The Gamification of Wonder
I am currently rubbing the corner of my thumb against the glass of my phone, obsessively clearing a smudge of sweat and sunscreen that has blurred the map for the seventeenth time. The humidity here is 77 percent, and the air smells like a mixture of frying garlic, stagnant canal water, and the expensive perfume of the person currently elbowing me in the ribs. I have spent the last 47 minutes on a series of increasingly improbable modes of transport-a sky train, a motorcycle taxi that smelled of menthol, and a long-tail boat that roared like a dying dragon-all to reach a ‘secret’ coffee shop I saw on a reel three nights ago. The creator promised it was ‘undiscovered.’ They promised it was ‘authentic.’ They promised a liminal sanctuary where the soul could rest.
THE REVELATION:
I arrive at the wooden pier, expecting a hushed silence and the clink of a single porcelain cup. Instead, I find a queue of 27 people. They are all holding the same brand of smartphone. They are all wearing the same ‘effortless’ linen sets. They are all waiting for their turn on the single picturesque stool that overlooks the water, positioned perfectly under a drooping bougainvillea branch. The stool is not for sitting; it is for performing.
This is the new cartography of the 21st century: we aren’t mapping locations anymore, we are mapping backgrounds. We aren’t traveling to see the world; we are traveling to prove we were there first, even if we are actually the forty-seventh person in line that hour.
The Frictionless Explorer
It occurs to me, as I watch a woman reposition her sun hat for the 107th time, that we have successfully gamified the very act of wonder. Travel used to be about the friction-the missed connections, the bad meals, the strange conversations with people who didn’t want anything from you. Now, we treat cities like levels in a video game. We are on a treasure hunt for ‘hidden gems,’ but the paradox is that the moment a gem is identified, labeled, and geotagged, it ceases to be hidden. It becomes a commodity. It becomes a set.
100%
We want the feeling of being an explorer without any of the actual risk or discomfort of being lost.
We are obsessed with the idea of ‘discovery’ in an age where every square inch of the planet has been indexed by a satellite. We want the feeling of being an explorer without any of the actual risk or discomfort of being lost.
Authenticity Beyond the Viewfinder
My friend Ana S., who spends her days as a therapy animal trainer, once told me that humans are the only species that will ignore a perfectly good sunset because they’re too busy trying to find a better angle to see it through a viewfinder. She works with dogs who understand authenticity in a way we’ve forgotten. A dog doesn’t care if a park is ‘undiscovered’; a dog cares about the smell of the damp earth and the physical sensation of the wind.
Ana told me about a client who spent $777 on a private tour to find a ‘hidden’ waterfall, only to spend the entire two hours complaining that the light wasn’t hitting the water correctly for a video. The waterfall was doing its thing-it was being water, it was being gravity-but for the client, the waterfall didn’t exist unless it could be converted into a digital asset.
The Curatorial Violence
I’m standing by the canal now, and I realize I’ve become part of the problem. I’m annoyed that these other people are here, as if my desire for a ‘private’ experience is somehow more noble than theirs. It’s a classic contradiction. We want to be the only ones who know the secret, but we also want to tell everyone about it once we’ve found it.
Optimized for Focal Length
Smell of Jasmine & Humidity
There is a certain violence in this kind of tourism. We arrive in a place like Bangkok, a city of 10 million stories, and we demand that it conform to the 7-second clip we saw online. We ignore the 117 other stalls selling better coffee because they don’t have the right aesthetic.
The Alternative Movement
I decide to walk away from the line. I don’t take a photo of the stool. I feel a strange, twitchy anxiety in my chest-the phantom limb of a missed opportunity. My brain is telling me that I’ve wasted the $77 and the three hours it took to get here if I don’t have the proof.
This is the part where people usually offer a solution, but I don’t think there is one that fits into a neat box. The algorithm is too strong, and our lizard brains are too desperate for the hit of dopamine that comes from a well-received post. But maybe the answer lies in a different kind of movement. Instead of chasing a ghost on a screen, you might just hire a Bangkok Driver and tell them to go anywhere that isn’t on a ‘top ten’ list.
Unshareable Moments
We need to reclaim the right to be bored and the right to be unimpressed. The ‘hidden gem’ is a lie we tell ourselves to justify our consumption of the world. The truly profound moments of travel are un-shareable. They are the moments of genuine connection that happen when the camera is off.
Online Reel (47 mins ago)
The search for the ‘authentic’ starting point.
The Alleyway Discovery
Silence found when chasing nothing specific.
The Unpainted Temple (37 mins)
Sitting, sweating, being present. No photo taken.
I sit on a stone bench. The stone is hot. I don’t take a photo. I don’t check my notifications. I just sit there until my shirt is soaked with sweat and my legs ache. For the first time in days, I feel like I’m actually in Bangkok, rather than just passing through a digital layer of it.
The Secret is the Silence
The hunt for the hidden gem is a hunt for a ghost. We are chasing a feeling of exclusivity that can’t be bought or mapped. We want to feel special, but being special is a lonely business. The real joy of travel isn’t in finding the thing that no one else has seen; it’s in seeing the thing that everyone sees, but experiencing it in a way that is entirely, stubbornly, and quietly your own. The secret isn’t a place. The secret is the silence you find when you stop trying to narrate your life to an audience of strangers.
The Ghost
Chasing exclusivity is chasing nothing.
The Feeling
The city does not care about your aesthetic.
As I finally flag down a taxi to head back, the driver asks me if I found what I was looking for. I look at my phone screen-still clean, for now-and I realize I have no idea. And for the first time in 47 hours, that feels like exactly the right answer. The city is alive, and life is inherently messy. It cannot be contained in a 9:16 aspect ratio. It can only be felt, briefly, before it shifts into something else entirely.