The Luck Laboratory

Traveling in search of authenticity

I decided to work a little bit on my book proposal today, which is going to look at vacation and traveling and every day life sorts of things. It’s based partly on an article I wrote for an upcoming issue of Budget Travel. In researching a bit, I read this ridiculous article today in Forbes, “How Authentic is Your Vacation?” It describes a woman who typically spends between $5,000-$8,000 for authentic experiences, like the ability–

to marvel at the Sistine Chapel for a full hour before the doors opened to the general public. Another time, she watched a Bengal tiger–a notoriously elusive animal–sleep for a half-hour while touring India’s Ranthambhore National Park by jeep. Most recently, on a trip to Syria in November, she spotted a man selling fresh flat bread.

Wow–a man selling fresh flat bread? That’s definitely something you can only see for $8,000!

I’m also heartened to know that there are independent management consultants in the world who still have the ability to go to national parks and see wildlife. But I find it hard to believe that getting to a sightseeing spot before other tourists makes your visit more authentic. You’re seeing the same famous crap as the other people with fanny packs you’re making fun of–you’re just getting there an hour ahead of them, lady. In fact, you’re participating in the very definition of artificiality that’s being railed against in the same article: “They also harshly judge experiences that seem fake or contrived.”

So how is arranging a visit to a tourist spot earlier than other tourists not contrived? How is that not fake or created just for your benefit? In nearly every bit of tourism or travel literature that I’ve read for my proposal, the art of traveling authentically, or the act of traveling itself, seems on the edge of perpetual extinction. And unsurprisingly, the tourism industry (occasionally billing itself, to everyone’s horror, the “experience industry,” as if experiences only count when your mother has a hard time calculating the time zone difference separating you) finds a new way to bill foreign experiences as authentic, thus raising the financial standard for what counts as authentic. It’s only authentic if only a few people can afford it; everything else in the world is just a tourist trap.

This has been the tourism industry’s goal since the beginning, when the goal was to go where you couldn’t see others of your socio-economic class, and to push the boundaries of danger while doing so in relative style or comfort. Initially this just had a geographical dimension, but now it’s imperative to add layers of history or politics to parse more meaning. At the end of the article the practice of touring slums in Mumbai, India is detailed, because poverty is “real.”

Of course, this is only an inexpensive way to experience authenticity if you don’t factor in the plane ticket. Would these people pay $10 to take a guided tour of the ghetto in their own city? I’d assume not. I bet they’d say that they’ve already been there and already know what it’s like, or that it’s not interesting to them. But what could be more interesting than something so close to you, so important to your everyday life, that you know absolutely nothing about? Apparently, for these people, it’s the ability to display your wealth and world savvy. A photo of you in a slum in India is a notch in your belt, but a photo of you in a slum in your own neighborhood is just confusing.

At the end of the article, the management consultant advises:

“You have to stop acting like a tourist,” she says. “We’re just here as a guest.”

Diane Haubner, do you really want to stop acting like a tourist? Put down your credit card and frequent flyer miles. Go to the slums in your own city. (To be fair, this is mentioned as a ‘thorny issue,’ but never examined.) Give them the money you would have spent on the plane ticket. Don’t be a wealthy dipshit; just be a good guest in your own backyard. Unless you’re on lots of peyote, isn’t it all real?

Mediabistro on columns

Huzzah! A short feature I wrote last week on getting a column has finally landed in Mediabistro. May I be the first to point out the obvious, that I loved talking with Joel Stein?

The next obvious thing would be to point out that a conversation I had for this very article with Rebecca Skloot resulted in my starting the blog you’re reading… now. So today I’m celebrating the publication of the thing that started this thing. What I’m really trying to say is that I need more coffee, and will publish something of substance later.

The internet makes us stupid, forgetful, impatient—and we make the internet that way

The Phoenix New Times recently reprinted an article I wrote on the effect of having too much music on how we actually listen to it. Because this is the fourth time that the article has been reprinted (original here)–and it’s still sparking random comments on random music blogs–it seems safe to say that the influence of the abundance provided by filesharing, digital storage and the internet is something that many others are thinking about.

You don’t have to be a fellow download addict to be affected by the web, from a behavioral standpoint. This great article in the new issue of The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, looks at the internet’s potential to contribute overall, more lasting changes in cognition, most notably a severely debilitated attention span. In the spirit of futurists, I’d like to present a list of behavioral predictions that I will blame the internet:

1.) A total lack of patience

2.) A lack of an attention span. (Said now to average at 400 words before we get the urge to move on.)

3.) Increased tendency to link ‘it’s on Google’ with ‘it exists.’ I was at dinner last week with a group of friends, when one said, for no reason, “I’m the only person in the world with my name” She proceeded to discuss how her first, middle and last names were a random mix of ethnicities. I didn’t ask her if she’d checked the birth records of every country to get her information. I didn’t mention that typing my full name into Google will yield no results, and yet–as both my mother and that very friend can attest to–I do in fact exist.

4.) Mistaking what’s on the internet with what’s going on in the real world. I know this may sound deluded, but with an entire generation used to getting their news online and seeing little use for newspapers and the like, drawing clear distinctions between sources becomes difficult when The Economist, Wikipedia, and The Obama File are a few links apart. We have the illusion that because we can see photos, we know for sure what’s happening in Asia. When the prevailing attitude of the Digital Native generation is: if it’s important, somebody will put it online. That’s not true, because, partially, of:

5.) The increased reliance on numbers to explain the world. When you are given the illusion of being able to quantify your friends, your popularity, your ranking on Amazon.com (a common obsession for writers), you start to live in a CSI-like “but is that really the case?” kind of world.

Businesses live in this world too. At a newspaper I used to work for, the web editor noticed the number of the paper’s hits decreasing and asked his boss for advice. (Over time, fewer hits means being able to charge less for ads and a crippling loss of revenue.) The corporate web editor, who oversaw the websites of several known newspapers in the U.S., crunched a few numbers and came up with a sure-fire slideshow to feature on the site: a series asking local strippers what they think of the locals who were, at the time, running for office–photos obviously included.

Sadly, I am not making this up. So why don’t newspapers have more thoughtful, subtle, hard-hitting stories? Because even if they don’t admit to it, people would rather read stories about strippers yapping up local politics. Even though you or the majority of people might not admit to it, web traffic numbers don’t lie.  I told that anecdote to a well-known researcher, who pined, “It’s also all about fear since fear sells and keeps people coming back for more.  Fear and sex.  Since when did that become news? How I long for another Edward Murrow.”

Sadly, she’s wrong. It’s easy to romanticize that if there were someone with a glut of ethics in a powerful position in the media, we’d be surrounded by better stories, but that’s not the case. Even if they put out a quality product, very few people would read it. People who disagreed with it wouldn’t believe it, and would go back to Fox News or something else that affirmed their pre-existing ideas. They would search out brain candy to feed their short attention span. The cycle would continue.

The New York Times likes my vacation know-how

An excerpt of an article I wrote for Psychology Today appeared in an article in the New York Times. I discovered that while I enjoy being referred to as Ms. Starr in print, I prefer my name in the byline. Next time, I’ll just write my own article on vacation for them.

Instant messaging means fewer distractions

According to Newswise, a study recently published in the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication by researchers at Ohio State University and UC Irvine “found that workers who used instant messaging on the job reported less interruption than colleagues who did not.” The report goes on to say that using instant messaging was often used for short information queries that otherwise would have been handled in a lengthier, more time-consuming email, in a phone call, or in a–gasp! the horror!–face-to-face talk. People are also using IM to schedule meetings instead of just dropping in. Because it’s also “more socially acceptable” to not answer instant messages, they offer the user an opportunity to tailor the conversation or interaction to his needs. You don’t have to talk to someone just because someone else wants to talk to you.

Granted, this has always been the case. When I was young, I remember my mother letting the answering machine take calls because she was too busy after working and going to  school to have a 5-minute conversation, half of which would be to say “sorry! so tired!” and arrange another phone call.

If emails are like letters without stamps–at best–instant messages are shaping up to be like emails with even less authority. I find it very hard to take anything transmitted over IM with any seriousness or gravity. You don’t know who’s at the other person’s computer, who’s writing it, or what any of them are doing.  There’s no authority to them unless, of course, you’re the person sending the message who really has something to say. I don’t think that IM in themselves are causing few distractions. I think that they’re just another way to annoy us, and therefore helping us to build up yet another layer of noise to ignore.

There’s a difference between important and urgent information that often gets confused. Just because something has to be done soon-ish (you need a pen, you lost your umbrella, there are dirty dishes) doesn’t automatically make it of utmost importance to someone’s overall goals. The major goals we have in life don’t distract us. People gossiping do. People, able to reach out to whomever and for whatever reason, fearing loneliness, contact each other just because. Not because they have anything to say, but just because they have a minute to spare or a tiny, potentially original thought came to mind.

Save those thoughts. Store them. Make a few of those into a larger, more interesting thought, and then give me a call when you have something important to say. And don’t feel bad if other people don’t call you all the time. As Joan Didion would attest to, you already have better things to worry about: “To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves–there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.”

A poor country, rich in art, left with…

Last week’s arteBA, the contemporary art fair in Buenos Aires, included a trio of discussions, “Altering the Tale,” Reactivating the Local Canon,” and “Towards a 21st c. Salon,” organized by Cuauhtémoc Medina. The Tate Modern’s associate curator of Latin American art considered those to be three of the most important issues in contemporary Latin American art.

Prices of Latin American art obviously aren’t anywhere close to Western European prices, despite the recent increase in interest; the record for a Latin work was set in late May, when an anonymous bidder paid $7.2 million for “Troubadour,” a 1945 painting by the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo, at Christie’s.

Still, the Tate Modern, New York’s MOMA, the LACMA in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston have far more money than their Latin American counterparts. Some of Argentina’s best museums have annual budgets of 3,000 pesos, or $1,000, for acquisitions, according to Inés Katzenstein, director of the art department at the University of Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

Though ill enforced, antiquities in India are not allowed to leave the country as a means to preserve that country’s cultural heritage. But contemporary art works are not antiquities, and fall under no such jurisdiction. The only thing that could save all of a country’s most valued works from leaving is money. Marcelo Araujo, the director of the Pinacoteca del Estado of São Paulo, Brazil, admitted that Brazil was being outbid by Houston, running the risk of having Brazil’s most important cultural works permanently exported.

But how could a museum in Mexico compete with the prices that the Tate Modern is willing to pay, as in last year’s $300,000 acquisition for Carambole with Pendulum, by Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco?

Could Araujo pay $300,000 for Brazilian modernist Mira Schendel’s Untitled 1963? Or $170,000 for Colombian’s Maria Cardoso’s Cardoso Flea Circus?

Katzenstein discussed Museum of Contemporary Art in Rosario, Argentina’s method of coping with such meager financial resources: aggressively soliciting artists to donate their own works, tapping into their sense of social responsibility. While relying on donations has been working in Rosario to some success, there’s a danger in going into permanent crisis mode. In time, even shrill alarms can fade into the background. And try asking every artist to forgo a spot in the international market.

During my brief interview with Medina after the conference, local gallery owners from South America brooded over him like a rock star as they doled out business cards and flattery. In their eyes, right now, the highest bidder will always win.

arteBA in the Guardian

I’m so excited! I’ve just begun writing for the Guardian, one of the dailies in London and a paper I’ve always greatly admired. My first piece was about arteBA, last weekend’s contemporary art fair.

Note to Obama: I wouldn’t mind being your VP, either

Dear Barack Obama:

Congratulations on winning the primary and becoming the official presidential candidate of the Democratic party. I want us to win, so listen up:

For one: I feel your pain. My name, like yours, was suspiciously absent from the Michigan ballot! I have reason to believe that it was also omitted from the AK, HI, ME, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, NM, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, and WV ballots. (Thank you, good state of Wyoming. On a related note: screw you, “voters” of Wyoming!)

However, over 17 million Americans have recently voted for me. Granted, these were not “typical votes” in the “primary season.” “Votes” are merely a social construct made by male chauvinist pigs. I’m counting things like internet hits, awards I’ve recently won, the number of websites to which I have a username and password, and all of the languages I mangle on a daily basis. But because you’ve had the gall to count caucus states, I don’t really think you’re beating me by that much. You’ve also had the gall to count so-called “primary states,” showing total disregard for some of my core demographics: Argentines, Miss South Carolina and others incapable of filling out voting cards, the dearly departed, kids, my mother, and the people who make Burt’s Bees.

Why do I have the vote of the makers of Burt’s Bees? Because, in addition, I have the coveted bee vote. Which is just as good as the Latino vote, since legally, there are probably more bees living in the U.S. than there are Latinos. (But I could get them, too, because I can say things like “I’ll make soccer, donkeys and mullets illegal unless you vote for us” in Spanish.)

Unfortunately, I’m not a cash cow like you and can’t afford any sort of committee to investigate why my name was left off of the ballots, but I do have Google. And I suspect it has something to do with 9/11.

On behalf of all 17 million Americans who have recently voted for me, I would like to announce that I would be willing to entertain an offer of the vice presidency. My résumé is more or less here. (Please note that due to restrictions, I wasn’t allowed to upload my boss CV, which reveals my lack of a husband, meaning that there’ll be less yelling in your campaign. My lack of a husband would likely also get the “frumpy women” vote, which has thus far been split between Clinton and Dennis Kucinich.)

It’s true, it probably sounds a little garish to be saying I’d be willing to accept the nomination when it’s typically an honor that you, the nominee, offer to someone else and are lucky to get. Anyone would be glad to accept it. But, with the exception of this sentence, I’ve never mentioned your potential assassination. Other people have. In my mind, that should count as a “strike” against them, while my tact deserves a gold star.

Speaking of tact, let the record show that I’d also be willing to accept a free ride to graduate school, a Mini Cooper, an apartment, a book deal, a foot rub, a lot of money and a pink pony.

I’d be happy to help vacuum the infamous “Cheney stench” out of the vice presidential mansion, a reported blend of Old Spice, Ben-Gay and the lemon-peppermint scented version of Mr. Baisley Sherman’s Foot Powder for Seriously Evil People. I’d pick out a sweet Snoopy sheet set for the guest bedroom and not think twice that you were being sexist to have me make such trivial, domestic decisions. Let’s be honest: right now I’ve got nothing better to do.

Obama and Clinton on the internets: case studies

Like a blind man with a selective magnifying glass, the internet amplifies whatever we happen to upload, leading to things like the MySpace-driven suicide of Megan Meier or the long-term haunting of those college days. But when it’s your job to have the largest presence possible, where do you start?

Barack Obama, famously, began as a community organizer in Chicago, rallying people towards a common cause people s background as a community organizer seems to spill over into his increased reliance on social media. He created myBarackObama, his own social networking site; used techniques to excite people about little tasks like ‘enlist 5 friends!’; he used the hell out of YouTube. It’s an example of how the Long Tail, personified, can lead to a grassroots supported campaign raking in millions of dollars. By engaging his supporters in social media, they’re more likely to pass along the info, giving him free advertising each time the meme is repeated within someone’s social circle. He also used technology to microtarget and look at the best ways to connect with people: voters in Maryland got text messages to remind them to vote after his team concluded that that’s what would reach them. Chris Hughes, Obama’s online technology coordinator, is one of Facebook’s co-founders.

By contrast, Clinton’s website looks more like a news site with a little area for buying t-shirts. Many voters were confused when, during her Town Hall meeting, their online questions seemed to disappear into the ether. Though it was supposed to have created a feeling of transparency, it ran like any other Town Hall meeting with the opportunity to email questions.

People want transparency. Usually, being tech savvy doesn’t made a big dent in the voting booth. In fact, for a few presidential cycles, the candidate who created the most online buzz didn’t win the primary: McCain in 2000, Dean in 2004; even Ron Paul’s candidacy was short-lived despite a strong online presence. The difference during this election seems to be the critical mass: using this technology is no longer a niche phenomenon; instead of just middle schoolers, mothers are some of the fastest adopters of SNS, text messages, and mobile games.

So how exactly does technology influence voter behavior? Voter motivation is nearly impossible to quantify, we already have scads of evidence from communication and psychology about reinforcement and social circles. Because of the seemingly limitless amount of info that 20-somethings or people with desk jobs are exposed to, it’s impossible to tune the election out, especially when it’s being reinforced by friends tens of times a day. Having the meme repeated daily by your network—instead of a top-down advertisement—is much stronger advertising. The only one that really works today.

The Buffalo Bills at CBGBs in Buenos Aires

Over the weekend, I went to arteBA, Buenos Aires’ contemporary art fair, to enjoy it and write about it for the Guardian (UK). Later Friday night, I saw a few bands at a club named “CBGB,” including this one:

Please note that while this wasn’t a part of arteBA it damn well could have been, as the kid is wearing a t-shirt bearing the likeness of the Bills/Cowboys Superbowl XXVII match up, smacking of both Modernism and Surrealism. For him, I’m sure it’s ‘hip’ and ‘ironic’ and ’so culturally irrelevant as to be named culturally relevant,’ but for me it was just kind of awkward. And funny.

This kid could not have been older than 17, which would make me his senior by 11 years. For him, this Superbowl is so past and distant as to be completely irrelevant. Granted, when I was in high school, I started wearing those kinds of vintage shirts with ridiculous references that were totally foreign to me; obscurity was the point. And I’m sure it’s his, too.

I could discuss travel and globalization in the way that’s arguably been done to death (Korean theatre groups doing homages to Brad Pitt!, etc.) but what I really want to know is: where the hell did he get that shirt? How far has it traveled? How many people have worn it? When was the last time someone wore that shirt who saw the game?