Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)

I feel like in countries which are mostly ethnostates, there is a tension around remnants of tradition and the business world trying to open up the culture to gain some new market opportunities (Unsure how to state this more neutrally). I think this tension is interesting and I think that in the U.S it feels like the market systematically has the upper hand.

I am not sure this holds scrutiny so I'd love to read a counter

I think ultimately the conclusion the author reaches is an interesting one, that the real "disease" of tourism is like sepsis. It comes not from without, the tourists themselves, but from within, the changes made by locals to try to capture the opportunities for wealth that the tourists create.

The paradox of the tourist is fascinating. All at the same time, a locality experiencing a flood of tourism will welcome the sudden wellspring of foreign currency pouring forth from the rock, and loathe the disruption the flood causes to the steady pace of life. Anyone who has been a tourist knows what the tourist wants, a break from the monotony of their own culture, a desire to know the other and tread in their footsteps, in some cases a wholesome longing to break down cultural barriers and prejudice. And yet anyone who has been on the other side of the interaction with a tourist feels the heady mix of emotions that comes with the experience of being the toured. The discomfort that comes from the wall being torn down unexpectedly. The inconvenience of disruption in routine. No tourist wants to do harm, but even the most sensitive and well-meaning tourist creates a breach in routine that is disruptive. Nobody likes change.

I think there are two distinct type of "touristy" experience.

1. Culturally important experiences lean towards the prescriptive side. You enter, you are observing or being challenged in something, and it leaves an imprint on you. It is usually a bit discomforting in an exciting way that transforms a part of you in a infinitesimally small, but distinct and permanent way.

2. The unimportant experience is the conforming one, where zero friction is the preferred method of interaction, but it is universally loved in the way high-fructose corn syrup is; it's an economically sound decision to at least try and profit from it.

As an Italian, I feel the exact same.

This guy just doesn't know how to seriously talk about imperialism, globalization and over-tourism from a geopolitical and economic prospective, so instead he talks about things more at his level: gelato, coffee, and quirkily decorated restaurants. With a bad, paternalistic attitude as well.

BTW we all hate those hipster burger places (which now turned to doing smash burgers), and they've been popping up everywhere even in totally non-touristy places. There are fashions and trends in the food business, and many Italians look at that with disgust and take refuge in tradition, but it is often not the tourists fault, it's Italians spending their money there.

Failure to read the room might explain why the tourists persist in the questioning beyond politeness, but not why they embarked on the quest to interrogate the worker to begin with.

My family does this and I can barely go anywhere with them for the embarrassment. Everything is an interrogation. They actually take delight in the waiter not knowing the answer to where the seafood was caught, and then lecturing them about the importance of knowing such things (this is the most common one they pull). That's not just failing to read the room.