Oh, so there is a word for it: Postmodern Tourism.
Postmodern Tourism defines a growing trend in travel where adventurers visit offbeat or unpopular locations for purposes pertaining to both “personal interest and ironic detachment”. Places that hipsters giddily check into on Foursquare and breathlessly wait for their followers’ confused responses. Places such as Roswell, New Mexico, Flint, Michigan, or Chernobyl, Ukraine. Places that tell a story good or bad, that might give us a little insight into who we are. According to the above The Atlantic article, “urban exploration” has become increasingly popular due to high costs of traveling to less depressing places such as Hawaii, desensitization from the Internet, and society’s expanding enlightenment to how we’re f’ing up the world. Postmodern Tourism has a close relationship with a topic I find very interesting: ruin porn. Ruin porn is the sort of stuff that curious or nihilistic artists get off on. It’s the sort of thinking that drives (more…)