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The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

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Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#21

Post by knobcore »

pbourke wrote: post #17
knobcore wrote: post #7

hipsters ruin everything literally my mantra whether it's last years riots from people wearing 20 dollar red fist shirts from amazon, or jan 6th insurrection by the dude wearing some funky horn helmet thing, or ariel pink, or the guy from vice starting the proud boys, or trump complaining about the mainstream, or fyre festival, or even once you add some edgelordism to it like lil nas x.... hipsters ruin everything. l…

What does this have to do with hipsters? Close to 400M visitors means this is the mainstream. Americans have flocked to their national parks since the first one opened. > like frank zappa said... america is superficial. no real culture, no real art, just fads. Jazz? Blues? Abstract Expressionism? Broadway? Give me a break.

there's a huge difference between serious art and serious cultural activity.

like experiencing national parks for instance, pack in pack out just like i had to do in boy scouts (and hated i'm not the outdoors type).

hipsters are only there for the "hip" factor. hipsterism as a culture is the mainstream. it's basically a cartoon version of itself, and we're worse off for it. people tried to counteract it within art and things like that, however it has no effect because the hipsters just latch onto it and you're back at square one again.

it's almost like we've gotta go back to book clubs and leagues and things like that, or somehow have some kind of platform like this mixed with twitter where you can have some kind of long form serious discussion, with real evidence (even observances). just like that dude said somewhere else in this thread, probably about half or more of these people are just taking photos for insta.

except there's nothing wrong with even that. it's the "just" part, and the lack of general respect for others and their environment. it is a trend that needs to end or we're over as a species and i'm not even making a joke.

somehow, some way, we need to make the lowest common denominator mentality we have made socially acceptable, socially unacceptable, and the design of our social systems and technology need to reflect it.

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#22

Post by gumby »

Most years I go to Yosemite at the end of tourist season to clean up (part of Facelift). Cleaning human waste is one of the least desirable tasks, but even apart from that the amount of lost and explicitly discarded crud is enormous. That's practically the only time I visit a national park at all.

The major parks are in some really really nice spots. And yes, they are quite heavily developed, but they are also relatively accessible.

They are also a tiny part of the wilderness owned by the federal government. Undeveloped BLM land is easy to get to and has few rules. Ironically because of that many of the visitors who travel more than a short distance from the roads are responsible (perhaps not the ATVers and snowmobilers...but they do deserve to have fun too). But you have to be responsible because there is none of the support infrastructure provided in parks. If you get into trouble you're likely on your own.

I don't really like the curated experience of the parks but I am glad it's there. And for some folks, it's a "gateway drug" to the wilder outdoors. Great!

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#23

Post by mjevans »

andrewzah wrote: post #16
space_fountain wrote: post #10

We can have wilderness. The eliteness of this article really bothers me. Why should we be trying to make parks less appealing to people. Again we have wilderness preserves in which we preserve wilderness, letting people experience natural beauty is a different but also good thing

Putting asphalt roads and hotels in Yellowstone for example isn't really preserving the wilderness. Having hordes of people walk around and cause issues with bears/wolves/other local species isn't really preserving the wilderness. Etc. In my experience people don't treat national parks with much respect.

I can't recall a time in my adult life when it was reliable and reasonable to expect respect as a norm. However the vitriol in the US seems to have risen over the last 20, maybe more, years.

These days I really do expect disrespect, at least to stand out as the perceived norm due to how much more common it seems to be. (It isn't really that common, but if you're in a crowd every day over a year, several hundred different people across a couple hundred days, statistics catches up!)

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#24

Post by knobcore »

knobcore wrote: post #21
pbourke wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with hipsters? Close to 400M visitors means this is the mainstream. Americans have flocked to their national parks since the first one opened. > like frank zappa said... america is superficial. no real culture, no real art, just fads. Jazz? Blues? Abstract Expressionism? Broadway? Give me a break.

there's a huge difference between serious art and serious cultural activity. like experiencing national parks for instance, pack in pack out just like i had to do in boy scouts (and hated i'm not the outdoors type). hipsters are only there for the "hip" factor. hipsterism as a culture is the mainstream. it's basically a cartoon version of itself, and we're worse off for it. people tried to counteract it within art an…

note that i'm specific about hipsters because it seems to happen in a few waves.

the first wave are the originals that start something, usually through serious means (ie, through literature, serious study, or whatever - think jimi hendrix right before monterrey)

the second wave is the hipster wave, where a bunch of people who see something cool/new want to capitalize on such new things.

the third wave is the mainstream wave, where now it's just a complete joke, who followed the hipsters because they told them it was the cool new fad.

when in reality, we should be in the first wave all the time, and THAT is what should be mainstream.

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#25

Post by prawn »

knobcore wrote: post #7

hipsters ruin everything literally my mantra whether it's last years riots from people wearing 20 dollar red fist shirts from amazon, or jan 6th insurrection by the dude wearing some funky horn helmet thing, or ariel pink, or the guy from vice starting the proud boys, or trump complaining about the mainstream, or fyre festival, or even once you add some edgelordism to it like lil nas x.... hipsters ruin everything. l…

What you are seeing, and letting yourself get upset about, are the elements catchy enough to go viral and reach you. Strikes me as a superficial take on things.

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#26

Post by [deleted] »

khuey wrote: post #9
zozin wrote: post #4

Get rid of scenic drives/viewpoints and park attendance would crater. Most trails that are more than a few miles long are rarely busy.

Indeed. It's not hard to get a wilderness permit in Yosemite (as long as you don't pick the same five trails everybody else does on a weekend) walk a few miles into the wilderness and see a handful of other people a day. Doing anything with a parking spot is an absolute nightmare though.

[deleted]

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#27

Post by knobcore »

prawn wrote: post #25
knobcore wrote: post #7

hipsters ruin everything literally my mantra whether it's last years riots from people wearing 20 dollar red fist shirts from amazon, or jan 6th insurrection by the dude wearing some funky horn helmet thing, or ariel pink, or the guy from vice starting the proud boys, or trump complaining about the mainstream, or fyre festival, or even once you add some edgelordism to it like lil nas x.... hipsters ruin everything. l…

What you are seeing, and letting yourself get upset about, are the elements catchy enough to go viral and reach you. Strikes me as a superficial take on things.

nah, i'm upset about republicans singing to YMCA or dancing half wasted to rage against the machine with stop the steal signs in the middle of a national pandemic that has killed 500,000 americans.

i'm upset about nobody reading their literature.

i'm upset about this article. it's just the piles upon piles upon piles of things i'm upset about and i could write books on it, but it all reduces down to our lack of seriousness which is a NEW phenomenon. even adam curtis pretty much agrees with me. that's literally the whole entire 6 hours of his new shindig.

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#28

Post by prawn »

space_fountain wrote: post #10

We can have wilderness. The eliteness of this article really bothers me. Why should we be trying to make parks less appealing to people. Again we have wilderness preserves in which we preserve wilderness, letting people experience natural beauty is a different but also good thing

There are also absolutely massive portions of most national parks that are effectively wilderness. You barely have to stray far from a major trail to see no one at all. Go look at satellite maps of Yosemite as a common example - huge sections would be an ordeal to even reach on foot.

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#29

Post by refurb »

andrewzah wrote: post #16
space_fountain wrote: post #10

We can have wilderness. The eliteness of this article really bothers me. Why should we be trying to make parks less appealing to people. Again we have wilderness preserves in which we preserve wilderness, letting people experience natural beauty is a different but also good thing

Putting asphalt roads and hotels in Yellowstone for example isn't really preserving the wilderness. Having hordes of people walk around and cause issues with bears/wolves/other local species isn't really preserving the wilderness. Etc. In my experience people don't treat national parks with much respect.

Go to any national park and you’re lucky if 2% of tourists venture further than 5m from any road or maintained path.

You can have millions go through a a national park every year and 98% of the park will still be preserved with harmless any humans passing through.

Re: The Business of Scenery: Why America’s national parks need new management

#30

Post by jmeister »

knobcore wrote: post #27
prawn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are seeing, and letting yourself get upset about, are the elements catchy enough to go viral and reach you. Strikes me as a superficial take on things.

nah, i'm upset about republicans singing to YMCA or dancing half wasted to rage against the machine with stop the steal signs in the middle of a national pandemic that has killed 500,000 americans. i'm upset about nobody reading their literature. i'm upset about this article. it's just the piles upon piles upon piles of things i'm upset about and i could write books on it, but it all reduces down to our lack of serio…

“Lack of seriousness” ebbs and flows.

Here’s DFW and his contemporaries talking about it in the 90s:

https://www.salon.com/2014/04/13/david_foster_wallace_was_ri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity

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