I think it can ping for me. To use a recent example , a plot arc in the TV Series “Call the Midwife” revolves around the entire (all white) cast traveling from the UK to South Africa to help set up a vaccination clinic in a remote village. A large fraction of this story involves interaction/conflict with the local white physician, and because some of the cast (including the handyman, who they brought along on a polio clinic mission to Africa) have nothing else to do, another subplot where they must engineer and pipe in a new water source in a few days time in order to “save the village”.
I couldn’t help but feel a little leery from some of the “white savior” undertones, the lack of much agency from any of the “local” South African characters, and the feeling this was all planned as an “exotic” vacation for the cast & crew (or the TV audience itself).
London’s different, because tourism is only a balanced component of the economy: there’s a lot else going on.
In my town, tourism is big enough that long-term housing is disappearing in favor of short-term rentals (AirBnB and the like). The majority of jobs in the town are low-paying service industry jobs at breweries and restaurants and hotels and tourist attractions. The city government makes decisions geared toward tourist interests over the interests of long-term residents.
It’s not all bad, of course. Jobs are jobs. But there are real tensions, and glossing over them by treating complaints and concerns like hypocrisy is missing a big piece of the puzzle.
But, to see the way it’s characterized as being so endemic to the generation, you’d think maybe that is the life they’ve chosen to “get” (for specific values of “chosen” and “get”). And who are we to say that their vocation of vicarious offense-cataloging is any less an authentic experience than Uday and Qusay Don Jr. and Eric’s “big game hunting?”
I think it’s different for certain “vacationy” spots. Places like London and New York are giant cities that naturally attract lots of visitors and have vibrant, diverse economies. If you go to some smaller vacation towns or cities, there can be a very different dynamic. In some of those towns, there is a large disparity of wealth between the people who live there year round and the tourists who visit. The year round folks might derive their income from the various small businesses that cater to visitors during tourist season while the tourists often have a great deal of disposable wealth and often are disrespectful or indifferent to the locals. In some places, the tourists drive up local real estate costs by purchasing or building expensive seasonal vacation homes, making it prohibitively expensive for the locals who live there year round.
