Freedom, Authenticity, and Traveling

On Instagram, everybody seems to be a traveler, longing to be free and finding that 'authentic' place or 'experience'. Traveling and backpacking should be on everyone's bucketlist: it is the new normal. 

Travelers in the digital age 

Scrolling down my Instagram, I am always surprised about the number of people who are traveling these days. Quotes like ‘please take me back’, and ‘most amazing experience of my life’, make you think that all these people had a really special and authentic experience. But where backpacking once was a method of traveling only practiced by countercultures hippies from the late 19th century, it now is totally mainstreamed (Paris, 2010).

In the Netherlands, almost two out of three people in their twenties expect to make a long journey. What was an exception ten years ago is now the standard, if it is not the minimum expectation for the average twentier. What causes this enormous increase of twentier’s' traveling in backpacking style all over the world? What are the consequences of this movement? And how free is this kind of traveling still, if all those people practically do the same thing?

Quotes like ‘please take me back’, and ‘most amazing experience of my life’, make you think that all these people had a really special and authentic experience.

Traveling has become much more accessible than ever before. Cheap international flights make it very easy to travel. A €400,- return ticket to Bangkok is a normal price nowadays. Different travel websites compete each other with cheap prices in combination with beautiful pictures. Besides that, the increasing internal flight possibilities provide more comfortable opportunities then spending days on a bus. Especially in South-East Asia, domestic flight prices are ridiculously low and sometimes even cheaper than going by bus. 

Next to the cheap transfers, technological developments made traveling much easier. Where the information gathering for planning a journey once was only possible by books, these days everything is findable online. From a top 10 of the best hotels of Tadzjikistan to a picture of the exact burger you will receive on your plate in an Italian/Indian restaurant in Botswana. The internet will leave travelers with no surprises and the ability to plan their whole trip ahead with all the small details included. 

Wikimedia Commons

Although technological development not only causes an increasing information gathering by travelers, they also make thankful use of the web 2.0. People share experiences and are part of communities using technology‘New innovations in communication technologies including Web 2.0, Mobile phones, laptop, and netbook computers, and Wi-Fi access have created hybrid-spaces for backpacking, blurring boundaries between the physical and virtual, as well as the virtual and cultural’ (Paris, 2010).

All of this results in the fact that traveling to the other side of the world is not that impactful as it was before. The travel experience has been completely reshaped by the new communication practices hat changed the meaning of distance (Mascheroni, 2007). 

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New innovations in communication technologies including Web 2.0, Mobile phones, laptop, and netbook computers, and Wi-Fi access have created hybrid-spaces for backpacking, blurring boundaries between the physical and virtual, as well as the virtual and cultural.

By leaving our physical environment, we do not leave our social networks anymore. Together with all the worldwide information, we take our social lives with us while taking our mobile phone. Through social media, we are continuously connected with our entire network system. Statements like ‘escaping the society’ or ‘leave everything behind’, even though heard all the time are no longer suitable.

In all the social networks the traveler is part of, the distance between participants of that networks is minimal, even while being thousands of miles away (Castells, 2012). It is very common that the traveler is even more visible in the network then while staying at home. By using specially designed applications to follow you by foo, travelers are able to keep their networks updated. These applications show exactly where you are and have been in a certain place leaves the opportunity to add pictures and stories. An example of this kind of opportunities is the application Polarsteps as shown in the image below. This application provides the travelers' network with all kind of information the people in the network probably couldn't care less about in an ‘at home’ life.  

Statements like ‘escaping the society’ or ‘leave everything behind’, even though heard all the time are no longer suitable.

Polarsteps Instagram

The reduced prices and the possibilities created by technological development are obviously factors contributing to the increasing group of twentier’s traveling all over the world. All this said, accessible circumstances are not the main motivation for traveling. As mentioned before, an enormous amount of people in their twenties is traveling these days. It became part of their perceived ‘development’. Who are you if you have not been to the other side of the world? What can you say if you have not been overseas?

Ask google ‘why traveling’ and it provides you entire lists of ‘17 reasons why around the world travel is good for you’ and ‘6 reasons why traveling abroad is important for young people’. People even write complete confessions about why they do not want to travel. They apparently are the ‘strange’ outgroup minority. According to these websites, through traveling people develop themselves and their identity. Traveling became a practice for identity creation, an aspect that is increasingly important in the context of superdiversity: the extraordinary complexity of the social configurations also caused by the digital revolution (Blommaert & Varis, 2011). 

People even write complete confessions about why they do not want to travel. They apparently are the ‘strange’ outgroup minority.

The identity creation of traveling nowadays evolve besides in real-life, also in virtual contexts (Blommaert & Varis, 2011). Traveling is an identity practice, a way to identify yourself and others. While traveling in the 60s, travelers just had one hippie identity nNowadays, ones ‘individual life project’ that forms an identity contains different ‘micro-hegemonies’, different niches of social spheres. People are part of different identity groups in all different ways  (Blommaert & Varis, 2011). This is fed by the use of modern technology who provides information about these micro-hegemonies. The traveler is not changing identity, but only is more active in the particular micro-hegemony of ‘traveler’.  While in the meantime, they also orient other parts of their lives to other centers of micro-hegemonies.Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Blommaert & Varis (2011) made a framework to describe  identity practices. The identity discourses and practices are the practical features travelers use to express their identity. These practices are for example the spiritual interests, the ‘free your mind’ attitude, the shithead card game, being stingy, taking a tattoo and posting beautiful pictures of ‘authentic’ places. These practices are not just ‘random’, but always contain an ‘essential combination’ to make sure that they provide the traveler with ‘authenticity’.

Besides the interaction among travelers, the internet is a way to provide people with information on how to do this. The possibility to share your travel experiences online is mean to confirm your belonging to the backpacker community and to maintain the backpacker identity formation (Mascheroni, 2007). Furthermore, the internet is used to participate in online forums. These online interactions are symbolized by the gift and reciprocity economy which is typical for the backpacking culture. So in this way, participation in these forums is also a form of maintaining the backpackers' identity, even while being at home.

These practices are for example the spiritual interests, the ‘free your mind’ attitude, the ‘shithead’ card game, being stingy, taking a tattoo and posting beautiful pictures of ‘authentic’ places. 

To give an example, I experienced a problem myself while backpacking last year. My friend and I did not know what to do while being robbed, so we asked help on an online backpackers forum. Another member of the group helped us out by answering my question in a very extensive way ( 300 words). For answering this exten, the member received 32 likes and loves of other members. The amount of likes shows the appreciation of this group. The person's position is strengthened and other members know what is appreciated. Of course, goodwill is probably the main motivation to help people the way this woman helped us. Yet, the openness of the forum and the likes make it a practice to confirm identity, an identity practice.

All these identity practices from different micro-hegemonies together form partly the behavior of a person's. What looks like a spontaneous picture or post on the internet, a simple game or an honest interest, contains a whole cultural script to establish one's identity. The rules of these scripts are created and spread by the ‘experts’. These experts are the most liked, most unique and most followed people who visit all the unique places.

An example of these ‘experts’ are travel influencers, who inspire the ‘learners/followers’ on where to travel, how to look and how to make pictures to be an ‘authentic’ member of the travel identity category. But of course, the fact that people all follow the same ‘leaders’ results in less authentic outcomes. For example, by posting pictures of the visited destinations, people show the world their ‘authentic’ experiences. On the first eye, the pictures look authentic, but as visible on the Instagram pages below, they are everything but authentical. This Instagram collects travel pictures of different people who made almost the exact same picture.

'Unique' pictures https://www.instagram.com/insta_repeat/?hl=nl

'Unique' pictures https://www.instagram.com/insta_repeat/?hl=nl

'Unique' pictures https://www.instagram.com/insta_repeat/?hl=nl

This following behavior is the same as what is happening with travel destinations. The ‘leaders’ of the travel micro-hegemonies are so influential, they are able to influence, and with that ruin complete destinations. Take the example of the Figure Eight Pools in Australia. A few years ago, this was a little known natural pool. But once this place was discovered by a few famous Instagrammers, the place became unbelievabl popular (Hutchinson, 2018). It became even so popular that, when you take a look at the national park website now, they warn you not to come:

 ‘Pick a better spot for a selfie. Instead of breaking a limb at Figure Eight Pools, take photos at some other beautiful places. Avoid the crowds that Figure Eight Pools is now infamous for’ (NSW National Parks, n.d.). 

Besides ruining beautiful existing places, completely new ‘authentic’ places and rituals arise. MacCannell described this phenomenon as 'staged authenticity' (1973) what refers to the creation of authentic local culture impressions for tourists. Tourists want to investigate to enter back regions because of the association with the intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences. To fulfill this need, tourist settings are arranged to produce the impression that a back region has been entered (MacCannel, 1973). If this is true or not is not relevant anymore since it is only about the experience. 

Take for example the place Sahngri-La in China. After James Hilton wrote in 1933 about this mysterious place, people got interested to visit it. It should be an authentic, Tibetan place with no influences of outside. There was only one little problem; it did not exist. The old town of Zhongdian had economical problems and came up with the idea to just create and become this magical place. The old Zhongdian is destroyed and a new Shangri-La is built in 2001 with big marketing campaigns. After a fire in 2014 that destroyed ‘old town’ (only 13 years old), the authorities choose to reconstruct the brand new Shangri-La in an authentic Chinese look, and Shangri-La became a fake ‘authentic ancient town’, like many others in China (Smart Trip Platform, 2018). So today, 17 years later, Zhongdian changed from a real authentic city to two different other fake 'authentic' cities.

Apart from creating new destinations for experiencing 'authentic' moments, the market mechanism of the authenticity market reacts to the question by creating fake experiences in a more harmful way than building new towns. Taking the example of orphanages in Cambodia. Volunteering is seen as a real 'authentic' experience to truly get to know a culture. Searching on Instagram at #volunteeringcambodia gives you the following results.

#volunteeringcambodia https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/volunteeringcambodia/?hl=nl

Websites of highly profit volunteer organizations advertise with quotes like ‘authentic experiences’ and ‘help to make differences’. It will leave you with the idea that their could not be anything wrong with this peacfull activity. But in fact, by volunteering at these orphanages people create new ‘fake orphanages’. UNICEF reported that only 28% of the orphanage's' children in Cambodia are in fact orphans and the number of orphanages is even rising while the number of orphans is decreasing.

The reason for th ‘fake orphanages’ is the demand-supply gap in the market mechanism of volunteering in orphanages, which is fixed by creating fake orphans just for making money. Families from poor rural areas got manipulated to send their child to an orphanage to pleasure good willing and unknowing western volunteers (Vargas, 2017). 

Authenticity in traveling has become a common good where everybody is looking for. The world has become an Ikea of experiences to buy. Commodities like a stay at a specific hostel or a trip through the jungle are packaged as cultural objects like a life improving experience. These commodities are promoted by the ‘experts’ and ‘leaders’ of the identity group and they promote that by buying these commodities, you buy a bit of the identity.

What can be concluded is that the perceived freedom of a lot of travelers is a myth and that the ‘authentic’ experiences are mostly fake as well. Every place is already visited by tourists and influenced by them. You have to, at least, been almost dead, lost and found by a local and spend a night at a hospital to come home with an 'authentic' story. So what are the next steps in this search for authentic travel experiences? Are people intentionally get lost in dangerous jungles? Is dark tourism expanding to current war places for experiencing authentic and original experiences? And do countries react to this movement by starting fake civil wars then?

References

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture & Society, 7(2-3), 295-310. doi:10.1177/026327690007002017

Blommaert, J., & Varis, P. (2013). Enough is enough. , 143-160. doi:10.1075/hsld.2.10blo

Bom, S. (2017). 'Als je geen verre reis maakt, is je leven niet compleet.'

Groundwater, B. (2017). Why backpackers aren't fun anymore. 

Hutchinson, A. (2018). Instagram Is Ruining Some of Australia's Most Photogenic Locales. 

MacCannell, D. (1973). Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings. American Journal of Sociology,79(3), 589-603. 

Mascheroni, G. M. (2007). Global Nomads' Network and Mobile Sociality: Exploring New Media Uses on the Move. Information, Communication & Society, 10(4), 527-546. doi:10.1080/13691180701560077

Mdgadvertising.com. (n.d.). How millennials killed travel marketing as we know it [PDG]. 

NSW National Parks. (n.d.). NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service | Home | NSW National Parks. 

Paris, C. M. (2010). Understanding the Virtualization of Backpacker Culture and the Emerge of the Flashpacker: A Mixed-Method Approach. Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2009, 25-35. doi:10.1007/978-3-211-93971-0_3

Smart Trip Platform. (2018). The sad truth about Shangri-La ? is it really worth going?

Vargas, N. (2017). How Orphanages in Cambodia Trick Travelers.