Business Insider Magazine Craps All Over Digital Nomads
One badly written and researched article unfairly damns all remote workers
I’ve seen a lot of bad takes about digital nomads since I started nomading myself back in 2017, but “How digital nomads are ruining tropical paradises” by David Kushner is one of the worst.
Let me be clear about one thing: there are definitely downsides to the increase in the popularity of digital nomading. Just like there are downsides to all aspects of tourism, including cruising, air travel, and Airbnb.
Of course, there are also downsides to, well, virtually everything.
Let’s start with the title: “Digital nomads are ruining tropical paradises.”
Gosh, I had no idea that before us nomads came along, Hawaii wasn’t overrun with tourists from the continental U.S., Bali had no drunk Australians, and Vietnam had no difficulties with their many Chinese tourists.
Just to be clear, the number of actual digital nomads visiting tropical places is dwarfed by the number of other kinds of tourists, and it probably forever will be.
Mr. Kusher claims nomads are ruining some of the most “remote” places. His supposedly fantastic example? The Mexican beach town of Tulum.
Which is a two-hour drive from Cancun.
Which is literally one of the most popular vacation destinations in the entire country of Mexico.
“Remote”? Please.
What’s most aggravating about Mr. Kushner’s piece is that he uses Tulum — which, frankly, most digital nomads agree has become something of a tourism disaster — to damn the whole movement.
That would be like me claiming Business Insider proves online journalism has become nothing but clickbait-y, sloppy journalism based on one badly written and poorly researched article.
How poorly researched?
For starters Mr. Kushner confuses the Thai city of Chiang Mai with that of Chiang Rai, claiming a fraud and rape allegation from 2017 still has Chiang Mai reeling. His proof that Chiang Mai — er, Chiang Rai? — is still reeling?
None. Not a single quote or fact.
But he uses the four-year-old scandal to try and connect the problems with Tulum’s drug cartels to the wider world of digital nomads causing problems. (And drug cartels were a problem in Mexico long before nomads came along.)
To call it weak is an insult to the word weak.
Mr. Kushner also writes, “Unlike the hordes of tourists who come and go for a few days, nomads create a permanent strain on local infrastructure.”
Did he seriously write those words with a straight face?
Sure, individual tourists come and go but they are instantly replaced with more tourists creating an equally permanent strain on local infrastructure.
In fact, the strain of new tourists is almost certainly higher, since they’re probably eating and going out more, and cooking and staying home less.
To see proof of this all one has to do is look at, well, Cancun, Mexico; Phuket, Thailand; or Papeete, Tahiti, all “remote” tropical destinations that were ruined long before digital nomading came along.
Whatever editor let that doozy of a claim slip by needs a good talking to.
Plus, rather than staying in large resort hotels and eating at chain restaurants, nomads tend to stay in apartments owned by locals (like our current situation here in Istanbul), shop at corner grocery stores (like our current situation here in Istanbul), and eat in independently run restaurants (like our, well, I think you get the picture).
Another whopper Mr. Kushner drops on us is “The idea of living in Instagramaritaville isn’t new, but it took COVID to make these pop-up communities viable.”
Seriously? When we started living as digital nomads four years ago, major digital nomad hotspots already included Bangkok, Ko Lanta, and Chiang Mai (not Chiang Rai!),Thailand; Hoi An, Vietnam; Bansko, Bulgaria; and Tbilisi, Georgia, just to name a few.
COVID didn’t make these places viable as nomad communities. In most cases, the pandemic badly damaged them and their economies.
Mr. Kushner goes on and on to describe the negative consequences of digital nomads, all based on some people in Tulum. He calls them “blue-toothed boobies” and mockingly mentions healing crystals. And he points out that some nomads were irresponsible for refusing to wear masks during the pandemic.
But literally every community includes some self-centered, silly, and/or irresponsible jerks. Why would the nomad community be any different?
If his article had been titled, “Tulum: What Happened to One Place When a Bunch of Jerks Came to Town During a Pandemic,” I’d have no beef with it.
But instead, Mr. Kushner makes sweeping and inaccurate generalizations based on what are clearly his own preexisting prejudices.
If there are downsides to the existence of digital nomads, there are upsides as well.
Bulgaria is one of the poorest European countries, and its economy has been struggling for years. The influx of nomads to the mountain resort of Bansko has injected much needed revenue to the economy, especially during the summer months which previously saw almost no tourism at all. Nomads have also reduced the massive oversupply of housing that existed from the Great Recession of 2008.
And ask residents of Tbilisi, Georgia, how they feel about digital nomads. After Vladmir Putin suspended flights to the country in 2019, the city went out of its way to court nomads to help replace some of that desperately needed tourist revenue. When we visited, the locals seemed incredibly happy to have us there, with one organization even matching nomads with local workspaces to create a sort of informal cultural exchange.
In fact, that’s been my experience all over the world. Unlike typical tourists, most nomads stay long enough to get to the know the locals personally — and they also make a point to do so. Both sides are enriched.
I know I sure have been.
Nomading has given me a chance to connect with LGBTQ rights organizations all over the world — and also helped me help them connect with each other.
I don’t know the reason Mr. Kushner has such an ax to grind with nomads. Was it a bad personal experience? Or maybe he just thought he’d get a lot of clicks pushing the popular but wildly inaccurate stereotype of nomads as trust fund babies and all-around self-centered jerks.
But I do know he did a disservice to Business Insider, his own reputation, and a movement that isn’t perfect, but still has a lot to offer the world.
Michael Jensen is an author, travel writer, and content creator. Subscribe to my free travel newsletter at BrentAndMichaelAreGoingPlaces.com, or follow me on Instagram or Twitter.
