Things I hate #472,816

Trigger warning: it might just be you

It’s taken a minute, but I’ve found the rant. I hope I’ve not torn shreds off them yet, but the vibe is strong.

The goddamn Digital Nomad.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a digital nomad is a person who can earn money on a computer. There’s a little bit of nuance to it, in their eyes at least, but the reality of it is essentially that. So, basically that means anybody on planet earth can become a digital nomad. For the last year, I’ve had an unreasonable number of interactions with people who live a ‘digital nomad lifestyle’. A great many of them are coaches who coach coaches on how to become coaches (read: circlejerkers), and now there’s even more AI-automaters (read: vanguards of the future OR absolute snake-oil salesmen, depending on the person, inclining to the latter), with a shitload of marketers in the mix for good measure.

Full disclosure, I make my living on the marketing crumb. Well aware I’m part of the problem. This piece is part-critical analysis of parasitic behaviour, part-brutal self analysis.

The lifestyle was glamourised post-pandemic, (on more than one occasion, when I’ve mentioned that I have been living overseas since 2017 people have said ‘oh wow, you started nomading pre-pandemic?!’), and the barrier to entry has never been lower. Especially in a place like Vietnam, where $350 a week can get you a good life. But fuck me sideways, they come in all shapes and sizes, and about 5% are people who should be allowed out of their birthplace. The other 95% shouldn’t be allowed outside their house.

What does it take to live in a foreign country?

This is an important question you should ask yourself before jumping on a plane and heading somewhere new. If your answer is ‘an internet connection, Airbnb, and the ability to ask waiters if they have wifi before ordering a meal or a coffee’, you’re exactly the kind of dickhead I’m taking aim at.

How do you navigate around a place you’re unfamiliar with?

Another hugely important question, and again, one you should ask yourself before leaving your birthplace. Spoiler alert: if you need Google Maps to navigate around your city of birth, do the rest of the planet a favour and stay home. Nobody needs another numbskull on a 50cc moped paying absolutely no attention to how they are navigating already chaotic traffic, because they’re too busy trying to understand where their navigation system is directing them.

And by the way, the place you’re looking for is straight ahead on the huge, busy main road, because you don’t have the necessary curiosity to turn from a straight road more than twice.

How do you behave when you are in a new place?

If the answer is to proclaim loudly, everywhere you go, that it’s ‘SO CHEAP’, obnoxiously overlooking the fact that minimum wage in the place you’re visiting is less than $1 an hour, again, this piece is about you. Yes it’s cheap, but it won’t be for long, and guess who’s to blame for that one? You. And me. But mostly you, because you also go to franchise coffee shops, as you think that local places won’t have Wi-Fi connections strong enough for you to have seven hours of online video calls for the low, low price of a single coffee.

For what it’s worth, the locals, and myself, are deeply grateful for this one small blessing.

Do you have a boss, in another timezone, who will require you to work eight hours a day?

If the answer is yes, you are in no way, shape or form nomadic. You are employed. Do everyone a favour, and work where your office is. Because soon enough they’re going to be calling you back home, and boy oh boy the rest of us can’t wait for that to happen. I would add 5% to my tax bill every year if that could be implemented globally, immediately.

Is your preferred method of enjoying a new place to listen to the soothing, unfamiliar sounds of the latest AI-generated bullshit on a Spotify playlist in wireless Airpods?

If yes, again, everybody hates you. You’re in an entirely new place, filled with sights, sounds, smells, and textures that are entirely foreign to you, and instead you are choosing to stay in the comfort and familiarity of the known. Nobody hates a music lover, but everybody hates having a conversation with a person who is half-out of the audio reality. Also, 2010 called, nobody cares that you are an Apple user anymore. The flex is pisspoor.

How do you like to engage with people you meet as you journey through life?

If you prefer to ask where you’re from, how long you’ve been in town, what you do for work, where your favourite coffee shop is, and whether or not I have Instagram, everybody hates you.

Jesus fucking Christ, people, you’re in a new country meeting total strangers. Surely every single one of them might have something a little more interesting to share with you than where they’ve been and what they do to download currency on their laptops.

Although, after having interacted with a shitload of them this past year, my hopes are fading pretty swiftly that they have all that much more value to add to a conversation.

What is your default response when, by virtue of the fact that you don’t speak the native language in the country you are trying to order your coffee, you inevitably receive the wrong order?

If the answer is to bitch and moan about how they’re so useless in this country because they couldn’t get your order right, Stay! The! Fuck! At! Home! You’re in a foreign place, don’t bring your homegrown needs and desires with you.

The property market is not what you are used to; the meals are not what you are used to; the traffic is (probably) not what you’re used to. And none of that means that what you’re used to is better, it’s just different. Don’t bang on about how the country you’re in would be ‘so much better if it were more like’ your own country. Go back to your own country and do everyone else a favour.

Also, stop ordering a caramel decaf matcha latte with oat milk. If you want them to get it right, order a coffee, and take what you’re given with a smile.

Who I’m not talking about.

There’s a shitload of people who have taken up the lifestyle of digital nomadism because they aren’t welcome in their country, or they’re fleeing war, or they’re genuinely keen to collect new experiences in life. And they very rarely exhibit all of these behaviours. I will say, I’m being harsh with the maps one, I get that plenty of people are directionally challenged, but as to the rest of the points I maintain a hard line.

The people who left their country with a real reason beyond the fact that they can just do their job somewhere else and benefit from geoarbitrage (a fancy word I learnt after speaking with digital nomads. It essentially means hyper-economic privilege because you earn a stronger currency) are typically the most interesting ones to speak with. They might ask you where you’re from, but very rarely will they ask you where you were before here, or what you do etc. You just find yourself having a conversation with a human, and learning about why they are where they are, what makes them tick, and how they show up as a human in the big, wide world. Who would have thought that such a thing was possible?

They also have a tendency to want to establish roots in the places they stay. Their life is not dictated by weather seasonality, or visa rules. They try to build community and they show up regularly, because they are living in one place. These are people with whom you can build genuine friendships with because they’re not shipping out in 90 days to Costa Rica or Bali or Thailand, only to return in 270 days when it’s the next nomad season in the place you’re in.

Now, you may think this is all very harsh and bitter. But there’s a reason I’m making these reflections. The fact of the matter is this: the person establishing some form of roots is, far and away, the happier person in their life.

Nomadism is sold as some wonderful dream, but all is not what it seems. If you are not someone who makes friends easily, or craves deep connections, or doesn’t know how to handle stress, you are going to collapse under the pressure of living in a foreign country, and you’re not going to have a good time.

You’ve got a solid two weeks of figuring out how to get from your airbnb to your favourite cafe with Wi-Fi, all the while trying to learn how to cross the street, then another two weeks before you find the energy to take out your Airpods and have a conversation with the person next to you who is also working US hours. Then you’ve got two months to develop that relationship, and hopefully enjoy the place you’re in, before you ship up and off to the next place. Not to mention the potential for accommodation jumping in between. Living out of a half-unpacked suitcase gets real shit, real quick.

But when you’re there to stay and you’ve got a rental contract, you’ve driven your moped around and gotten lost enough to recognise landmarks, and can get yourself home comfortably, the experience changes.

The Digital Nomad is a Tourist. The person who lives in a place they are not from is a Traveler. Tourists are one of the worst species on this planet. Travelers share stories and spread culture across the world, not with force but with passion. These are the people who should embrace a nomadic life. The rest of them should stick to four weeks of holiday per year, as permitted by their boss, and do their part to decrease their touristic footprint on the planet.

The great irony is, of course, that the vast majority of this plague comes from ‘conscious, socially progressive countries’ (read: rich), and they extol a lifestyle of net-zero carbon emissions. Leaving aside the 3-monthly airplane trips, the price of this lifestyle on the social fabric of every place this community sets its sights on is devastating.

Everybody with no patience or travel savvyjumps into an apartment at $600 per month, singing ‘it’s so cheap’ all the way to the bank, meanwhile a genuine local apartment costs under $200. The effect of this is, collectively, all of the locals are priced out of their own market. Da Nang is being ripped apart in record speed and will collapse in no time under the weight of all the new development being poured into it, and tourism is the absolute cause of it.

Finally, it makes people like me feel embarrassed to be seen as not from the place we’re in, because we are associated with you. ‘Oh look, another white guy! He must also be an obnoxious bellend who comments on how cheap everything is, before driving away on a shitty rental moped with his iPhone secured poorly to his bike, no doubt 15 seconds away from losing said iPhone as it falls out of his phone holder, only to then stop in the middle of the traffic and cause an accident. Geez, I wish they’d stay home’.

That’s what everyone is thinking when they see you.

Or maybe it’s just me.

/end rant.

Happy (belated) Full Moon.

Nick, out.