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> The article falls directly into the "good old days" fallacy

This comment falls directly into the "things never change" fallacy.

This fallacy can be applied whenever anyone complains about any change anywhere. Picking one sample piece of anecdotal data from another period that can roughly be lined up with some other vague impressions of today does not refute the claim.

I have no strong opinion on overtourism or the effects on it by social media, but I'm willing to listen to people who discuss it without dismissing them.

> This comment falls directly into the "things never change" fallacy.

That sounds interesting. I looked for it, and I just found references to the "tradition fallacy" that only deals with resistance to change.

Can you provide a link?

> Picking one sample piece of anecdotal data from another period that can roughly be lined up with some other vague impressions of today does not refute the claim.

I provided an anecdote example as a means to be more pedagogic. It is easier to understand concepts from the concrete to the abstract. So you are completely right, my anecdote does not refute the claim.

I guess the oldest quote would be in the bible, as "there's no new thing under the sun". In any case though, I don't really understand the point of using 'fallacy' aside from cases where it's an actual logical fallacy.

You can probably cover every habit of thought and discourse under a banner of fallacy, if you pick out the ways in which they are used badly - since people tend to think badly due to misapplied habits.

Social media has just distilled this pointless behavior into the purest form possible. The behavior is just like the good old days, but the tools aren't (you'd have to invite people around to show off your photo album persona). There were (and still are) tribespeople that demonstrate this behavior with affluence: living an outwardly great life (by having cows, goats and what-have-you on public demonstration) without substance. Politicians and celebrities are no different.

This exaggeration of this behavior has increased contrast. It is both easier to identify and self-identity people who aren't victim to this pattern. There were never the good old days, speaking in a formal logical manner. However, in the good new days it is easier to identify this bullshit and pry oneself away from it.

You can look back to the early days of tourism when gentlemen going on their "grand tour" often commissioned paintings of what they'd visited so they could show off how cultured they were.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art...

Yeah I'm sure the very rich had that luxury back in the day... But nowadays anyone can do it.

That's the point! With the subpoint that it scales...badly.

It's not like you can spin up 20 more instances of the historic city center when you get 20x the usual traffic. Result: cities literally divided against themselves, transformed into a tourist-factory-slash-amusement-park that nobody lives in, segregated from the actual living city.

What, me bitter about my hometown being disneyfied? Nooooosir...

Being a 3rd generation Floridian...I can sympathize.

I don’t know if it was meant to be a subtle joke, but tourism 75 years ago (in Europe or otherwise..) seriously?

Youre getting downvoted (likely because you didn't explain yourself) but you have a point - 75 years ago was 1943, it was the tail end of WWII and Europe was a literal battleground

Tail end? D-Day wasn't until the summer of 44

What a weird, overly pedantic, comment to make.

Hilter invaded Poland in Sept 1939 and VE-Day was May 8, 1945; so the war in Europe lasted 68 months. 75 years ago the war was 47 months old, or 69% complete. I consider the final 30% of something the "tail end." It's weirdly pedantic and downright antisocial to go around arguing "tail end" means something else, especially when its entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Since the internet is for cats I did some quick Googling and looks like, on average, a cats tail is around 34% of their total length (body plus tail) so saying the final 30% of something is the tail end is objectively accurate. Unless you want to go around arguing that some cats don't have tails.

'Antisocial', really? You are weird.

1943 was the year when German advance was halted and they began to be pushed back by Soviet army. It's right in the middle of the war if you look at the map instead of calendar.

D-Day was too late and happened after the outcome of the war was clear. So while I agree with your point, mentioning D-Day doesn't really support it.

Sweden was neutral. Presumably Swedes would've had their summer holidays as normal (though staying within the country)?

There was massive fuel and food shortages in Sweden. I doubt that very many people had normal vacations.

The key point wasn't being neutral. Didn't help the rest of us. The key point was not being occupied.

Swedish men were in military readiness, stationed along the borders around the country.

Russians still like to joke that their grandfather went on sightseeing trip in Germany - in a tank.

Germans were dying to see Russia

>"The article falls directly into the "good old days" fallacy."

This type of dismissal - that people discussing change are nothing more than baseless nostalgics, is really becoming it's own tired trope.

The article gives quite concrete examples of recent-ish developments that are an annoyance to both other residents and other travelers. Large groups of selfie sticks, outsized queues, neighborhoods bereft of actual locals, etc.

The article also discusses sustainability which is a pretty important topic on a planet with 7.6 billion people. How is that a fallacy exactly? An increasing population and a global expansion of middle class people, two elements that factor a booming tourism industry are very rooted in fact.[1]

>"No, people in the past were not looking for "more authentic experiences"."

Nowhere in this article is that claim even staked. It's also very odd that you then go on to mention a couple who brought back some small keepsakes and mementos from a trip as evidence of this. People keep reminders from local events in their life as well and it has nothing to do with "authenticity."

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/global_...

That's probably when modern tourism began, in the post-war 50s and 60s. You had a bunch of things coming together: commercial airliners, cruise ships, better highway systems, etc. Disney World launched in the 60s to capitalize on the trend. I agree "people are people" and they don't change as much as we'd like to think...but I do also think that modern tech has made travel more frictionless than ever. You have GPS in your pocket, you can Yelp for good locales and restaurants, you can book flights in minutes, hail rides from an app, Google anything you're confused about, etc... So the number of people travelling nowadays is probably at an all time high.

Fun factoid. Before World War 1 passports, as we know them, did not exist through nearly all of the world. They were a 'temporary security measure' like so many things... It wasn't until 1978 in the USA that entering or leaving the nation requiring a passport was legally encoded (though we'd been using them since the early 19th century). That's why reading of e.g. scientists from before the early 20th century you'll regularly see them being born in one country, educated in another, opening a business in another, and so on.

The reason I'd agree with your timeline is one thing you did not mention -- wealth explosion. Purely recreational international travel is and always has been relatively expensive.

The passports are much, much older then WWI - however railroads in late XIX century made travel requirements more relaxed as the administration were not able to catch up with technology.

Also XIX c. passports were without biometry (ie without photography of the holder).

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport

I'm not sure about overtourism, but just got back from a trip to Europe. Almost the exact same countries as a trip 13 years ago. The difference was AMAZING. Technology has made traveling so easy by comparison it's SHOCKING.

1. No more staring at signs and menus in confusion. Snap a picture with Google translate and viola.

2. Related to #1, no more getting lost using public transit or walking because you can't read street signs. Google Maps with walking directions, transit directions was a LIFE-CHANGER.

3. No more being LIMITED to phrases in your phrasebook. Again, Google translate.

4. No more worries about being taken advantage of by local taxis or figuring out local taxi customs. Uber and Uber clones.

5. No more getting trapped at tourist trap restaurants or overpriced "officially" reviewed restaurants. Google search again.

6. Waze can help you navigate to the most secluded spots, even when the local signs become sparse.

I could keep going...

Actually, it's amazing how much it was Google and local clones of Uber. Yelp and Uber aren't as popular in the countries we visited as I expected.

Honestly it was almost a little too easy, in some ways I didn't feel like I was in a foreign land... I felt at total ease in any neighborhood, because even if no taxis were around, just hail a ride.

Rented a car multiple times and drove around because Waze was great everywhere if Google Maps broke down.

Overall I LOVED that technology has made experiencing a foreign country almost trivially easy.

Technology absolutely lowers many barriers to travel.

The difference between this trip and my last trip was unbelievable.

I am glad you enjoyed the trip. Check your commentary again and replace the word "technology" with the word "Google" rightfully so.

foursquare is pretty popular in parts of Europe for restaurant reviews (Yelp is used for that in the US?)

Is foursquare still popular? I just moved to Estonia (American from SF) and I feel like I see many more people using general Google reviews than foursquare or Yelp

I’m finishing my first ever 2 week trip to Europe and I agree with everything. I wasn’t brave enough to rent a car on this trip though.

6. Waze can help you navigate to the most secluded spots, even when the local signs become sparse.

...and then you can complain on FB how many people are on that supposedly "secluded" spot. Surprise: technological innovation applies to them as well.

Indeed, technology removes many bottlenecks...but as we should know here on HN, all that ever did was expose other bottlenecks elsewhere in the pipeline - and physical scarcity is a far harder bottleneck than knowledge imbalance.

The danger is of course that your tech bubble distances you from the place you are visiting, resulting in a duller experience.

I can't see how any of that advantages would result in a duller experience.

Following walking directions on your phone that are optimized for efficiency makes chance of running into nice places and other suprises off the beaten path less likely.

Likewise for planning each and every meal via reviews.

Google translate might mean that you don't even try to learn the basics of a local language.

You just shielded yourself from most interesting aspects of travel for me - diving deep into unknown, blending with locals, just wandering around without any significant clue where the heck am I. Even simple travelling like you did can be a beautiful adventure, if you don't mind a bit discomfort and uncertainty. These things are what I remember most from travelling. Cruising smoothly through any place and it fades into yet-another-something in memories over time.

Each of us seeks different things in their free time. I for example usually don't turn on phone for days during travelling.

I fail to see your point. I too keep travel pictures with stuff like tickets, flyers etc. The purpose is not to build a brand or show off but to better remember the experience later.

I think that was the point.

I also fail to see what this article is stating. That people are travelling to build a personal brand. Maybe some people but nobody in my circle. Everyone I know travel because they want new experiences. They save little items and trinkets from those experiences to remember them. Not to post them on social media.

To take that thought a step further, posting pictures on social media is the way we remember things now. We certainly don't take photos exclusively to print out and store in offline albums.

Plenty of people do take photos to store offline* and to print out. My parents have a big house filled with photo albums that they have to store. We have a small apartment that makes it impractical to store multiple boxes of photo books of families throughout the years.

* Assuming by offline you mean not-shared, rather than literally offline. Anyone with a smart phone is most likely backing up their photos to iCloud/Google photos.

> I too keep travel pictures with stuff like tickets, flyers etc. The purpose is not to build a brand or show off but to better remember the experience later.

That is my point. In the past, people did the same things, if that does not make them superficial we are neither. We should not judge our contemporaneous travellers so lightly.

Social media makes self-portrayal certainly easier which makes it a worthwhile assumption that presentation effect is more rated than the experience.

Guess with howany people the photo albumhas been shared compared to the social media post?

While I do have friends who simply travel to build their brand around it (every year in my circles there's a set of "cool" destinations that you post pictures from, where somewhere like Iceland is cooler than Rwanda), I think tourists have and will continue to have the same behavior. As a tourist, you have a limited amount of time to explore. Sure you can "go off the beaten path", but that represents a risk, and while the experience may be interesting, you could also end up in a boring villa/Airbnb with nothing more than mediocre food and unfriendly people. Wasting your limited vacation time on a subpar experience is a pretty dismal proposition, so most people will take a trip to a place that's easy to navigate as a tourist while still giving enough of the local flavor to impress.

There's something to be said for trying to preserve local flavor while accommodating tourists though, and that's a line each tourist spot will have to find for themselves. Some will probably inevitably become expat party towns, while others will probably strike the right balance.

> where somewhere like Iceland is cooler than Rwanda

You are technically correct.

It’s a matter of scale. The number of people like your Swedish couple was much lower than the number of people like them today. Film wasn’t free like Instagram is.

It does get a bit disgusting when people are taking selfies with shit eating grins at the WTC memorial. All for the status boost in their corner of the graph.

How often do you see this happening? And how do you know why they are grinning?

What else do you expect people to do there?

Most people are fully aware that what happened there is a tragedy. Most people also have an instant-no-thought habit to smile when having a picture taken. Is it really any better for them to take a picture and be solemn? Is that enough or do they need to express deep sadness for these pictures? Would others claim these sad emotions are just for show anyway? And if so, should we expect people to just not take pictures at all at the WTC memorial? And if so, at what point in time can we start taking pictures at a place with our normal happy faces?

People are there. They are happy they are there, even though 'there' (where ever 'there' is) may be a place that causes them to have emotions on the sad part of the emotional spectrum.

Think of funerals. It's a sad place to be (perhaps sadder since the person who died is someone well known as opposed to a lot of unknown people, but I won't judge either way). Family and friends are together, which usually makes people happy. It's a mixed bag of emotions. If someone happens to smile in a picture there it's probably more to do with habit of smiling for pictures or happiness to be with family and friends (perhaps first time in a while) than it is for being happy the deceased is deceased or for social status boosts.

Would you take a smiling photo at the Lincoln Memorial. It is also a monument to a murder victim.