I liked this article, but I think the author is conflating her personal experience with a general experience.

There was no pressure to convert your experience into proof for someone else. You didn’t have to optimize your time in a place, check off a list of must-dos, compress Bangkok into a 30-second reel detailing the perfect itinerary.

She is misremembering entire swathes of time. People have been taking pictures and videos on vacation for decades now to brag to others about their trip. This is not new.

That’s how many people did trips in the 80s, 90s, and the early 2000s. They just used guide books instead of the internet and made photo albums or (literal) slide shows. Lots of people seemed to travel just to say they went, since at least the 1980s.

I even went on trips like that with former partners where it was carefully scheduled to hit all the sights. That’s how she traveled, trying to do all of the popular things in a place. In 2001.

Isn’t traveling like this kinda the plot of National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983)? All the different stuff Clark wants to do on vacation? Making “good time”? There was also an Adventures of Pete and Pete episode about something similar in the 90s.

I even clearly remember thinking about how I could avoid being that type of tourist when I first traveled anywhere, in the late 1990s.