[teerak]

> 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[michaelt]

> 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.

[teerak]

> 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.

No, I started travelling frequently around 20 years ago and was by no means wealthy. Just single with a normal job and willing to spend all my money on it. I've also always been able to plan my own travel and never used agencies.

> But social media is just one small input in all of this.

I really don't think it's small. For example just yesterday I visited an island nearby with a very nice beach. It was mostly unusable, all the good areas were occupied by people taking photos and videos, with others queueing to take that spot and do the same. A constant stream of activity and noise, the opposite of relaxing. I left. I get that's a rant and people have every right to do that, but I stand by my point that social media has very noticeably made things worse.

[brailsafe]

Is it not still dictated by the same things? Tourist heavy areas still optimize for people who have more money than sense, and it's not like it doesn't still cost thousands to get anywhere different. Even the hostel experience you mention isn't cheap bt any stretch. It's going to probably cost thousands, whether it's train tickets or accomodation or food or plane tickets.

Maybe before the internet it might have required the equivalent of tens of thousands instead of single digit thousands, but you still need to put some cash down.

[tbcj]

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]

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.

[jonnybgood]

It’s funny how tourism hasn’t changed for over 2000 years. Greek tourists of antiquity would write graffiti letting others know they were there and leave reviews on Egyptian tombs.

[diceduckmonk]

> 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:_...

[toastercat]

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]

> 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]

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]

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

[huimang]

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.