Josie pulls the camera back to show the viewer how big the blocks are. Just one of the stones used to build the pyramids is taller than Josie. The usual questions start to surface: the blocks weigh tons—how did they do that?
Josie brings up the idea that aliens built the pyramids.
“It’s offensive,” she says, and turns the camera to her Egyptian friend.
“Have faith in the power of brown people,” he says.
Josie is leading the conversation. She’s leading every conversation. She’s making a travel vlog called “100 hours in the ‘scam capital of the world’ as a woman”. She’s looking for statements and experiences that show Cairo is not full of scammers. Almost every person she comes across is asked to respond to the idea online that tourists should avoid Egypt unless they want to be scammed.
She’s travelling with a local friend and an Egyptologist – she’s making a travel video that makes me think she’s trying to find the ‘truth’ about Egypt. With local and expert help, it feels like her video might be a source of truth. But something is still missing.
Josie is interrogating a harmful narrative, she’s leading every conversation, she’s got an agenda – but it feels like she never really turns the camera. Which I think, is to say, she doesn’t let conversations evolve, she’s in control the whole time. Her worldview, her agenda.
She’s not an anthropologist, but I think there is so much travel vloggers can learn from anthropology. Specifically cultural relativism. It’s a practice where you leave your assumptions, expectations, your culture at the door – and let people show you who they are, what they value and how they do things. That’s why we go travelling isn’t it? To experience other ways of being.
Most travel vlogs feel more like safe consumption guides. Showing you where you can go and consume places and culture, without having to risk being changed in any meaningful way. Never really connecting with the place or the people.