[jolesf]

“To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience, It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.” -David Foster Wallace

[bliblah]

Shame that people think this way or rather that people focus so much on the negatives they miss out on the positives.

I travel quite a bit and always encourage / force the people with me to visit museums and cultural highlights of the location because the truth is that only by being in a new city/state/country can you expand your horizons. The only thing I see coming from this anti tourist attitude is more xenophobia from residents and ignorance from would be travelers.

I honestly can't imagine people learning history just by scrapping wikipedia pages and not actually going to the sites that history happened.

I went to Venice during the Winter and the reality is that if it wasn't for tourists the city would be half empty outside of hyper wealthy individuals who own a vacation home there, it's a shame that every other store was a souvenir store but the only other stores there seemed to be Luxury Brand stores that probably wouldn't exist either.

I don't know, I come from a country that thrives on tourism and I definitely understand the hostility, but in the end of the day many cities wouldn't exist without this new wave of low cost tourism.

[thisrod]

The thing is, you can't go to most of the sites where history happened. They don't exist anymore.

Want to see where the French Revolution happened? Sorry, Haussmann blew it up and built today's Paris on the rubble. Venice? OK, a few bits of St Mark's basin were there when the galleys came back from the crusades. Dare you to say which bits. Cromwell and the Glorious Revolution? Nup, their Palace of Westminster burnt down in the 19th Century. Imperial China? It fell down and was rebuilt with every earthquake.

Archeologists can go to these places, but they have to work hard for it.

One of the essays in Parkinson's Law turns this into a law of nature. When the grand parliament house was built, parliament no longer mattered, and the country was really run from a dingy shed out the back. That shed was later demolished and a well-appointed cabinet room built in its place, but by that time cabinet no longer mattered, and the country was run by a king.

On the other hand, visiting exotic places makes me curious about how they got that way, which is one way to discover history.

[chasingthewind]

I personally hate travel and can identify with some of what he expressed here, but at a deeper level this throbs with a kind of elitism that really bothers me. I imagine replacing the words "mass tourist" with "immigrant" and the sentence almost reads like one of today's despicable screeds against the "alien" invader. Is there even any possible solution to the "problem" of some people living in or near a place that others would wish to visit or even move to? What gives one set of people the right to live in/visit a place and denies others that same right? It's not an easy problem and a well crafted paragraph by a talented writer doesn't transform it into one.

[ChristianBundy]

> I imagine replacing the words "mass tourist" with "immigrant" and the sentence almost reads like one of today's despicable screeds against the "alien" invader.

FYI, it shouldn't be surprising that replacing critical words can change the meaning of a sentence.

[domador]

A question would be whether the replacement forms a valid analogous statement, one which reveals unrecognized hypocrisy.

In this case, it's a partially successful analogy. Both mass tourist and immigrants travel to foreign lands, but one of them does so optionally while the other typically does so out of real or perceived necessity.

[sundarurfriend]

> I imagine replacing the words "mass tourist" with "immigrant" and the sentence ...

That's a big leap there though, ignoring the context and intent of the quote. The main issue expressed there is the mindless greed of the "mass tourist" when visiting these places, not truly viisting them to be temporarily part of the magnificence, but to use it to boost their own ego and tick a notch in some list. The intent of the immigrant is for survival and better standards of living, the intent of this kind of "mass tourist" is superficial consumption, which is what he's warning against.

[pradn]

While the sort of travel/tourism this quote describes is the common, default way of experiencing the fact of putting yourself in another place, we must allow for the genuine joy of meeting other humans, experiencing other beauty, and getting closer to other cultures. It's the hateful paradox of being a tourist - your difference is pronounced, concentrated.

As when home, a spirit of joy and generosity is the best way to go about going to other places.

[pradn]

Discussion from another time this quote was brought up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8408870

[jolesf]

thank you, that is an interesting perspective... "This is one of those sentences that sounds insightful, but in reality is pretty surprisingly shallow."

[grogenaut]

And yet the irony is that the main reason I and many people travel is to break out of that.

[totalperspectiv]

I struggle with this every time I travel! I think that part of the... guilt? ... can be assuaged by intent. As in, you are there to learn and absorb a culture and broaden your horizons, as opposed to being there for the entertainment of seeing crazy things and getting the Instagram shot. But maybe that's just a pretense I make up for myself.

[mitchdoogle]

The thing with absorbing cultures, sightseeing, and taking photos of landmarks is that to an outside observer they all look the same.

[pyrale]

It doesn't really matter whether your visit is motivated by self-enlightment or selfie-taking. The plane you use consumes just as much, the effect you have on local life is just as dire.

People have found other ways to broaden their horizon in the past.

[kweks]

Counter: the tourist that has made the effort to seek out non standard sights, or has made an attempt to learn the absolute basics of the local language will be welcomed so much better than the selfie-obsessed flock-travelling ignoramus that simply imposes their standard habits on a new environment.

[steve-benjamins]

Is this from his essay on the cruise ship?

[maxfurman]

I will almost always upvote DFW