{"id":20653,"date":"2026-04-03T12:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T20:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/?p=20653"},"modified":"2026-04-03T18:16:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T02:16:16","slug":"media-the-narcissism-of-travel-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2026\/04\/03\/media-the-narcissism-of-travel-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Media: The narcissism of travel writing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I covered this topic before &#8211; it is well known that travel writing has fallen into narcissism &#8211; in large part because the focus on self is done to compete with social media such as TikTok and Instagram. Writers and editors know that this style generates more clicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-social-panic wp-block-embed-social-panic\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"hjrsrP7NNE\"><a href=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2025\/12\/20\/media-how-travel-writing-became-self-centered-narcissism\/\">Media: How travel writing became self-centered narcissism<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Media: How travel writing became self-centered narcissism&#8221; &#8212; Social Panic\" src=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2025\/12\/20\/media-how-travel-writing-became-self-centered-narcissism\/embed\/#?secret=WwHlZiIdOk#?secret=hjrsrP7NNE\" data-secret=\"hjrsrP7NNE\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s a snapshot from Business Insider today, re-enforcing the description &#8211; stories are about the writer, not the destination. 90% of the time, its a young woman highly educated at a private university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"841\" height=\"841\" src=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-362.png?wsr\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20654\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-362.png 841w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-362-600x600.png 600w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-362-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-362-768x768.png 768w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-362-270x270.png 270w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 841px) 100vw, 841px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>And just down the page from that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"833\" height=\"709\" src=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-364.png?wsr\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20656\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-364.png 833w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-364-600x511.png 600w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-364-768x654.png 768w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-364-317x270.png 317w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 833px) 100vw, 833px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"936\" height=\"838\" src=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-363.png?wsr\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-20655\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-363.png 936w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-363-600x537.png 600w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-363-768x688.png 768w, https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-363-302x270.png 302w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 936px) 100vw, 936px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I was reminded of this topic after attending a local meeting where the guest speaker was a local travel reporter. He spent the first 20 minutes rambling on about his background, even saying he just rambled(!), and then gave his 40 minute presentation, mostly have nothing to do with the group&#8217;s interest area &#8211; but featuring him in several video presentations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Crazy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Modern travel writing is all about narcissism, unfortunately, as it has to compete with social media selfies, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20659,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20653\/revisions\/20659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}