Every time Josie asks the question, the person she’s asking it to, looks taken aback. It’s not a nice question. It sounds more like an insult.
“What would you say to anyone who thinks Egypt is full of scammers?”
It makes me cringe, because here is a person just going about their daily life, who now has to defend themselves, their friends, family and neighbours against an insult that originated somewhere on the internet.
The answers are almost always the same. Every country has its bad apples, but Egypt is not full of scammers.
Josie is making a travel vlog. It’s aimed at her Youtube audience, and it’s titled to stand out against the other travel vlogs that tell people not to visit Egypt because it’s full of scammers. Hers is called “100 hours in the ‘scam capital of the world’ as a woman.”
It feels like western travel vloggers on Youtube, usually British, American and Australian, are trying to shape global perceptions of Egypt. They decide which stories will be told – the more inflammatory, the more views they get and ad revenue they get paid – and the further their messages travel – sometimes to tens of millions of viewers. One American goes as far as calling on travellers to boycott Egypt.
It reminds me of the first travel writers, who followed the colonial trail, judging people based on their own way of life and painting everything that wasn’t the same, as lesser, irrational, dangerous, not evolved, etc (before cultural relativism). In those days it helped justify the subjugation of European colonies. White outsiders are trying to influence who visits Egypt – a country that relies heavily on tourism.
Why does tourism feel so much like a type of modern colonialism?
When you look at how tourist heavy places are built up to cater for tourists, and where locals can’t afford to live themselves, and instead have to serve that tourist economy, it starts to resemble a more sophisticated, less violent, form of colonialism.
The social structure in these places are two-tier. Language shifts to accommodate the tourist. New local culture can’t evolve in those places because locals can’t afford to put down roots, and traditional culture is essentialised and frozen in time for the entertainment of visitors.
Is tourism, as it’s being created today, a from of modern colonialism? What would tourism look like if it was created by locals? I imagine fewer all inclusive hotels.