something to make life more convenient like where they live.. they make a hotel, or just a hostel or guest house.. they become a leader and a point of entry for reliable information for other foreigners seeking to 'know what's going on' and not be ripped off, not be alone, and not get sick, even though they came here to get away from it. So this person from elsewhere exists to be a bridge, between their social isolation in this new unspoilt culture that seemingly doesn't know how to run it's self properly, because they haven't answered certain basic developmental questions, and the visitor, which the explorer was before, so they have empathy, which the locals are assumed to lack because they are unconsciously adapted to the challenges of the place.
Well, the entrepreneurial types come in.. that explorer has proven the place is safe, and the entrepreneurial types come in and in their munificence, start turning that previously unspoilt place into a hybrid of the world the travelers come from and what it was (if you have heard of it, assume it is already fucked..), while selling it without admitting the impact they are having. They come with the self righteousness of the enlightened, and they try to 'train' the locals to 'handle' the tourists that they are soliciting to come and introducing to the area and culture for their own profit... thus begins the race to mediocrity.. because the place looses it's old sense of identity, and their value system is undermined by the obvious proof that the outside influences solve basic problems better, but that they are here seeking something that must be of great value, therefore we as the hosts must have something of great value that we can now exploit to obtain the conveniences that they bring. Just look at them, the first tourists tend to be these beautiful glamorous looking Europeans with leisure minded charm, and they exude confidence that most people in former backwaters can't help but be envious of.. I must have what they come from. The vampire class is born, the parasites, and the longer they make easy money, the worse a place gets... the hustle begins...
The Parasites are people who figure out they can make money, often times cloaked in 'potecting a palce' or alleviating poverty', but often times just providing services or goods to outsiders who take neither the time nor have the boldness to test the true price of things in a new place.. they come, they overpay, and that becomes 'the tourist price'.. two classes develop, those who exploit this for capital gain, and those who continue their old way o life, and the ones who exploit climb to the top by way of possessing capital, and the more a place westernizes, the more it stratifies, the more important that becomes.. now they control medicine, and have cars, and things that were simply a fact of life before become tragedies to both them and the more emotional of their visitors... these visitors create maternal attachments to their hosts, and further conflict them with descriptions of their 'poverty' and 'need', muddying the waters for those who just want to arrive and exchange services and goods for money or barter in the way it has been done for centuries.. there start to be perceptions of unwritten obligations, and so many cultures are attracted that it becomes a tangled mass of confusion with the parasites focusing on providing their services for whomever is most likely to pay, and denying them to those who refuse to pay... in some places they tilt the deck and cartel... you aren't allowed to provide your own transportation, cook your own meals... you have to go through 'guides' or official restaurants.. people try to 'save' the situation, and merely perpetuate it or make it worse...
Eventually a place jumps the shark.. the parasite class becomes so prevalent that the whole experience of the place is lost in a sea of set rate transactions that benefit the parasite class over the traveler... the neophytes come because by now the place has an awesome reputation for convenience, for lawlessness... there becomes a class of young hustlers who will get you any drug or delight you want.. there is no control because money has long replaced lifestyle as the ideal of the place.. ever since that first explorer started to invite more of his kind to 'enjoy' what used to just be enjoyed as part of life', before it was gormandized...
It jumps the shark when greed becomes all pervasive.. when the attempts to keep up with the pace of development become constricted by incompetence and corruption due to the locals never having had the chance to adapt in and of their own to this new burden of visitation.. they were picked not because they were the vanguard of a new organization and civilization, but because they were anything but, and what was quaint and cute before becomes a sad mess.. paradise lost...Florida, Cancun, Acapulco, Phuket, Siem Reap, Santa Marta Colombia... and those who create the problem don't care because they will return after days or a week to their place of aggregation, and it ain't their problem, because they came to this ghetto 'just to have fun', and aren't there to create justice, order, or environmental harmony...
When does it jump the shark... well, when you have a Bob Marley themed bar, in a place that couldn't be further from Jamaica, and the locals start to pretend they are a Rasta.. that's a good hint that things are good now, but gonna suck soon.. they hit on the hippie girls coming to find themselves from the repressive northern European cultures, and they want a piece of brown skin to exemplify some passage to womanhood.. they are happy to trade their fiat for some good times and a bit of a memory blur..
by the time you have a zip line, you are fucked.. there is no charm left.. all that was in and of it's self, little roads leading down to a beach, are likely now traffic choked and where kids used to play in the surf, they are now looking for the next snorkel tour victim so they can get another whiff of meth tonight.. compared to the life they were promised before the first tourists showed up, this is an easy life, but it's not a lovable one.. the money doesn't go where it might have... it's going going gone.. what attracted us was the very lack of structure, and now all there is is the structure that the greedy and the self righteous agreed upon was the only way to handle the influx.. you are mad to not be doing activities, and the time of charm has come and gone... the rules for this ghetto of leisure say to look for what is good by your cultural standards, don't question much, and go home before it would dawn on you how horrible this place has become, how dependent they all are on you instead of just them anymore, like they were for thousands of years before you arrived perhaps, and what a tragedy it all is..
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