Functional and Fading in Talat Noi
I’ve noticed something I didn’t expect: I’ve lost the desire to travel the way I used to.
Not because I’m older, or tired, or suddenly allergic to airports—but because the world feels…pre-seen.
Social media did this slow, invisible thing to travel. It didn’t ruin it outright. It saturated it. Every place arrives before you do. Every “hidden gem” has already been geotagged, filmed in 4K, packaged into a 12-second reel with the same music, the same angles, the same “you HAVE to see this” urgency.
And after a while, your brain starts asking a blunt question:
If I’ve already seen ten thousand images of this place, why do I need to see it in person?
Black and White Conversation, Nonthaburi, Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: Matthew Noble
The old hunger was about discovery. Now discovery feels like scrolling. Like consuming. Like watching other people have experiences at high speed—until the idea of having your own starts to feel redundant. Or performative. Like you’re not traveling for the place anymore, you’re traveling to prove you were there.
I miss the era when travel was mostly private. When the best moments weren’t designed for an audience. When a place could still surprise you because you hadn’t already memorized it through other people’s lenses.
Maybe this is just a phase. Maybe it’s burnout. Maybe it’s grief for a version of the world that felt wider.
10jan2026
I truly believe you have just uncovered something that is huge. An answer for so many things that are happening today. This is brilliant and applies to much more than just travel. The surprises of life are being taken away. The reasons to do many things have been erased or demoted. Fun, seeking, wonder and appreciation are being drained from life in ways we haven’t noticed or realized. Your post is a wake up call. There is so much information, so much of everything that it feels as if we’ve done it all without having done a single thing. Thank you for this. I’m going to reblog your post. Thank you for that as well. I just didn’t realize what was going on until I read this.
That’s the weird trap of it: we’re flooded with experiences secondhand, and it quietly replaces the hunger to go live our own.
And yes — it’s bigger than travel. It’s wonder. It’s curiosity. It’s the small surprises that used to show up unannounced and now arrive pre-packaged, pre-captioned, pre-understood. We’re consuming life like content, and somewhere in the scroll we forget we’re supposed to touch it.
I’m really grateful you felt the “wake up call” part of it, because I wrote it as a kind of self-intervention too — not a sermon, more like me holding up a mirror and going, wait… what happened to my appetite for the world?
And thank you for reblogging it. That means a lot. If the post helps even a few people notice what’s been slowly draining the color out of things, then it did its job.
I agree with Gigi. I’ve travelled a lot. Now? I don’t really feel the need to. I might have a couple of places I would like to “see”, but even so… Pre-seen indeed. Thank you for the thought
I get this completely. That “I could go… but do I need to?” feeling is real.
And “pre-seen” is such a strange modern grief, isn’t it? Like the world didn’t get smaller, but our sense of discovery did—because so much arrives to us already digested.
I’m glad the thought landed with you. Maybe the next version of travel (if/when it comes back) isn’t about chasing places, but about reclaiming surprise—even if that’s five blocks from home, offline, no proof required.
Reclaiming surprise sounds like a good programme.
Thank you Jacqueline.
Thank you — I love the way you put that: a programme. Like something you can actually commit to, not just a mood.
Maybe it starts small: one walk without a phone, one café with no photo, one day where the only proof is that you felt more awake inside it.
Really appreciate you reading and taking it in.
👍🏻
Interesting and insightful perspective on travel. I haven’t traveled much out of the US, so I can’t really speak to whether the social media bombardment has held me back. I do wish we were more focused on living and connecting than performing and documenting.
Thank you — and honestly, you don’t need an extensive passport to speak on this. What you said about living and connecting vs performing and documenting is the heart of it.
That tension shows up everywhere now, not just in travel: dinners, friendships, concerts, even quiet moments that used to belong only to us. The documenting can be beautiful, but when it becomes the default, it starts to pull us out of the experience while we’re still in it.
I really appreciate you naming it so clearly. That wish—more living, more connection, less performance—is exactly the direction I’m trying to move back toward too.