On my Travel blog, the narcissism of travel writers is documented – it is well known in the industry. Travel writing is no longer about the destination but about the writer: Is travel writing narcissistic? Some think so – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking

The economics of freelance writing reward self‑as‑content – and thus, numerous freelance writers are constantly pitching stories to media outlets like Business Insider, HuffPost, Yahoo and MSN Start news feeds – all competing for the “attention economy” – which is now true for all of the “lifestyle” genre.

The editors at these outlets want:

• “personal essays with a strong first‑person hook”
• “stories that center the writer’s lived experience”
• “narrative‑driven pieces that feel intimate and confessional”

Why? Because these stories:

• are cheap to produce
• require no travel budget
• are SEO‑friendly
• generate emotional engagement
• feel “authentic” in a social‑media‑driven landscape competing with IG posts, YouTube stories, etc.

The incentives push writers to make themselves the product with formulaic content:

• I did this …
• My journey
• Me overcoming something
• My transformation
• My trauma, burnout, breakup, move abroad, financial mistake, etc.

The common elements that led freelance writing down this path:

• Humanities / journalism majors
• Study abroad
• Personal‑essay‑heavy writing programs
• Low‑paying early‑career media jobs
• Freelancing for lifestyle outlets
  
  These writers were trained to write:
• memoir‑style essays
• identity‑centered narratives
• “my experience” pieces

Which get us to this story

I did a job I loved, but now have no savings – and can’t retire like my friends

In this piece, she says she has no money and her friends have ditched her. Yet, see below, she wrote a column saying she’d spent 500,000 pounds on her appearance…

She picked a passion career because she may have come from wealth (she attended an expensive private school, see below):

At 64, and single, my career as a journalist and now freelance-writer does mean I’m facing a miserable sort of penury, thanks to my total failure to make any provision for old age.

In her past writing she describes herself as brilliant and smarter than others: I’m single at 50. Why? Men hate me being brainier than them, says KATE MULVEY | Daily Mail Online

“As we were checking into the hotel, I struck up a conversation with the receptionist in Italian (just one of the five languages I speak).”

Her boyfriend told her, in these words from her own writing:

‘You always have to be the star of the show,’ he continued in our bedroom, as he began to systematically work his way through the mini-bar. Apparently I was argumentative, a know-all and an intellectual snob.”

She then writes the article, linked above, to say she is smarter than everyone else – which seems to confirm what her boyfriend told her, again, in her own words.

Perhaps the problem is her behavior but she does not see it: “I’ve lost count of the times men have rejected or insulted me simply because I was brighter, wittier or cleverer than they are.“

Perhaps not everyone wants to be around self-centered behavior, saying she might not be likable because she is so brainy.

Unlike the canny girls who learnt how to flirt with men from an early age, the brainy ones, like me, were too busy with their books to master the art of flattery. Instead we challenge rather than charm, we control rather than compromise. No wonder men find it hard to like us.

She has a BA degree in Drama (says her LinkedIn Profile, but also says in Italian and French) and attended the private girls-only (and expensive) Godolphin and Latymer School. Godolphin and Latymer currently costs 34,622 British pounds for the 2026 academic year. There is an additional 20% value added tax on those fees bringing the total to 41,546 pounds (US $56,500) per year. Students may attend from age 11 to age 18.

With her braininess, and elite private school education she writes a lot of fluffy articles, often about herself:

• Kate Mulvey
• Why I’m disinviting my unvaccinated friends from my dinner parties
• Why I’ve vowed to only date younger men
• Face it – townie folk like me can never fit in in the countryside
• I’ve spent £500,000 on my appearance hoping to find love. But now at 63 I’m single, mired in debt and living in one room because I can’t afford my gas bill: KATE MULVEY | Daily Mail Online (archive link – https://archive.ph/Jt1R0 – in which she also reveals that she inherited her London flat upon the death of her father. She insists that capitalism required her to spend all this money on her appearance. WTF?
• Or perhaps you are not a nice person to be around? My friends all disappeared in midlife – is that because I don’t have children?

There might be clues hiding in plain sight as to why people have avoided her. At this point, she is not happy about having made bad choices throughout her life (as described in her own writings).

There are many Reddit posts about her – and they are not flattering to the brilliant writer.

Again Is travel writing narcissistic? Some think so – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking – and has freelance writing in general devolved into narcissistic behaviors?