this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
1202 points (96.3% liked)

memes

18123 readers
2073 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/Ads/AI SlopNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.

A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment

Sister communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day ago

That's because tourism heavy economies have a tendency to screw over low income locals to favor high income tourists.

[–] just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Its funny how the blame is on tourists who have to pay exorbitant amounts but not the owners of the property. Its almost like the exploitation of people whether tourists or locals is just the divine nature of our world so it must be the fault of tourists (or immigrants in other places) and never the owning class

In places like south Spain and Greece the "tourist" have outbid the locals and are the owning class.

It's not like they're hating on backpackers living in local hostels. It's hating on the people pricing them out of their own cities. And then renting it out as an Airbnb in the "off season" for 10x the local rent.

There's even a television show dedicated to this new colonialism https://www.aplaceinthesun.com/

[–] Binette@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

Strange. Scrolling through all these comments and no one pointed out colonial tourist countries. Like how do you even defend tourism in general when shit like that exists?

[–] gmtom@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Whoever made this meme doesn't live in a city where new houses are bought up to be turned into shitty airbnbs

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] chemicalprophet@slrpnk.net 18 points 1 day ago

The tourists love the town for how it was before they got there. We did too…

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (10 children)

It's getting tiresome to constantly explain this shit...

Tourism is almost always an extractive activity, kinda like mining only it sells a place's natural beauty and/or culture built by previous generations rather than whatever is dug out of the ground, and like mining it suffers from it's own version of the Resource Curse:

  • Most of the population isn't needed to extract that "resource" and there's no need for those who work in it to be highly educated or have much of a quality of life
  • Most of the gains from Tourism end up in a small number number of hands and don't really trickle down
  • Tourism has all manner of destructive side-effects, from actual natural environment destruction and overcrowding to massive realestate bubbles that push out the locals.
  • It's kind of a silver bullet for politicians, especially for the crooked ones, since they don't really need to invest in the broader population and their welfare to get themselves lots of money from Tourism, be it from thankfull Tourism Industry companies or from the value of their own realestate investments going up thanks to the realestate prices going up as the Demand for space (and, in the era of AirBnB, the actual residential units) from Tourism adds up to the normal demand from people living there, pushing prices up like crazy.

Tourism can be a good thing for most people in the kind of place like a little village in a developing nation with mainly primary sector industries at a subsistence level, because it brings better jobs than subsistence farming or fishing and which reward some level of education (enough to read and write in English), plus it brings money from people from much richer countries, but it's a totally different thing when we're talking about established cities in nations which are supposedly developed because there it brings jobs which require lower educational qualifications than most people there have, because of the side effects of Tourism (such as the above mentioned realestate prices and overcrowding) which make it hard for the existing Industries already present there to profitably operate and finally because it isn't even a path towards becoming a richer nation since the kind of customers it has to attract are those from already rich nations which aren't crazily ahead in the income scale, so it has to remain cheap enough to attract them hence it's wealth production abilities is in the main capped because of having to stay below that of those nations - you're not going to build a modern and advanced powerhouse nation with an industry that sells sunshine and old buildings to foreigned from modern and advanced powerhouse nations whilst employing people with mid-level or lower qualifications: you can bring a developing nation up with it but you can't use it to push a developed nation all that much up from poor developed nation with Tourism.

People inside the Tourism Industry love it because they personally make money from it and Politicians love it because their "generous friends" make money from it, they themselves indirectly make money from it and they can be completelly total crap at managing a country and Tourism still keeps on generating money because it mainly depends on natural beauty and/or ancient buildings and people with low and mid levels of Education that don't even need to be locals so the fatcats in nations underinvesting in their people still make lots of money from Tourism.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

I used to live in a Northern Wisconsin town almost entirely comprised of tourism and snow birds for an economy from May to September. Most were people from Chicago and Milwaukee that moved "a little too fast" for someone who lived in the area, so they were easy to spot.

Once school started up, the place was an absolute ghost town. All of downtown completely shut down except one bar. The hotels either shuttered during the winter or operated a single floor of rooms. The population would drop by ~80%.

I loved living in The Great Northwoods of WI, as it's absolutely gorgeous up there half the year, but I don't miss standing at the bus stop when it's -40F wind chills or shovelling out my car to drive somewhere.

Stargazing was incredible in the winter, though.

[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 day ago

Europe is like that nowadays. Rents have skyrocketed only from Airbnb and the tourists. Why rent it to a local when a tourist will pay more? Not to mention it ruins the economy. If another covid happens, market will crash, like the one in the USA.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 35 points 2 days ago (9 children)

People need to realize it's not the locals that decided to base their economy on tourism at some town hall meeting. Where I live the government moved all the industry to different parts of the country and allowed for huge real estate development that turned the area into tourism based economy. At the beginning it's just extra jobs and people are happy about it but at some point it starts displacing locals and people start complaining.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 52 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

The problem is usually wealth inequality. The residents have to compete with the tourists for resources, but most of what they could get in return gets gobbled up by late stage capitalism. Most people who have a direct relation to tourism to how it benefits them in their lives have no problem with it.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 150 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (16 children)

Having experienced life in a city with a heavy tourism influence, it's not the tourists that's the problem, it's counterintuitively a select few locals ripping the arse out of it.

  • Housing shortages and sky high rents because homeowners and flat owners stick their places on AirBNB and other types of peer to peer services they provide access to;

  • Ludicrous policies imposed on residents by locally-contracted private enterprises like event managers extending their road closures and parking suspensions a quarter mile away from their actual event areas, fucking over residents who actually live there for the other eleven months of the year;

  • Zero hour contracts for those in gig economy or service workers, who get used and abused for a few weeks a year and fucked off when the good times dry up, while business owners have made bank;

  • Increased pressure on public services for a few weeks a year, caused by influxes of folk putting heavy demands on the staff but leaving local residents to foot the tax bill;

  • ...and the usual creep towards city centre locations trending towards tat merchants selling utter shite.

It's important to note that none of the above is anything wrong, it's just assholery for the most part...

...and then those small numbers of "locals" have the gall to blame Mr and Mrs Miggins from halfway across the globe for ruining the city. Fuck all of the way off

load more comments (16 replies)
[–] stevedice@sh.itjust.works 68 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Most of those places were doing just fine before becoming tourist destinations. This "economy" you speak of is just the profit margins of hotel chains. It very seldom benefits the people living there.

No, no suelte' la bandera ni olvide' el lelolai, que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] ruplicant@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 days ago (6 children)

yeah, it's awesome to live and work in a town and have to rent a temporary place for 3 months in summer cuz your're priced out of your normal home, and it was rented in advance by tourist paying 4 times normal rent value

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I live in a tourist heavy place. My biggest issue is that the influx of tourists is seasonal. During the summer, the number of tourists brings the infrastructure to knees and shops, restaurants and cafés are uncomfortably full. During the off season, maintenance of the roads serms to be of low priority and a lot of the shops, restaurants and cafés reduce their opening time or even close, and the town center becomes a ghost town.

So no hate towards tourists, but the inconsistency of this place is very annoying.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Hot take but tourism economy is the best economy and best quality of life.

Tourism encourages the best values:

  • Environment is much safer and local government is held more accountable
  • Great career diversity - even low tier jobs are service jobs instead of factory work and high tier jobs are real product business owners not finance or some other bullshit money shuffling.
  • Cultural industries like art, bars, history, museums - all thrive under tourism economies

It's up to communities to learn to manage it but well managed tourist spot is legit one of the best place to be a human in. I lived in tourist towns almost all of my life and it's the best, especially in seasonal places where you have a low season vibe with communities just chilling and enjoying the rewards of high season.

The real issue stems from corruption where instead of managing this golden goose someone manages to squeeze all of the eggs to their own pocket and leave the rest unmaintained.

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Hard hard disagree. I grew up in a tourist town, and every kid I talked to for over 20 years had one goal on their mind: getting out of there as soon as they could. Job opportunities outside of tourist focused seasonal industries were practically non-existent. Your choices were wait-staff, landscaping, or deli/grocery store clerk. Any other industries had at most 1 business in the single industrial park in the area. Tourists destroying local beaches was and continues to be a major issue. Everything closed after the tourist season so there's nothing to do other than drink or do heroin, and during the summer there's too many tourists to be able to go out and do something. Tourist areas consistently have the highest rates of substance abuse and homelessness. Low wages from low skill industries focused entirely on serving the out of town seasonal tourist economy combined with high CoL as prices are determined by what tourists can pay, not locals, and little long-term housing as rentals are focused towards short-term leases for the tourist season and competition for housing is fierce with wealthy out of towners buying summer homes.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I have the exact opposite experience and I also grew up in a tourist town.

Just like any other town you leave to get education and come back with your money and get a house to enjoy your home town :)

What you're describing is mostly skill issue and conjecture.

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Skill issue? Maybe. But conjecture? Hardly. The data says that across New England summer tourist towns consistently have the highest rates of drug usage, alcohol addiction, homelessness, and highest CoL for their region. And this is in large part attributed to the lack of job opportunities outside of the seasonal tourism sector, expensive prices caused by the focus on wealthy tourists, and the competition for housing caused by both landlords seeking seasonal rentals and the wealthy buying or building summer homes that will sit empty for 9 months out of the year. This is also backed up by the findings of the committee in my hometown that was created to solve the issue of young people moving away and the looming crisis that will happen as the town becomes more and more one massive retirement home with too many retirees and not enough staff.

Of all the people that I knew who grew up in my hometown (which is at least 2 generations of teens that I trained at work plus my generation), I found 2 types of people: those who left and never went back, and those who never left and never will.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Care to share this data because from googling around for regions I'm familiar with the story is exact opposite. I'm not familiar with New England but the data is quite the opposite for places I am familiar with.

[–] Daxter101@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Tourism economy is the best economy, for the tourists and their white western touristy values, not the working exploited local class who gets priced out of their life by rich owners.

Rich owners get disproportionally richer by tourist money (by definition much more than the locals, because that's what makes tourism possible), and then the local economy bends around them.

"It's up to locals to learn to manage it well and not get corrupted" - my brother in Christ this is basic individualism and victim blaming in a trenchcoat. "Corruption" isn't a magical thing, it happens because of the proportionally obscene extra money in the pockets of the few.

It's basically this: tourism doesn't happen between equals, and the money of the richer tourists goes down the road all money does in capitalism. Concentrated further unless redistributed via politics, and politics bends to money over time.

If you live in tourist towns, as in going around exploring instead of having your future stolen and become nearly unable to both live and leave, you're part of the people rich enough to enjoy the benefits, whether you know it or not.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I'm a digital nomad in south east asia and I lived in villages, industrial towns etc and I can 100% say that locals have a much better life in tourist towns.

There's a reason tourist towns have so much immigration because people actually want to be there despite vocal minority raging on the internet - the stats don't lie.

[–] Daxter101@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Sure. Only, what you're saying reinforces what I said. Rich immigrants like you, from higher economic class, as well as rich locals and those capable of serving them, enjoy tourist towns. Duh.

No need to take into account those locals unable to work in those industries.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

Nope I speak for the local pov of my friends not of my own. People legit dream to move to tourist areas here because life is legit better. You don't have to believe me, just google real data. Would you rather work in some unregulated factory or take tourists snorkeling? It's a no brainer.

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

People in Ireland tell me the focus is on keeping the tourists safe, not the locals. So criminals just learn who it's okay to target

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

So you think without tourists it would be more or less safe?

[–] harambe69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

And one pandemic and your entire economy is dead

[–] Scribbd@feddit.nl 9 points 1 day ago

One boat stuck in a canal has had the same effect on other industries.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] fascicle@leminal.space 51 points 2 days ago

I'd say most employees feel that way about customers, tourist or not. Dealing with the general populace just eats away at your soul

[–] devfuuu@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago (9 children)

Tourist Town is what happens after your community has been bankrupted and stripped for parts

No shit people are resentful

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Zannsolo@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I grew up, and live in a tourist destination. My highschool was trash. Tourists are a nuisance. We have a few big events in town yearly that bring an insane amount of people here and most locals just hide in their house for a week at a time. I would leave but it has the only weather I like. I make really good money(well over 100k) in a non tourist job and can't afford to buy here.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›