When Travel Becomes a Narcissistic Act
In this age of travelers, tourism has rapidly grown into the most 'democratic' industry. 50 years ago, when your grandparents had to painstakingly save up to take a trip, travel was an activity linked to the soul, typically undertaken by experienced travelers who often had remarkable personal stories. Until the baby boom generation grew up, overseas travel suddenly became commonplace, and 90s kids became the newest generation of backpackers; coupled with the prevalence of 'gap years,' people in their college years and keyboard-bound middle-class periods, eagerly jostled for space on planes, starting to run around randomly.
Common sense dictates that travel makes people more interesting and becomes an important part of your life. However, in the face of the increasingly broad international curiosity, the increasingly out-of-control over-interpretation, and the inescapable influence of high technology, travel itself has inevitably lost its value of making us feel amazed.
Full of silly information from the internet, formed an inescapable maze. Think about it, you can see a few words pop up in the sky whenever you look up—you can only live once. And this is precisely the force exacerbating this phenomenon. Whenever you walk into a hotel bar, you'll see more than half the people huddled in their digital worlds, experiencing the greatness of 'nature'; the LCD screens of tablets illuminate a string of expressionless faces. They sit in a circle, not speaking, their attention focused on the 'escape' they've just come back from home; they browse reviews on travel review websites, searching for restaurants to eat in. This internet massacre, which fundamentally stifles our ability to autonomously perceive the world, has already occurred.
In this open, egalitarian, fast-paced world, we begin to 'do homework' to access unknown fields, rather than spending time truly experiencing and understanding the culture from different regions. People seem increasingly inclined to fast travel, after marking all 'must-see' destinations on their phones, they rush to start this 'sightseeing' based on minimal understanding.
Seriously, I'm not exaggerating. When you take a truck across Tanzania's interior, with the same ethnic group and country of tourists sitting on it, your truck can only drive according to the regulations, stopping only at animal-occurring fixed places, then returning to the convenient and exquisite hotels to eat and sleep, and buying leather products prepared specifically for you—all this clearly can't give you a boastful capital of Africa, but you still do it.
To some extent, our aversion to hearing others talk about their travel experiences may be due to envy—to be honest, if you've been immersed in endless work and escaping reality drinking for half a year, how could you possibly like listening to others boast about enjoying themselves in the other end of the world? But conversely, any traveler who finds their story valuable to share with others is actually caught in a self-indulgent delusion of one's own nature.
What we ignore is that travel is not just an 'experience,' it's also about how you feel about the unknown. Many of us travel for 'wealth' (whether it's stories, photos, or life experiences), forgetting to immerse ourselves in the unfamiliar environment and forget to enjoy the unexpected surprises. We have become the consumer generation of travel: if there were no digital SLR cameras, the misty dawn of Machu Picchu would not exist; we have become a group of people following behind a tour guide.
Actually, I'm saying this to do self-reflection. I am a travel writer, which means I am also a 'sightseeing' type of traveler who doesn't like to work: I rely on my travel experiences to earn money and respect from others. Therefore, my 'travel' is just a self-deceptive investment, and ultimately becomes my burden: every place I have to experience on the road, I have to do my homework in advance, and I also have to carry a camera with me, which is really boring.
As for my articles, they are naturally related to my travel experiences. Whenever I sit in a 'Shangri-La' style beautiful place, I spend most of my time writing. While tapping on the keyboard, I deceive those who read my articles 'to come' to these places that are actually best to never come to see. Therefore, whenever I start to self-reflect, I also know that I may never be able to find that feeling of surprise when I first traveled independently—at that time, I traveled without a travel guide and without a mobile map, I was still a child full of curiosity about the world.
Of course, I'm not saying that all types of tourism are without value. Going out of your house, basking in the sun, and writing travel notes are certainly no bad things. However, you must understand that if your 'travel' is just a collection of visa stamps, if your life is so pitiful that you have to rely on boasting about how many countries you've visited to gain some kind of value recognition, if you think their 'top 10 tourist destinations' are valuable, then you are just a tourist who is trying to find a sense of self-existence. Travel will never make you a more interesting person; you are just a crowd behind a tour guide's butt.
