It's because just the act of going outside costs $29.99 minimum and any participation in social activity is $7.89/hr or more.
Even the outdoors is heavily commodified, if you're in a city it's blatant, but even the smaller towns and suburbs, the parks and natural areas are only accessible by car, or you need a permit, or you have to purchase new shoes or a backpack, or supplies.
The Main Street areas are patrolled by police that will tell you too move along if you spend too much time in the public space without buying anything, every other block is plauged with chain stores that all look the same with the interspersed boutiques now all selling the same kitch they found online.
The Internet is just the elevated form of reality, a distilled version of the hyper normalized commodity fetishism of the real world.
I've long since lost any interest in travel, especially within the US, because any unique character that distinguished one part of the country is either gone, or horrible. The same stores, chains, and products are available everywhere, with maybe a handful of regional variations that have been getting smaller every year. Every city has the same kinds of daring cultural fusion restaurants, the same theaters I can't afford, and the same shitty pop-punk-folk anarchist music scene. Unless it doesn't, and there just isn't a local music scene. It's all completely homogenous now. Everyone watches the same TV shows, everyone works the same shitty jobs, everyone lives in either the same shitty little apartment, the same overpriced luxury yuppie box, or the same alienating and horrible suburban tract house.
I’ve long since lost any interest in travel, especially within the US, because any unique character that distinguished one part of the country is either gone, or horrible.
"Prestige cities" are a very real and ruinous phenomenon and they're found worldwide. The world's being made more bland every year by chasing techbro-approved glass and steel aesthetics.
It's because just the act of going outside costs $29.99 minimum and any participation in social activity is $7.89/hr or more.
Even the outdoors is heavily commodified, if you're in a city it's blatant, but even the smaller towns and suburbs, the parks and natural areas are only accessible by car, or you need a permit, or you have to purchase new shoes or a backpack, or supplies.
The Main Street areas are patrolled by police that will tell you too move along if you spend too much time in the public space without buying anything, every other block is plauged with chain stores that all look the same with the interspersed boutiques now all selling the same kitch they found online.
The Internet is just the elevated form of reality, a distilled version of the hyper normalized commodity fetishism of the real world.
I've long since lost any interest in travel, especially within the US, because any unique character that distinguished one part of the country is either gone, or horrible. The same stores, chains, and products are available everywhere, with maybe a handful of regional variations that have been getting smaller every year. Every city has the same kinds of daring cultural fusion restaurants, the same theaters I can't afford, and the same shitty pop-punk-folk anarchist music scene. Unless it doesn't, and there just isn't a local music scene. It's all completely homogenous now. Everyone watches the same TV shows, everyone works the same shitty jobs, everyone lives in either the same shitty little apartment, the same overpriced luxury yuppie box, or the same alienating and horrible suburban tract house.
"Prestige cities" are a very real and ruinous phenomenon and they're found worldwide. The world's being made more bland every year by chasing techbro-approved glass and steel aesthetics.