Uncharted Thoughts.

Not ‘cool uncle’, more like ‘clout chasing losers’

AI FREE ZONE

I have no idea if the term ‘bro tourism’ has yet been coined, if not, you heard it here first. Bro Tourism is a relatively new online fascination, predominantly used by men visiting dangerous locations across the world in an attempt to be the ‘cool uncle’. Another term that is found in this strange fascination of being idolised by people for being the ‘black sheep’.

Its a strange self love and self pride that makes those in the ‘bro’ club think themselves some kind of explorer or brave adventurer. As though they are unbound by the norms of society, and that they are experiencing life at its maximum potential. The truth, is quite the opposite.

Instead of igniting a fire of inspiration and awe in the people they meet, they come across as weird, kind of goofy, rich kids that have no real friends or direction in life.

While I have visited a lot of countries, some poor and some considered to be on the ‘dark tourism’ list, at no point do I consider myself a explorer. Like them, I use public transport, access Visa entry points and understand that the ‘3rd world’ isn’t so far from the reality of our very own countries.

Yeah the traffic is bad, the food can be weird or nasty, but everyone has cars now, even in outback of Zimbabwe people have phones. Like, these ‘bros’ think they are captain cook, finding uncharted lands, meanwhile we can all just zoom in on google earth and see what they see.

One guy, Harry Jaggard, really really grinds my gears. He’s this middle class guy from the South of England, if I had to guess, he’s probably from Summerset or Devon, and has this arrogance and flippant way of just being unlikeable. He posts all these Instagram shorts of him being in this mock podcast where people ask him questions like ‘Who are the kindest people in the world’ and instead of saying Canadians, or there are kind people and bad people everywhere. He goes on these tangents about Pakistani people, or Afghans, or Iraqis, in an attempt to show off where he has been.

As someone who has visited Pakistan, and met Afghanis and Iraqis, I found them to be polite enough, but no where near as happy, polite and kind as others.

Anyway, more about these idiotic content creators. Harry, and other Youtubers under the ‘Cool Uncle’ cringe tag, walk around these desperate countries and make light out of the situation a lot of these people are in. They’d visit Afghanistan and laugh with the Taliban, joke with all the boys and men while never addressing women being publicly flogged, forced to marry their oppressors or exiled from public view

They’d visit the Sudan and run wild with men across the desert in buggies, or visit churched in the mountains. Laughing and joking while women are having their clitorises cut and their vagina brutally deformed by filthy razor blades.

Sometime ago, ‘cool uncle’ Harry Jaggard visited North Korea to run a marathon. He filmed himself laughing and smiling in a stadium filled with North Korean subjects. To think he never addressed that fact millions of North Korean starve each year, that they are the most oppressed people on the planet and he is one of so many thousands able to visit each year.

Now we should never walk around our entire life in shame of our abilities to do more than others. I am not asking Harry and his ‘bros’ to never travel, that would be as arrogant as they are, but its the blatant narcissism and propaganda they are fueling that is the issue. Visiting Afghanistan and saying how lovely it is, without addressing the real issues there is false advertisement and dangerous.

It undermines the reality of the people living in these situations. It’s complacent to the will of barbaric governance and, all a while, lining the pockets of the exploitors.

Additionally, I never see these ‘bros’ contributing to the countries they visit. I’ve never seen them advocate for a charity of that country, advocate for a human rights group there or even show any sort of investigative work that highlights the reality of everyday life there. It’s all ‘look what I’ve done, tell me how cool I am’.

I imagine they’d argue ‘we expose the real Afghanistan’ or that ‘we are contributing by exploring places tourists wouldn’t usually go’. No, you’re not. You chasing cloud and forming this narcissistic opinion of your own ‘work’. You’re jobless, and kind of sadistic.

To be honest, I think you are lame as hell. Exploiting people in their home country for financial gain and clout. No one down the pub wants to talk to you, your family probably find you insufferable and everything you have done, has been done before.