Vanlife, the Bohemian Social Media Movement | Hacker News Reader

Vanlife, the Bohemian Social Media Movement

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110 pointsDowwie86 comments

Kind of depressing. These people cash in on our desire to escape from the grind. The irony is that they now live a life of product placement and "brand alliances". The post ends with a casual admission that they make sure all pictures include the girl in a bikini. For maximum likes. The glamerous world of repping products and "creating authentic brand experiences" doesn't seem so glamerous to me.

Why? There's nothing wrong with cashing in on our desire to escape from the grind. The winter here in the upper South is an especially difficult season for me, since it's unpleasant to spend much time outside, and I absolutely want to watch videos of people cruising around the Caribbean or bicycle touring the Mediterranean or hiking trails. I'm glad people are able to go out and spend their lives making those kind of videos at all, and I'm not surprised that there's a lot of work to it.

Although I do try to avoid the channels that heavily exploit the women-in-bikinis thing, and prefer ones that are honest about the gritty and unpleasant details, like toilet repair.

I think I must not have been very clear. I'm not surprised that living in a van can be tough. I'm not surprised that documenting things or creating videos is hard work too.

My dissonance is that if you watch these videos most of them are full of rhetoric like "my generation doesn't like to settle" "I did what I was told went to college, found myself at a soulless marketing company and realized that I needed more" "I dare to think different" "I've never been a conformist". But if you read the article they are right in the middle of the world they hate. There life's work is product placement, brand repping, and promoting the superficial. Their youtube and instagram channels aren't documentaries of their lifestyle, they are just outlets for corporate attempts at growth hacking via sponsored photoshoots.

Yeah, when I'm at work and I see those kind of pictures, I always long for the holidays. Conversely, when I'm on a holiday and think of a cool project, I always long back to my desk :)

Anyway, these bloggers need to upgrade to VR.

The irony is that they now live a life of product placement and "brand alliances".

To restate what I think you're getting at, I had the same impression as you: they escaped the grind on to fall right back into the grinder. Running around in a loaner van, "we need content!" Making sure we get the girlfriend to pose in skimpy clothes. Making sure to mention the products. They answer to The Man more than I do in my 9-5.

I lived in my Toyota 4Runner for about 6 months. It was definitely not glamorous - my coworkers thought I was crazy. I parked outside of work. At night I would pee in a bottle. Sometimes the bottle would spill. I had to drive everywhere - to the library for WiFi, to the gym for showers, to the basketball court for exercise.

I think it takes a certain personality to be able to do this (without the benefit of being beautiful and Instagram sensations). Me, I've always wanted to try. I was saving an additional 400 a month - for a total of 10k per month in savings. So the reason was definitely not financial. After a while it got old, especially heat waves where I woke up in a sweat and had to turn on the AC for ten minutes to air out the car.

The faint smell of piss and 90 percent humidity. Bet there's no hash tag for that.

Oh yeah, I hate driving and think travel is overrated.

Did you work remotely while living in a van? Or did you still work in an office? It sounds like you did the latter, which sounds miserable. I think you would've had a different experience if you had used your van to travel.

I've been living in my pickup truck for about a year while rock climbing, skiing, hiking, and not working. A pickup is not a van, and definitely makes things like cooking or just hanging out less enjoyable. Regardless of the space constraints, the biggest thing is the loneliness of the vagabond lifestyle. I actually kind of miss my coworkers. Most connections are ephemeral, like climbing with someone for a day before they take off to LA or Oregon. There's also some stress with finding places to park at night. You're almost always staying somewhere where you shouldn't quite be. I've spent some entire days just surfing around on the internet, not motivated to really go out and adventure. I'd agree with this blogpost https://theinspiredclimber.com/2014/05/14/romancing-the-dirt..., "don’t expect going on the road alone to fill the void in your life."

Like the parent commenter, I too have spilled my pee bottle in my living compartment.

It would have been way different for sure. If only I enjoyed travel.

So you weren't doing it for money and you don't like travel, so what was the point? Why do something that doesn't make you happy?

We all think we know what makes us happy. So we try things and we find out that it doesn't work... The sad truth of it all is that not only do we not know what makes us happy, biologically speaking, there is no evolutionary advantage for a creature who reaches the nirvana of eternal satisfaction.

We are biologically built to forever embark on a fruitless quest for happiness, and while we can be happy at certain times, we'll never be able to reach that state of complete satisfaction that we spend our entire lives searching for...

As crimsonalucard stated, it was on one hand something I've always wanted to try out. Just living on the barest essentials and seeing how far I could take it. Also I don't have any people I consider close family in my life, so in case I lose my job and the economy tanks, I can feel secure that at least I can survive.

There are elements of race and class that underlie this phenomenon. The "van life" theme is a foil for "pretty people in pretty places" where pretty people look a certain way. And those people can afford to live that way. They are so transcendent that they don't have to think about the trappings of the common life. That requires quite a bit of confidence about your ability to have a soft landing when you fail. In a different station in life, you have no ability to conceive of following your dreams of surfing and biking because you have to worry about making rent and helping pay for your parents meals.

While I agree with your assessment of "pretty people in pretty places" as it applies to the giant Instagram accounts, it really doesn't apply to most people who live this lifestyle. Living in a van allows you to not need to worry about making rent or anything like that. Most people living the life have some form of normal work income. They work as campground hosts, or as ski instructors, or raft guides, or park rangers etc. I'm just saying recognize that there is a huge bias of, the people you know of doing this life are the ones who advertise it on social media, but there are an order of magnitude more people who live in the same accommodations without the same source of income.

I agree, as I did this in the 90's while in college working as a raft guide on the Arkansas river. We were allowed to camp on our employer's land for free. There was no social media to pimp our activities on, and I imagine it would've been looked down on at that time.

>I agree, as I did this in the 90's while in college working as a raft guide on the Arkansas river.

Such a small world. I guided Brown's canyon for a couple summers as well. Best few years of my life, and we were living in tents. What company?

Apparently, pretty small. Sorry I missed this. I'm not exactly a public person, so let's say 'buffalo' was in the name. WA was the only other company I know of at the time with a similar set-up.

There are also tons of people who do this without the sponsors. I've been living in an RV for a while while at the same time working remotely (http://therecklesschoice.com if you're interested). Lots of people work as campground hosts or seasonal workers. If the mobile lifestyle speaks to you, spend the next 6 months finding a remote job and just go do it. Don't wait to find a "sponsor".

This is more inline with my dream. I have a van, I work remote. My wife doesn't ; ). So for now we're weekend warriors.

We've done road trips through New Zealand and Iceland and it's a great way to experience a country inbetween hikes.

I see you're in Colorado. If you make it into Utah we should meet up!

We're aiming to do all of the national parks and monuments in Utah this year, starting at the Grand Canyon and working our way towards Moab. Where abouts are you? Email in profile or on our website.

I am in progress of creating my own RV-van. This won't be a full time thing, but for sure a week or maybe a month at a time. I already work remotely as a software developer and my SO is a professor who gets summers off. For us it's just a vacation vehicle with a neat twist that we designed and built it. I do plan to take videos of construction and maybe post some pictures here and there, but I see it more as sharing ideas with other humans than a business venture. If I can make a couple bucks to subsidize travel expenses, I don't see anything wrong with that; if no one watches but my grandkids, I'm OK with that too.

I live in an 11 foot truck camper during the summer. I'm a camp host at a Forest Service campground. The rest of the year I live in my home in Mexico. It can be a lonely life, and I miss road-tripping across Mexico and all the interesting people I used to meet. At 71, though, I guess I'm too old. Damn! Still, I can fish, pan for gold, write, etc. as the impulse strikes me. A small pension with health insurance and social security makes it possible. I do miss the people on the road though.

Vansploitation is back?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vansploitation

Everything old is new again.

If you're curious about the reality of vanlife, this Canadian couple documents it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGud34X3j5M

Short story, it can be awesome but there's a ton of unforeseen hassles/stress involved. Basically, it aint all like the Instagram highlight reel.

The sort of sponsorship and advertising has always been a major factor in the outdoor sports. And I mean climbers, surfers and mountain bikers have been living in vehicles doing cool things and publishing pictures of it for years...often with sponsors logos prominently placed or adds on the next page.

It's just that the decline in magazine readership etc has lead sponsors to look for "ambassadors" who engage directly on social media.

I want to live in a van, and I want to be sponsored to do it. I see other people saying the lifestyle is vapid, but to be honest everyone I know that has done it has embraced it.

There's unique challenges for sure, and making sure that sponsor obligations and the like don't take over your life can be a real concern. But the idea behind it comes down to living a lifestyle that works for you.

I want to do it because I want to spend the next few years of my life chasing dreams of being a professional skier, I'll probably not get there but I'd like to try it for a while. I'll sacrifice money, security, and a lot of normal comforts, but there's reasons certain lifestyles exist.

Granted, I don't know how the transition after this period of my life will go, I think it's important to chase dreams for a while and not have regrets.

I guess my whole thing is money doesn't buy happiness, but even then money is needed to support yourself and if it takes selling yourself out a little bit for sponsors and the like, so be it.

It's only two sentences in the article but it's pretty important - they had to move back in with their parents for four months when one of them got sick. So make sure you have that or someone you can really depend on if things go wrong. Assuming you are in the USA - the main couple in the story are so young that it seems like they would also be covered under their parents health insurance under the ACA as well.

> King and Smith, who are thirty-two and thirty-one, respectively

My wife and I have lived in an RV for the last 5 years. We have met some amazingly strong single full-timers out on the road. It has got to be tough when something happens and you don't know another soul for hundreds of miles.

Yah I've got a good few years more on my parent's insurance, it's an overlooked fact that you need well-off parents to have a strong safety net while you're young.

With all the truth in this article, it is worth to realize that there are large number of people that dedicate part of their life to being nomads and adventurers and do it authentically. There's a huge spectrum of adventurers from weekend warriors to full time. There's a spectrum or vehicle nomads from full time van life to traveling by car with your family. Having read this, please do not look down at our or your own adventuring. It is fun. When you get bored, you do something else.

Interesting, I am very mobile but have never done van/rv lifestyle "yet". I have no issue with people doing this but for me its more about escaping the grind. I would not want to be encumbered with posting etc, defeats the purpose for me. Although I do see how it makes it affordable for some to be able to live that life so kudos to them.

RVs are a major slow-burn issue in Seattle, as clusters of them are becoming essentially one step up from homeless camps.

Something to perhaps look into and consider thoughtfully if this sort of thing attracts you.

But just think about the future when those RVs are all self-driving -- all those people will be nomads, roaming the land!

What issues do they cause? Is it just an eye-sore thing?

I'm guessing an encampment of vans in a location with minimal facilities (restrooms and waste) has the potential to become something of a cesspool. That along with not everyone having the same free spirit love the world and leave no trace attitude (i.e. some homeless) can quickly create issues.

Notably, meth labs, bike crime rings, fires. I think I recall something about a prostitution ring? It's a significant public health and safety issue here. A lot of crime and grief is localized around the RV encampments here.

Broadly, you also have to consider trash, sewage, water, electricity, and heating.

Plus some of the RVs are kinda dumps, but that's less relevant.

I lived in a homeless camp for two years while I rebuilt my classic Avion truck camper. Trouble did come through at times, but I value the time I spent with the people there. It can be a hard life some times. There, people had it particularly hard because of personality problems. That didn't mean they weren't trying to live as good a life as they could and be as good people as they could manage. I have thought of writing a book: "Live Among Heroes" because their lives were heroic struggles.

I'd read that book. Maybe put it into a blog form first, then edit to book taste?

Homelessness in Seattle(in particular) is a very fraught topic, with many cherry picked examples for discussion when it comes up. It's certain that a wide range of behaviors from anti-social to pro-social have been observed, often depending on the specific camp.

There's a certain lure of living in a tent in the woods, playing mountain man.

Am I the only person that thinks this is a terrible idea? I couldn't stand living in a van for a month, let alone any extended period of time. The only way I'd do it is to save money; that's not the kind of adventure I consider fun. I'm also not the sort of person who sits around drooling over other peoples' adventures, so I guess I'm not the target audience here.

It's interesting that Americans go for van's and RV's where as Europeans trend toward sailing. Very similar play.

Sailing is a much more dangerous game then driving.

Sure is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evi_Nemeth#Later_life

I think that sailing requires a whole other level of income than living in a van.

I met some folks in a RV park in Mazatlan. They had a cruising sail boat. They sold it because the cost of a night or so in a yacht harbor was too extreme and the worry while they were traveling in the area was too great. They had a van and seemed content.

This feels like some kind of hippy-tainted ultra-hispterism to me.

I can't put my finger on it, but this phenomenon makes me profoundly sad for reasons I cannot fully elucidate. Maybe the notion of documenting the experince in place of actually having the experince. Maybe the feeling of all these lost people, posing with all their money and might, for the acceptance of others, all based on a snapshot. Sure, it becomes a self-sustaining lifestyle if you do it "good enough", but where is the fun in that? I want to live a life I enjoy, not just project that image.

Who says it's mutually exclusive?

I know what you mean. I think this caption hits the point home:

> you can see the couple become better at tailoring the images to what their followers want. “They want to see Emily in a bikini, they want to see a sunflare, they want to see the van,”

My partner and I have labelled this behaviour as living the "Instagram Lifestyle" - directing your life so that it looks, on social media, as if you're having the best life ever, rather than actually doing what you want regardless of how photogenic it is. Labelling it helps us (attempt to) avoid succumbing to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxVZYiJKl1Y

That was great! Thanks for sharing it. Good spoof of the lifestyle. Now we need a good one for the playboy types who seem to effortlessly get piles of women and cool vehicles always doing just what they like. In reality, most I meet hide the enormous amount of time they waste plus huge costs. I love messing with them. One joked about a guy with no style that he should pay to get that guy a girl but wouldn't ever pay for sex himself. I pointed out he paid thousands extra for a car, parts, and detailing to get women. "What's the difference other than number of chicks and nights with them vs dollars spent? And how much time on those parts, stuff they like but you don't, and hanging out faking appreciation?" He didn't like me then lol.

So, something like the video you posted but for those guys. Needs to capture each of the aspects above since they're the most common. And mockable.

Real good.

Caption: Facebook can be depressing because everyone else's lives are better than yours... But are they really?

By the HightonBros https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo5or9Rhz3X5b9qr-hd2-AQ/abo...

An important part too is that it all has to appear effortless. So we see in the article how much work went into getting that deal with Outsiders where 70 emails, a half hour photo session, which is then photoshopped all go into making a single post where they talk about how the whole experience has made them reconsider what work means. And of course it has to be published at 11:00 AM, since thats when engagement is the highest.

Quite. Not quite Stanford Duck syndrome, but something similar...

I see it differently. Everyone needs money to live. If you can get that money doing something you find fun, having control over your life, and hanging out with people you like... as long as you don't buy into the image you're presenting it sounds like a great life to me. I feel sorry for the people who buy into the fake reality presented to them via Instagram, but that's a different issue.

Are you as an individual not responsible for your cultural impact at all?

Yes, but the idea that someone posting pictures of themselves in a van is a negative cultural impact is kind of ludicrous.

Posting pictures, writing a blog, etc of your trips/experiences is one thing, spending the entire day trying to capture the perfect pose, shot or moment in time to push a lifestyle brand is inauthentic.

What's ludicrous about it?

Especially since it's not just "someone posting pictures of themselves in a van", but promoting a certain untenable lifestyle, helping to sell more crap to people, faking experiences, and a whole lot more besides.

Yeah, I'm with coldtea here. This is very similar to the phenomenon where the "attractive" women in media were a specific type for a long time. Implication was others weren't or should look like them. All the fake experiences those media outlets pushed vs lower number many women experienced that were contrary made a lot of them think less of themselves or try to fake themselves into what "worked" (but was lies). I had similar trouble trying to get modeling agencies to take in women outside the fold who were utterly beautiful with long list of people that would want to date them. Not skinny enough, not tall enough, blah blah blah.

The BS the vanlife people are promoting might do something similar. Even worse, them faking the difficulty and reward ratio on many people who might have never heard of such scams on social media might lead them to waste money on a van or loose real opportunities. This can actually damage people like other forms of fraud. So, I certainly discourage doing it or aiding those people in any way.

> utterly beautiful with long list of people that would want to date them.

You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth. You're saying that media constructs what "attractive" means for women, and now you're saying that "attractive" is something that is inherent to a woman irrespective of media pressure.

Also, having a long list of people who want to date you does NOT means you'd be a good model. Models exist to make the product look good, not to look good themselves. A lot of fashion models are very skinny and tall because it makes the clothes they wear look good.

> Even worse, them faking the difficulty and reward ratio on many people who might have never heard of such scams on social media might lead them to waste money on a van or loose real opportunities.

You've basically just described all of advertising and marketing. It's not fraud or a scam - it just takes much more hard work than they show. They're not deliberately lying, they're just leaving out parts of it. Just like programming is a good job with high pay except you have to spend a lot of time learning it and working hard to get the good job with high pay.

"You're arguing out of both sides of your mouth. You're saying that media constructs what "attractive" means for women, and now you're saying that "attractive" is something that is inherent to a woman irrespective of media pressure."

You're pretending all people act the same to accuse me of some false argument. Some people will follow what the media says a lot, some a bit, and some not at all. The fact that local + some remote people thought those women were beautiful doesn't change the fact that media were trying to say otherwise and shove a specific profile in people's faces.

" It's not fraud or a scam"

It really is if it's dishonest to get people's money. There's legal and illegal scams, though. ;)

Part of the failure, in my eyes, IS not buying into it. They know their profession is 'faking it'. Living a life you actually embody seems inherently more fufilling to me, having been on both sides of the phenomenon.

But how much control do you really have over your life, if your life is all about going to places your followers want you to go and striking poses your followers want to see you strike?

I feel the same way. I think the article mostly describes the "travel porn" phenomenon which can also be found in a lot of "digital nomad" blogs: people making a living out of exhibiting a seemingly glamorous lifestyle.

To me, that lifestyle is only attractive if it can be combined with other fulfilling activities and relationships - which might be in their case, but isn't conveyed through their social media image.

Imagine vanlife in a self-driving house-on-wheels. That is my plan for the next phase of my life. I’ve been saving every penny I can for when the first self-driving RV hits the market.

I'm excited to see what self driving RVs do to the housing market in the bay and other high rent markets. Waking up infront of your office, then at the end of the day going "home" and an hour or so later being up the coast without leaving your couch.

I am deeply skeptical you will ever experience such a thing.

Gas is too expensive to move a house that way. Most RVs get significantly less than 10mpg. Ours gets about 7. Even if it drove itself, there is no way that I would want it moving that much per day.

Converted bus shouldn't consume much more than a normal bus. From what I understand, a public transportation bus should be somewhere between 30-50 liters per 100 km. Which isn't that bad, considering you could drive like 30 km to some nice place out of the city, and maybe further away on the weekend. Even if you spend 20$ on gas every day, it's just a 600$ a month, which is much better than 3000$ for an apartment?

Living in something like seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUYryxKfrUc doesn't seem so bad.

Having to drive every day is annoying, but with a plug-in self driving computer (hopefully in the next 20 years?), it would be quite nice.

I van-life you typically drive somewhere. Park it, and stay for a while, possibly weeks or even months.

You can do that now. Get a sailboat. Autopilot does most of the work and you only need to pop your head up to watch for boats and trim for the wind.

We read a lot of books, watched movies, and cooked across the globe at a slow, steady 6kts/hour

> a slow, steady 6kts/hour

Pedantic, perhaps, but that's just 6kt. 6kt/hr is constant acceleration; 1 kt = 1 nmi/hr.

I need to get back on the water. I'm starting to mix up my units and forgetting what the different lines are called.

Have you done it? Requires a LOT more expertise than a van.

Ask @lutusp about it:

https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html

Uh, yes. 10000nm in fact. And I read his book and he also didn't have a lot of experience at first.

NM I hope because 0.01 mm is not very far :-P

Hmm. The high school dropouts I knew always said that they'd go down and live next to the river in a van. Now it's the new hipster cool thing. Reminds me of people glorifying living in "tiny houses" that are upscale versions of the wickiup tow-behind logging camps my father lived in. Minus the mice and weasels skittering across your sleeping bag in the night, or the bear that smashes your kitchen to pieces while you're out chopping.

That's the whole point, though, isn't it? It's a vehicle for people's fantasies. Like that genre of porn that's shot as though from the viewpoint of one of the participants, except that the illusory fulfillment on offer here is of a different and more socially acceptable urge.

There's some interesting theories that the popularity of vans and tiny houses aren't just a hipster trend, but an actual reaction to diminishing opportunities. I don't know if they are true.

When life gives you lemons and you can't afford a home, you make lemonade out of the fact that you're living in your car or in an illegal shed.

When the bid you put in on a one bedroom house was a year's salary over asking price and you still lose "Fuck It" starts to seem a lot more sensible.

I definitely think that's the case, same for food trucks as well.

just an anecdote from the people i know doing this.. there isn't a necessity component for them. It is reactionary though, i think it's a reaction to the "Ok, i just finished 20 years of this school system of control.. and now I get to.. sign up for a 30 year system of control? (mortgage)"

Exactly. Combined with utilities, insurance, property taxes, zoning, maintenance, etc...

A house is literally a systemic bureaucratic yoke around your neck.

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