“What would you say to anyone who thinks Egypt is full of scammers?” Josie asks the woman who had just shown her how to make Egyptian bread. It’s not the first person she’s asked. In fact, it might be the 8th or 9th, as far as I can count on the video.
Josie is exploring whether the online warnings about Egypt being unsafe or scam-ridden are true, and she’s made a travel vlog about it for her YouTube channel.
In many places, people see this kind of stereotyping as lazy and harmful, and no way of getting to the truth of a place. (In another field note I write about how generalisations like these were once used to justify the subjugation of Egyptians by European colonisers.)
My first instinct is to be grateful for someone like Josie, who is going out to Egypt to counter the narrative that Egypt is full of scammers. Josie does a really good job in her videos, showing women that the world is safer than what they’ve been led to believe, and that they should travel alone like she does. But, I can’t help but think that while she is creating a story that shows the opposite, she is also keeping the sammer
Most people she speaks to look taken aback by this rumour. Almost pained by the idea that their neighbours, friends, and family are considered scammers, and now they’re being asked to defend them.
It makes me wonder: is countering the narrative reinforcing it? Is it not better to tell a story that is rooted in its own reality, rather than trying to prove even a gross exaggeration wrong?
Towards the end of the video Josie admits that she’s let fear-based YouTube content shape her expectations of Egypt – but she has also let this content shape her entire video of Egypt.
I can’t help but feel that there used to be an innocence to travel vloggers – as in, travellers with cameras who just wanted to share their experiences online. More recently, it feels like there’s an agenda. If it’s not countering conflict in the ideas space, it’s chasing views (and ad revenue) and turning every trip into a story, complete with villains and heroes.
Wouldn’t it be way more fun and exciting to not watch travel vlogs before visiting a place? And just discovering it for yourself?