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Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

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Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#191

Post by devonkim »

knd775 wrote: post #97
mijamo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland is pretty damn expensive, probably one of the most expensive nature destination you can find, together with Norway (although Switzerland probably still wins the prize).

I went there in the winter (when things are generally a bit cheaper) a couple of years ago and it wasn't too bad. Food, however, was incredibly expensive everywhere. No where else have I spent nearly $20 USD for a meal at a fast food restaurant.

Every other person I know that goes to Iceland subsists off of hot dogs. For dining out at restaurants in Reykjavik, the cost has been comparable to tipping well at middle to mid-upper US metro establishments that aren’t chain restaurants ($20-$25 / entree as of 2014 when I went).

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#192

Post by cgriswald »

balabaster wrote: post #109
sillyquiet wrote: post #5

I call this the 'Disney World' effect of nature tourism. Self-involved, entitled people who treat national parks and the wilderness like an amusement park that has been set aside for their entertainment. They expect the natural world to cater to their whims the same way a Disney world employee does, and they just do not understand that's not how the world works.

It's worse than this - their entire life needs to be Instagram worthy. Everything they do is in the name of getting the next perfect shot, so they can influence others in the name of social advertising to make a quick buck. They either become proficient photographers, videographers and writers or they team up with those who are, capitalizing on the latest trends in photography to consolidate their brand. The problem…

Nice rant, but the problem described by the GP has been there since long before social media. (Since I was a kid in the 70’s at least.) At best, social media exacerbates the problem but I’d say growing population and wealth have had a bigger impact.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#193

Post by close04 »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #76
close04 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That escalated quickly. In law there is a principle of proportionality [0]. It's the reason why jaywalking isn't punished by 60 days in prison or by getting sent back to your country and banned from ever travelling to any country that has pedestrian crossings. Also laws should apply equally to everybody. How would such a law apply to locals? Withdraw citizenship? I think hitting them with fines or paying damages is a…

You will probably be surprised when I state that I agree with you in general. Nobody wants a dictatorial state, which puts you under constant surveillance and jumps on you for the smallest of infractions (Singapore being again a great example). I do feel, however, that this Instagram self promotion shit has gotten so badly out of hand, that drastic measures may really be justified. As the article explains Iceland's n…

> Now, you may think of this what you want, but to the people of Iceland this is important.

I do think it's important. It's a beautiful country. But a disproportionate reaction might do more bad than good. Civilized tourists stop coming when they know a relatively small mistake can literally ruin their lives. And once someone knows they screwed up with witnesses they know they have nothing to lose by doing some additional stuff. And I'm pretty sure some would make the most of it.

Please don't get hung up on the interpretation of my words. The point is any kind of overreaction will without a doubt do more bad than good. It certainly sets a dangerous precedent on treating crimes that are only serious en masse rather than as individual occurrences.

P.S. My original comment was not actually addressed to you but to another fellow commenter who's comment builds on your idea. And the 3-strikes law has nothing to do with racism in my comment, not more that saying people should be banned from Iceland is xenophobic. It has everything to do with how people react when they are faced with disproportionate punishment, the topic at hand. I did add it later, probably when you were already composing your message. Contrary to your assumption it wasn't meant as "intellectual dishonesty". It was just an example to strengthen the point I was making that came to me later, before your comment was displayed on the page.

Edited for clarity and to add paragraph 2.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#194

Post by klyrs »

magduf wrote: post #165
maxxxxx wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our whole society is based on trying to make things easy and convenient. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people have the same attitude towards traveling and nature. Iceland could fix this easily by making places less accessible but then the tourist money would stop flowing. In the end they have to make a choice. Limit accessibility or number of tourists and lose some money or accept the negative consequences…

Maybe they should just forbid or discourage tourists from countries that cause the most problems, such as Britain and the US. I'm sure Japanese tourists never litter there.

Problem being that tourism is one of Iceland's biggest sources of income. Selling out sucks, but starving is worse

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#195

Post by lawlessone »

Juliate wrote: post #35
marapuru wrote: post #27

This quote from the article baffles me: > The good instagrammers try to show different ways of enjoying nature. We don't tag places that are off the beaten path that we want to protect as long as possible. Some places have become "insta-famous" without ever mentioning where they are but eventually they become known to everyone. Wait, what? So you take a picture. Put it on instagram (because you are an 'instagrammer')…

When an instagrammer dies, where go all the likes and the pictures? At least, with paper-printed photos, you have|had material stuff to inherit with some context and history.

You get buried with copies saved to glass discs in 5D!

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#196

Post by lawlessone »

throwaway847272 wrote: post #39

Until recently, I worked at a company that sends these people to Iceland, among other places. Influencers end up in that career for a reason. They are, in general, everything you'd expect them to be: flaky and privileged almost as a rule. They're not bad people per se (no tantrums that I've seen), and are often well-meaning, but most are desperate to be famous. These are the same people who competed to be on The Bach…

>Thus it should surprise no one that they are terrible tourists.

is it even them?

1 instagrammer is ok, if they have 1 million followers though and a fraction of those people follow the same path then everything get's trampled.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#197

Post by serpix »

rtkaratekid wrote: post #161

It's not just Iceland. My wife and I typically travel for the outdoors and we are extremely impact conscious. I've noticed a significant growth in outdoor activity in the last ten years or so. Along with the that growth I've noticed more trash, more people going off established trails when they shouldn't (I'm not 100% anti off-trail travel), more disrespect for others who are trying to escape into nature, more people…

The key is accessibility. If you have a good road then you get people who treat nature as bad as themselves.

The higher up without accessible road or further in towards tougher trails and you start to have people there who have the will and stamina to be there and take the necessary precautions.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#198

Post by cglace »

jacquesm wrote: post #184
cglace wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do be fair, they did say "east asia" and China does make up the majority of east asia by population and land mass.

Yes, but at the same time it is a-typical in its approach to many concepts, apparently including national parks. And even there, given the size of the country there is a very large chance that OP's sample size is small even within China alone. They could have just as well been more specific and simply said 'China' or name the specific parks rather than to write 'east Asia'.

My main point was just that he was not "extrapolating to a whole continent". Which is a nitpick, however, it also makes your nitpick more nitckpicky due to his generalization becoming far less general.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#199

Post by magduf »

tomxor wrote: post #24
justaguyhere wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same everywhere. I still remember going to the NY ball drop new year's eve - all I could see was camera flashes, hundreds of them every second. It was disgusting. I was one of the very few people who wanted to see stuff with naked eye :( Do these super talented artistic photographers see the photos they take, even once, after they have taken it?

> Do these super talented artistic photographers see the photos they take, even once, after they have taken it? Nope, similarly the affect of using cameras in museums has been studied before. In real life it's pretty blatantly obvious that 99% of people don't go to museums and galleries for their interest any more, it's all about being pretentious and shoving as many pictures on facebook as possible so their friends…

I take tons of photos when I go on vacation in a foreign country, but I don't put them on Facebook. I do put them on Google Photos so interested people (who I specifically invite) can look at them if they choose. (GP also has some convenient features, like being able to add descriptions/commentary to each photo, and being able to see on a map where it was taken.)

Getting a photo book wouldn't help me though. I like to take photos of many things that tourist photos don't show: random city streets, bicycles, vending machines, cars, graffiti, other tourists, locals, shopping districts, residential districts, trains, signs, Apple stores, grocery stores, etc. I like to try to capture what life is really like in a place, good and bad, and a book of tourist photos isn't going to show you that.

Re: Iceland tire of tourists trashing their nature

#200

Post by magduf »

justaguyhere wrote: post #96
prawn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, my kids and I often go back through my travel photos and reminisce. They are almost all on Instagram (plus a local copy). We’re not climbing over safety ropes to pose though. Think of photography in that situation like a hobby, just like people might want to learn programming languages or whatever. There’s a personal sport to it - challenging yourself to get a great shot or document what you’ve seen. Each to the…

The difference is we aren't disturbing anyone while learning programming languages - the biggest nuisance I can think of is a newbie writing wrong/out-of-date tutorials on the web. Whereas photography by its very nature can be super annoying to others - you have to be polite and wait for some dumb tourist is taking a photo of his girlfriend, you can't enjoy anything in peace with flashes going off all around etc.

>you have to be polite and wait for some dumb tourist is taking a photo of his girlfriend

Actually, you don't: I usually just take a picture of them taking the photo of the girlfriend.

As for flashes, these days with everyone using their smartphones, the phones are smart enough to usually not activate the flash when you're outside. It's not as bad as the "old days" when I used to see dumb tourists with disposable film cameras taking flash photos of the Grand Canyon at night, thinking somehow they were going to light up the entire canyon.

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