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Comment by manuelabeledo | Hacker News Reader

This looks like non news to me.

People don't "hate" digital nomads (and the article itself does not even back up this claim from the headline). In fact, most people do not even notice them most of the time, as they don't make up for a significant percentage of the population anywhere.

There will be always small and very vocal groups, complaining about effectively irrelevant things like this. That is not newsworthy.

> But they add: “While the constant state of motion was exciting in the beginning, it eventually became tiresome – literally.”

Well, yeah? Constantly moving and traveling around the world tend to have this effect on people.

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One common thread among the people profiled in the article is that they are all "influencers". I do think there there's something unique to influencers vs other digital nomads. There's something off putting about the egoism of thinking you're giving back to the world by broadcasting your life. It's probably more that aspect that people "hate", not necessarily the digital nomad aspect.

This is probably the linchpin. Same thing with "tourist hate" I've read about; I've never had any major issues anywhere I've gone, but then again I don't do the "stereotypical asshole tourist" stuff.

"Influencer" is almost synonymous with "online asshole".

I feel the same about being a tourist. I've never felt unwelcome anywhere as a tourist, but I'm also not loud and pushy. They're happy to have my money, and I'm happy to have their hospitality. Even the locals that aren't actually involved don't really mind tourists that are nice.

People who try to change things, whether it's actually for the better or not, are not well-liked. The locals like doing things their way, and they won't like being told to be different, regardless of the long-term benefits.

> and they won't like being told to be different, regardless of the long-term benefits.

wild assumption that just because something is different that it will be better. Especially when it usually comes from sheer utter ignorance and not being there long enough to understand, yet alone change for better

There are problems with tensions between locals and digital nomads in several places, especially Portugal, but also in a lot of major cities where they are having a similar effect to Airbnb. A big issue is the strength of the US dollar simply makes it impossible for anyone else to compete and attracts so many Americans.

> There are problems with tensions between locals and digital nomads in several places, especially Portugal

I have never heard of this before, and I have a few portuguese friends.

Also, in the context of Lisbon, I doubt that 16,000 salaried workers [0] could influence the market to that extent in a city of 500,000 people, especially given that digital nomads make, on average, $120,000 [1].

It seems to me that digital nomads are the new scapegoats for people who don't like to point their finger inwards.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20221227111848/https://nomadlist...

[1] https://www.twoticketsanywhere.com/digital-nomad-statistics/

Depends how many houses there are, if they had 'just enough' then adding any amount of people can cause a large price spike as everyone tries to outbid each other for remaining inventory. The price increases can become sticky as people start joining the market to speculate

> Also, in the context of Lisbon, I doubt that 16,000 salaried workers [0] could influence the market to that extent in a city of 500,000 people, especially given that digital nomads make, on average, $120,000 [1].

16000 out of 500000 people will definitely move the needle quite a bit in housing, given the small % of people who move every year

16,000 digital nomads that need individual housing, in a culture where multiple generations of families live together.

This is nonsense, and definitely not a thing in Portugal.

It's famous that the Portuguese and Spanish live with their parents until 30s (increasingly 40s) and usually close to their grand parents.

Isn't that just housing market going to shit ?

Because the housing market has been effectively closed to many young people for a couple decades now.

Was the 2008 crisis also caused by digital nomads?

> especially given that digital nomads make, on average, $120,000

Minimum wage in Portugal is about €760/month, or $10,000/year. You're seriously underestimating how much $120k is.

I think you are overestimating the impact of 16,000 people in a city like Lisbon.

The median salary of a digital nomad is sure lower than $120,000. I don’t have numbers, but I would say it should be closer to $60,000. Average salary in Lisbon is also roughly $48,000.

If locals want to blame someone, perhaps investment banks eating up the available housing stock would be a better target.

16k digital nomads will have a negligible effect on a country the size of Portugal.

AirBnB disregards zoning laws to repurpose residential housing as hotels.

It's a completely different thing from new workers moving in to a city.

I've been doing some budget digital nomad for several years and the most boring part of it is having to re-explain what I do for a living every time I meet someone - oh why does every conversation start like this? I don't think I've even met a single soul who knew what programmers do or what "digital nomad" is when traveling within the USA over the past 2/3 years.

Granted, this is mostly rural camping and small-city AirBNB all in the borders of the US. (Except for one time I stopped in DC for a month - strangely the only people that came to talk to me were the homeless and even they held decent conversations)

We're getting our adrenal glands pumping over Narcissistic obsessives dedicating every ruminating moment towards writing the next hit piece where they finally resolve their past scenarios, and they finally said all the right things to the wrong people, in an orgy of retraumatizing material. Just ignore them, go travel, say hi to people, change the world and all that stuff.

Might be my wrong sampling methods but I thought introducing yourself with the job description was more of an American thing? My impression meeting people around here (Europe) is more like "where are you from? aaaa cheese right?" and it goes on from there.

I don’t hate them, but they tend to be pretty cringey.

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