the toxic hedonism of male travel vloggers 

Ah! I see some people (of a specific gender I will not name ahah) being triggered by the fact that the words 'toxic' and 'male' cohabit in my title. I mostly make videos analysing the things I like and the things I don't like about both male and female social media trends, there's nothing new about this one. It's maybe less analytical than usual, I had a bit more fun. And you know what? If it may reassure those who find it concerning that I only talk about men, then yes, I'll admit that all the things I said in the video can also be applied to certain categories of female travel vloggers. I wanted to look at men specifically because it has its own features, men aren't socialised like women. It's funny though that when I do those critical videos with female trends, people don't get triggered like that! But it must be a coincidence, right? 👀 am I right? 👀👀 ahah

That bird was probably vlogging about his exciting trip to Random Woman's Garage 😅

I think those "fake deep" and "profound" monologues are what kept me from falling into travel vlog stuff lol. That and it seemed that most of em were probably secretly trust fund kids who could afford to travel on a whim, which is fine, but the way they make it seem like they're an everyman just taking a chance felt very gross to me. But i get why people like it - the idealistic, adventurous young and free ideals of escaping, life on the road and having the experience of a lifetime. Who doesn't want that? But traveling and adventure is really not as glamorous unless you're loaded.

That bird talked back, nobody can convince me otherwise

Whenever narcissism enters into any activity everything gets fucked up, especially activism and world exploration.

I took about 6 months out to go backpacking around SE Asia and India in a really typical mid-20s middle class guy kindof way. I learned mostly that travel wasn't the experience it was really made out to be. It is, for the most part, not challenging, deep or even that hedonistic. It definitely did not leave me with a feeling of being changed. Tourists live in their own ecosystem. There is a whole economy designed around keeping you comfortable. It is actually quite a challenge to break out of it. While I met lots of people from the UK, EU and US, I had barely any real conversations with locals. While I made some effort to read about the countries and visit the museums, most backpackers did not. Your engagement with the culture feels limited to eating food, walking around town, visiting a temple and going to bars. Travelling from place to place so quickly means that nowhere has a chance to really affect you. Same with the people that you meet along the way. If you want a profound experience, you have to stick with it for a while. Its like the difference between a series of one-night stands and having a partner. The one night stands might be fun and some people might respect your high body-count, but its only when you are with someone for a while that you really learn about each other, you bear your soul and hopefully push each other to be the best versions of yourselves. Anthropologists spends years as participant observers to learn about a culture. Finally, its not as fun as its made out to be. If you like going out drinking every evening in clubs playing the most generic pop EDM possible, you will probably be ok. I went travelling in 2016, so pretty much every night I was listening to Justin Bieber, the Chainsmokers, Skrillex and Kygo. I went to the Full Moon Party, expecting some wild hippie gathering, and it felt like Tiger Tiger but on the beach. I could find better parties happening on my street than most of the parties I attended while travelling. If you indulge in narcotics, then you would also do better to stay home; when you are passing through, dealers have no incentive to give you good product. I would encourage anyone considering backpacking to reconsider. If you want to learn about different cultures, pick one place, choose an activitity that integrates you into the community somewhat, like working, volunteering or learning a skill particular to that area, and stay there at least a few months.

Can you make a video about the fake deep quit your job, move to hawaii, manifestation girlies? Lol I used to be OBSESSED with them when I was a teenager

It’s essentially a “travel” version of Dan Bilzerian’s content. Around ten years ago, Bilzerian was seen as the “king of Instagram,” largely for the same kind of antics I see in these “travel” videos. If you remove the “travel” aspect of these videos, it boils down to the EXACT same thing as Bilzerian’s content.

A couple of months ago I fell into the RU-vid rabbithole of male travel vloggers and watched a few of them to find out what they were about. So yeah, there's a specific genre of this that is decidedly "male" in the same sense that this video seems to get criticism for alluding to, i.e. toxic masculinity. I suddenly found loads of guys traveling to poor places, sensationalizing poverty, crime etc, exoticizing their problems without appreciating the culture, pretending to have chance encounters with young, conventionally attractive women right in the streets and hanging out with them as if it was not obvious that they payed them to play the overly friendly stranger role etc. You will spot these easily enough by their fixation with emphasizing "dangerous" on the titles, or pretending to make "brutally honest" presentations of things like homelessness (invariably trying to inspire hate against homeless people) or by their constant inclusion of "hot women" in the thumbnails. Some of these men make not so subtle comments revealing this is a thinly veiled exercise in sex tourism, or that they were aiming to place themselves as idols for incels (the guy who scores everywhere), or that they enjoy poor countries because in their view poverty would render most women more submissive and themselves as western demigods because they are able to throw some money to their faces. This can also be served with the pseudo-antisystemic sauce of presenting the West as a decadent, failing part of the world, with developing countries being where one should go to live their live to the fullest - assuming that one can still be paid by western standards and use their economic privilege to take advantage of the locals, that is. Of course you can be a guy, do travel vlogs and be a far cry at least from promoting harmful ideas, but I can hardly think of a clearer manifestation of toxic masculinity in the context of travel vlogging than these guys that seem to have inundated RU-vid recently.

The fake deep video you reacted to hit different once I realized they were in my country 😭😭

Hedonism is hedonism despite gender, race and religion.

All kinds of excessive (as in: consuming many non-renewable or slowly renewable resourses) hedonism repel me when I see them.

Being rich and good looking rarely makes someone into a decent person

Totally relate to being 14 and being all "maybe I'm just not like all those sheep who want an office job and house in the suburbs, I'm just so different and special" At the same time though, living in a small, rural town in Canada I am treated like some kind of specimen because I went abroad to uni and spent a year travelling. At my family reunion this year I was literally surrounded by relatives with all sorts of questions and commending me for going travelling. In some places (ie. rural North America) it is still radical to travel somewhere other than Mexico/Cuba for a resort vacation as a holiday. But also I see that quickly changing- the travel influencer space is getting SOO crowded.

The bird did not bother me. Nice background song.

Love this video and how you reflected about "teenager hedonism" takes. I personally can relate a lot to that (and probably most of us can to some degree)

I'd never heard of Cedric Herrou - so great to learn about such an amazing guy! Thank you :)

In defense of the male travel vloggers: It would be interesting to see a statistical comparison regarding the numbers between them and the pretty girls, living almost the same lifestyle paid by their sugar daddies. They create content, which attract viewers and generate income. The girls don't need this, you can just see their photos on the Instagram time to time. Is it fake? Maybe. But I would chose it over a sugar daddy. :)

Imagine if she saw bald and bankrupt

How long until we start getting deep fakes of fake deeps?

Cappelle always concretely identifies societal trends with a literate, philosophical and anticapitalist perspective which seems so rare on this platform, and I‘m a big fan :)

Hedonism is easy to start but is hard to finish.

It has always upset me that as a woman, I could never go on a solo hitchhiking trip no matter how hedonistic I feel

I find it a fascinating caveat that one 'cannot judge these people', for whatever reason. We absolutely can. If we cannot judge eachother as fellow citizens, what's left? Judge eachother as consumers? Wait for God's final judgement? Of course we should judge people, we should explicate what we admire and shun.

So hedonistic female travel vloggers are non toxic?!

First of all, welcome back! Second of all, so heartening to see you in the lineup of ’Creators For Palestine’.

Perfectly said . This is what it truly means to go against the norm. While the world turns to hell you don't join the world in destruction but in fighting for what is right

Also: Utilitarianism started in the industrial revolution to search for a way that everyone could find happiness. The word "pleasure" is not used the way we use it today

What a wonderful video. i am a therapist who works with women, and I often utilize your videos. I sure hope you never stop making them! Love from Arizona!

Why "male"? Same if not much more of them are "female travel bloggers".

Thank you for mentioning the students ❤❤️

One thing that strikes me about travel influencers is they always talk about community among the locals they meet as something they admire. If they want community, why don't they stay in one place for a decent length of time and build up some local connections? Travel can be fun, but it's not (pardon the fake deep quote) the ultimate destination. To think otherwise strikes me as very alienated.

Thank you ma‘am. You reminded me that I must travel more😉

LOGAN PAUL = OYSTER 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

what an excellent video! I thank you for that. We are at the Olympics, and because my country (Brazil) is doing very well in surfing, I decided to watch some films about the sport. I came across a supposed classic surfer film called “The Endless Summer” from 1960. It was a true racist aberration. They were Americans from California who were going to “explore” surfing in African countries and cultures that, according to them, were primitive. I felt that this film (still acclaimed, as incredible as it may seem!) is the embryo of these RU-vidrs who have fun in cheap countries mocking our culture. I say “ours” because unfortunately it's something I've seen too much on Brazilian beaches. Gringos (as we call them) completely apolitical and full of colonial thoughts

Wait honest question, do women not do the same thing with travel blogs? I used to watch both men and women who made that kind of content, I didn't think it was a sex specific thing..

Never heard of them. But they reminded me of the beginning of Far Cry 3 (game released in 2012).

Thank you for this lovely video! I have a sort of different take on these kinds of guys (or just travel vloggers in general with their excessive drone shots and all). Im currently planning my honeymoon and honestly these vloggers have helped me so much in my planning. I get to pan the different takes each vlogger has on different areas, i get to see the locations for myself, they tend to over-glamorize things but i know to keep that in mind, so for me i just owe so much to this culture of travel vlogging! I think its important to keep in mind that what they do is a full-time job, even if it all looks like a huge blast, even if their job is just beach. I need that guy when im picking out beaches! I know Alice knows how much work goes into making content ofc, and definitely these people are kind of shallow in the grand scheme of things (pretending life is as simple as just opting out and becoming the anti-normal free spirit) but i actually don’t believe they are as free as they posture themselves out to be? They provide a service and get rewarded for it. Their goals may be to live a very hedonistic life, but at the end of the day I dont think of it as genuinely hedonistic if its being done as a career, planned out, executed and edited for the viewers' pleasure rather than their own.

This one feels slightly hypocritical. Hedonism is what thrives on social media. Consumerism for entertainment is a hedonist practice and it is everywhere. I get that this one focuses specifically on male travel vloggers, but it feels dishonest to point this genre out specifically. Even though I agree the fake deep stuff and the lifestyle advertisement aspects of it are of course shallow and empty, it feels like this angle is being used to paint a broadly negative picture of a wide group of people trying to experience more of the world. I expected some sort of deeper analysis and elaboration on this but then the video just ended, with the divestment point feeling very disconnected from the whole thing. "The often toxic genre of western men going on travels" god forbid.

I expected a video about actual toxic male bloggers, like those sex tourists making videos while dating poor women in South America or Eastern Europe. Instead, I’m watching drama about some young lads just enjoying their travels and having fun, lol.

You can't even go 5 minutes without scaring a bird and im supposed to believe all women are not evil?

Damn, I was hoping you'd talk about Yes Theory considering they're one of the biggest travel channels out there and they have a ton of fan clubs all over the world. Very interested to hear your opinion lol

there is a subsection of travel vids that actually kind of the opposite where they try to find the "worst places" in the world and then make clickbait videos to showcase the worst of a certain culture. vids titled like "don't go to this place in Bangladesh" or something like that. that's what i thought of what i read "toxic male travel vloggers lol"

I have a much higher opinion of the average oyster than I do of Logan Paul.

The rain noise is really relaxing!

I follow people who fit into the demographic you’ve mentioned. Currently reevaluating my life choices lol

I worked with teenagers for over 20 years. I'm glad you tempered this with the "when I was a teenager" discussion. It's really hard to distinguish rebellion from transformation (particularly when you're young) when you've only grown up in a modern, capitalist economy. Sometimes it takes a while to realize what a "real" life really is.

Alice: "...Jeremy Bentham..." Me: 🎵"Bent-ham's Heaaaad"🎶

The rain’s okay but the bird’s not? RIP bird friend :(

It brings me delight that someone is paying you to read out Trogdor's name every month

You know it's a going to be a good video when Bentham and Plato are both quoted in the first five minutes! This is why I love your videos--engaging and very thought provoking! The camera work is superb as well. Have a great week, Alice!

Most respectful French bird

Aw, I thought the bird was deliberate background music. It sounded nice, like a nature soundscape!

I enjoy some male vloggers mostly bc I don't see a lot of them. I don't really agree with the title as to why we should view them as toxic...

Lighting is really good here. You have like a silver-lining around your hair.

Finally a video about this! I'm so tired of travel vloggers, who just copy all the other ones, and make it look like they are incredibly special in their content and in their ability to travel the world.

Sorry, princess, us boys are having fun whether you like it or not! Besides, you never say anything nice about us anyway, so no matter what we do you're calling us "problematic" and "toxic." We don't need your downer vibes!

Never heard of any of these people.

showing the connection you can develop while traveling and being more present in the moment is uniquely valuable content, i got people in my life who share experiences like that and it can be a beautiful facette of life if you want to engage with it

That birdie legit said “idgaf”

The bird was chill

I felt each one of those facial expressions 8:00

I remember visiting France in 1987,and there was a heavy undercurrent of resentment of American tourists at the time. Having not returned to France from that time,I don't know how French people view Americans at this time,but I can assume not much has changed. Listening to this video has given me deeper insight into this resentment. I also sense some of the anti-male,male-bashing themes inherent in modern radical leftists as well. This particular theme from leftist discourse is deeply antagonistic in a way that I would think that someone needs to redress this. In America and other places in the western world,there is a growing backlash to leftists gender politics,which is really somewhat overdue. Making young men who lack experience into whipping boys for the failures of the western system will not radicalise them to the left. It will radicalise them to the hard right and alt-right. Also, criticizing young men for being hedonistic (especially on vacation) is hypocritical, given that in colleges across the west, women participate just as or even more fully in hedonistic Greek culture and it's debauchery, which supplies easily 70% of the business which abortion clinics engage in. Whether you believe abortion is evil or not, that is a sad record indeed. I agree our young men need to be trained to be more responsible when they go outside their own country,and encounter norms which they aren't always sensitive to. This is the job of parents, who have been put under ever-increasing pressure simply to provide for their children, let alone to fully engage in their moral development. It takes a village, and a village full of drunks and prostitutes isn't going to produce good, morally upright offspring. The state is also a terrible parent as well,however, and serves the short term goals of the rich and powerful. I'm not against capitalism, but I wish that our corporate leaders recognized that the most important product which society makes is it's offspring. Hedonistic tourism is just as much the product of a radicalised left wing,whose subcultures,such as the hippie movement in America and other places in the west, advocated hedonism as a response to the stiff morality of the WWII silent generation, who were trying to pick up the pieces of a world that had seen 6 of the most devastating years of conflict that the world had ever seen, and wanted so badly to return to something like,.....normal. What our young men need is indeed a rebirth of meaning. They also need a clear sense of right and wrong,one free of the constant double binding which the ever evolving moral haphazardness which the left brings on due to constant trial and error. They need simpler rules and simpler relationships. The complexities brought on by moral relativism are part of why most young men retreat from life into video games and virtual girlfriends, and live their fantasies through a few RU-vid content creators,who really know precious little more about life than themselves.

Loved this video - thank you for making it!

Ok now i want your take on bald and bankrupt

redefining what 'radical living' means was pretty interesting. I remember hearing people say the platitudes mentioned in this video when I was younger and always feeling like that lifestyle wasn't as much 'against the grain' as it was gatekept from most people due to money as Alice mentioned; fun video.

Today I learned that I am jealous of oysters.

Could say the same thing about women travelers but probably many don’t post about it as much. I think chasing pleasure is a big issue in our modern dating culture.

By the way, the best reaction video i ve ever seen in my life, so relatable.

Do you know what we need? For everyone to mind their own business and stop thinking that they are ethically or morally better than others

The "Ah, Voilá" made me chuckle.

I really wish we could live in a world where everyone could travel like this. Not just rich fail sons. Lol

I used to think like this, looking to traveling as an act of rebellion and only pleasure (because you are leaving your boring day-to-day life). And reflecting on all of my trips, and seeing the examples of real rebellious acts that you mention, it reminds me of the reason I got in that point in the first place: having buddies who followed that lifestyle from the vloggers you showed, and having them hammering your head with those trips everyday, plus myself, again, having a very boring life and taking 4h trips to the office. It is that desire to get into that state of full pleasure (which you won't, seriously, I can't state how trips generally have its headaches and emergencies). Btw, did you see there is a bird that was vlogging about pranking a RU-vidr?

as a student protestor for gaza who got arrested back in October, finding ways to live in your values, live in community, live in a way that builds the world you want to be in, is so freeing. it is so joyful. so much more joyful than these vloggers can imagine

What I'm taking away from this is that Logan Paul is an Oyster.

great vid, for real. it's been a while since I found a video in which there's some critical thinking. you say that this is not even analytical like your other vids, I'll need to check them out. thanks for putting forward this type of content, really reflective and refreshing.

As always, thank you for your thoughts. I appreciate your detailed analyses just as much as these videos highlighting examples. Over the years, you've certainly nudged where I sit on different issues and provided valuable perspectives that are hard to access elsewhere for me.

you explaining away the agency of the girls is kinda funny acting as if they don't have the free choice to be in a video

Great video, Alice. Just wish it was longer! 😄

As if female travel bloggers are not even worse!

I feel click baited.

That one guy using eyes without a face as bgm is so fucking funny

The lifestyle of never being in the same place and meeting new people is so shallow to me. Its always about connecting ✨, but they will never see people long enough to go through avarage life hardships with them, to share their happiness and be vunerable. Real human conection is not as simple as they make it.

THAT BIRD 🦜

being « radical » doesn’t mean being bad. THOSE WHO say / think that are PEOPLE trying to manipulate. YOU just need to know that there are consequences to YOUR choices, and there could be SACRIFICES (not killing! But do as THOU wilt).

I am so incredibly lonely

Alice , who hurt you? 🤣🤣🤣

Fascinating look. It's also sad because you're not going to appreciate the things themselves as much as you are to erase what you have in your current life. Every time I get home from a trip I appreciate my life a little more for what I missed during that trip. That's what I like about travel.

Hearing the stories you chose to shareI felt emotional and happy. All of a sudden those travel videos seemed so incredibly empty. I got goosebumps. Such an odd discrepancy.

I'd love, if you'd make a video on why life is important, why furture generations are important, why earth shouldn't be destroyed to the point of no life ever.

YOU ARE WONDERFUL, ALICE!!!

Always a treat and inspiration, Alice

Amazing lighting. Nicely done

Yet again, an amazing video 🤍 thank you

I am curious about the gender aspect of this topic. How would you say male travel vloggers are generally different from their female counterparts? Basically, why make this video specifically about the dudes? I have some ideas about how some kinds of hedonism are more available to dudes, especially if it comes to interacting with strangers or having lots of dates while traveling. But this video was so interesting that I would also hope to have some of your thoughts on the gender topic specifically.

Alice, thank you for your videos, they are so well thought-through, narrated and explained. I'm an artist studying fine arts and they really inspire me, because you always talk about such interesting topics that make me dive even deeper in the things and people related to them. Good job and keep doing this!!! :)

I'm really grateful I have no idea who are all of these people you're talking about, and also hope to never hear from then again

I think it's not only fine, but positively great you are living to enjoy your life (as long as its not a superficial or empty enjoyment). Just do so in a way that is sustainable and also good for other people, not just yourself. You can travel sustainably, you can party with enough responsibility (i.e. not compromising your future with addictions!), and you can also, sometimes, mix both enjoyment and responsibility with things like volunteer work, and choosing non-destructive jobs that you enjoy.

5:02 It so happens, travel vloggers would arguably agree with Plato. While they show pleasurable moments, they definitely, like all other travellers, have moments that are unpleasant, enough to provide the contrast that Plato thinks so important. If you have ever walked a pilgrimage, you will know what I mean.

Come on! The bird chirping was so nice 😢