To preserve Earth's treasures, digital silence is golden Social media has made it easy to create large communities and to communicate with them instantly. The downside is that when those communities cross over into the real world, crowds of people can cause real harm regardless of their intent. I recently returned home from holidays on the Island of Hawai'i, where I had the …
Only a fast EasyJet excursion to Santa Cruz de la Palma in the Canary Islands. Best avoid the volcano season though - hence the icon!
Here's a piccy: https://www.inspain.org/en/tenerife/santa-cruz-de-la-palma/beaches/
Vulcano, near Sicily.
Ooh, that looks interesting, I'll take a walk. 30 seconds later I'm hop-skipping across the sand like some kind of lizard, heading for the cooling refuge of some concrete that was merely blisteringly hot ;-)
I suggest you wear something on your feet if you visit such a beach in the summer !
(icon for the temperature)
There's almost always a gentle breeze on the islands but there are certain places you don't want to be if it stops on a sunny day. Black sand or dry rusty dirt - you'll be cooked if it takes you longer than a few minutes to escape. It's an insulator that heats up quickly.
Hell is other people.
Indeed ...
+1
eg:
I cook from age 15, like to eat and am always on the look-out for places where I could eat good honest * food.
I used to share my finds and recommended them among friends and acquaintances.
But I stopped doing it many years ago, well before the likes of Twitter existed.
Why?
Prices rose, food stopped being honest and you were then required to make a reservation.
Not just my doing, of course: it is the eons old word-of-mouth process. (look up gossip)
Social networks have only sped it up: we now have its speed-of-light digital equivalent, which can be both fatal and life saving and like many other things digital, depending on the purpose.
O.
* Those among us commentards who cook know what I am talking about.
tl;dr: no BS, just good food, good service and reasonable prices.
The same issue has arisen with B&B. I used to travel extensively around the UK and it was once possible to turn up in a small town and find a B&B for the night. On many occasions, if the first one found was full, they'd recommend another nearby. But since AirB&B you have to book in advance online every time. Gone is the freedom to roam. And let's not forget that Everest is littered with toilet paper.
The fundamental problem is that convenient access has reduced the need for a significant reason to visit places. Where once one had to be determined and therefore in principle really interested in a destination, it's now possible to just turn up without any such real interest and merely gawp at it. So the numbers rise, and the places get swamped and cease to be worth visiting, as was foreseen by John Buchan in his 1940 autobiography Memory Hold-the-door.
Too many humans are awful, because statistically it includes idiots who don't know better and sociopaths who do but delight in buggering it up for everyone else.
Near where I live there is a lovely spring, impossible to get to in the summer because of the nettles & other vegetation but a sight to behold in winter. Some 'well-meaning' person put markers around so we removed them. Selfish? If too many idiots went too close they would collapse the sides of the spring pool and that would be that.
> because statistically it includes idiots
Not necessary: It's the sheer quantity which creates the problem. Imagine a pretty tropical beach, a dozen people, all is fine. Same beach, 2000 people, it's hell on earth. Throw one used paper towel into the countryside, it will disintegrate well before anyone spots it, throw 2000 paper towels and you've got a dump.
Which actually means that true beauty needs to be reserved for a select privileged few, because else it simply ceases to be beautiful. Sad, isn't it...
"Which actually means that true beauty needs to be reserved for a select privileged few,"
Ah -- sanctuaries. But they're only acceptable if one is included in the said elite.
Maybe a more effective and acceptable alternative is better education for all, so folks become aware of their impact and actively seek to minimise it. Then the numbers might not be such a problem. Intent to harm the environment is extremely rare. The common problems are lack of awareness and negligence, both of which can be amended by appropriate education. But the tourism issue is the peak of an "iceberg". If we don't as entire communities start minimising our impact on the environment we'll be a short lived species.
Maybe a more effective and acceptable alternative is better education for all, so folks become aware of their impact and actively seek to minimise it.
That doesn't work on the assholes or sociopaths / griefers who are the biggest part of the problem. Quite the opposite: it gives them a checklist of obnoxious and destructive ways to be assholes, some of which they might not have thought of.
"Throw one used paper towel into the countryside, it will disintegrate well before anyone spots it, throw 2000 paper towels and you've got a dump."
The problem is thousands and thousands that will also drop mylar candy bar wrappers, bits of food that attracts birds and supports their breeding far too many more birds.
I was at the market yesterday and an employee was collecting the trolleys in the parking lot and I noticed her tossing out bits of paper and other debris before ramming them together to push them into the store. It's bad enough that people had left rubbish in the trolley, but for a store employee to just toss it out in the parking lot to be blown away was inexcusable.
Litter is a big problem, but so is people that will go off the trails, add graffiti and leave marks on trees and other plants. The local hills would be a nice retreat and a place to make some nice photos but the local "youths" have pretty much trashed anywhere easy to access.
Not necessarily. There are a great many "truly beautiful" spots on earth. It's quite possible that basically everyone (who has enough leisure and income for it to be relevant to them) has at least one such spot within a couple of hours' travel.
If everyone just sticks to their local beauty spots, all will be fine. It's fame (virality) that does for them.
In a similar vein is Gary Kilworth's "Let's Go to Golgotha", published in 1975, in which the protagonist goes on a time-travelling holiday back to Jerusalem to witness the crowd choosing Barabbas over Jesus. To his horror he realises that the entire crowd consists of time-travelling tourists.
Flash Crowd - Larry Niven
In this SF, with mass teleportation available, some tourist "hotspots" e.g. Easter Island, keep themselves quiet by not being on the teleportation network
As title suggests, all about big crowds gathering at random places
https://zigstedimension.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/larry-niven-flash-crowd/
'The Blue Hole' (disused slate mine above Fairbourne in Gwynedd, North Wales) definitely a minor those who know - know. Goes on the BBC telly instant swamping of people struggling up the steep and somewhat dodgy path resulting in the usual assortment of injuries, also people jumping off the vertical sides into the flooded workings and um getting it a bit wrong :-| .
Now it's closed off, a wonderful silent oasis denied us mildly responsible people.
Its not just getting it a bit wrong - even entering the water safely can result in thermal shock as the water is bloody cold all year round there. I was in Lake Garda a while back and the water by the shore was 20C or more but the following week a bloke dived off a boat and and wasnt seen again for a couple of days.
Remember the blue hole from the mid 1970's along with the Penryn quarries - riding in the buckets on the aerial ropeway...
There is also the related problem, "we had to destroy xyz in order to preserve it", ie. people wanting visitors.
Take a location in the Geek's Guide, the Lizard Wireless Station at Bass Point. I visited the site back in 1999 (solar eclipse) and revisited in 2017.
In 1999, it was just some concrete footings in a cow field, with preservation, the cows have gone and been replaced by a car park and visitor centre and maintained grass.
Seen similar with Bletchley Park, its a great museum and day out, and will now be preserved, but compared to visiting in the mid 1990's...
Better to keep schtum about the good stuff, and not go plastering it all over the Internets as if it's pictures of what you ate for lunch. Things get passed-on, and before you know it, your "secret" find has blazed its way across Facebook. The wife and I agreed we would not post anything related to our favorite vacation spots on social media - no restaurant shout-outs, no "oh, look at our lovely hotel", and most certainly no "this twisty, curvy country road has no traffic on it and will save you 20 minutes going from (point A) to (point B)". Those are all just glory-seeking types of posts anyway, trying to impress some small circle of "friends" and make the poster look important. Which, yeah, that's exactly the never-spoken-aloud entire point of Facebook, innit?
Judging from her social media (I'm no longer "social"), we're the most boring, stay-at-home people alive. Which is just how we like it.
It did occur to me that telling us where it is is rather against the spirit of the ranger's request.
Perhaps there will be more places like Macchu Pichu which strictly limits the number of visits, and doesn't even allow replacement visitors (so someone else can't go in your place).
It did occur to me that telling us where it is is rather against the spirit of the ranger's request.
I wondered the same thing. The genie has been released if only in words. Might have best just to say someth8ing "I know a place...." without telling where it is or it's name.
The beach (Maya Bay) where DiCaprio filmed The Beach was destroyed by the influx of tourists. It was closed for three years and the Thai Supreme Court has now ordered repair work to be done.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/13/thai-court-orders-repair-of-the-beach-location-maya-bay-ko-phi-phi-leh-22-years-after-filming
Reminds me of a couple of places ruined by people (Instagrammers) trying to recreate iconic photographs.
(1) The lone tree in a lake, eventually had a branch snapped off for the sake of a photo, then vandalized with a saw.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/wanakas-famous-instagram-tree-attacked-with-a-saw
(2) Lavender fields in France, repeatedly trampled without permission for wedding photos.
https://www.paulreiffer.com/2019/07/photographers-instagrammers-stop-being-so-damn-selfish-and-disrespectful/
There is a 1920's abandoned railroad tunnel in the woods near where I live. In the early 2000's only a few of us locals knew about it & could find it. It is partially collapsed, very dangerous, and hasn't been touched since the 1940's. Cool, right?
And that is the problem. Now with GPS & widespread sharing the tunnel location is readily discoverable. To the point of a functional path exists to the portals. It is on the National Register of Historic places with the address unpublished. It is also on BLM land and they don't want anything to do with it (the other BLM - Bureau of Land Management).
Eventually someone will get hurt & here comes the lawsuit. That will force 'something' to be done. Which is likely a few sticks of dynamite to blow the ends closed. Sad, as this has survived for decades known only to the locals, and now the onset of social media & GPS will ruin it for everyone.
There are some locations close to my city which - as a result of Twitter / Facebook are inundated so badly - that the police routinely close access on weekends to all but non-residents - you have to show proof to be let in. And no I'm not saying where they are.
"At the top of the trail the ranger on duty gave my traveling party three instructions: be careful on the descent; stay well away from the ritually forbidden kapu areas at the bottom; and finally, don't share any of our photos of this idyllic spot on the internet."
So, realizing obnoxious tourists' impact, did Dork then leave?
No, he continued onward, with self-importance and contradiction.
May the spirit of Bobby Brady's Tiki idol give the author unrelenting crotch rot.
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