Quote:
Originally Posted by Bbasso
I'm shocked to hear so many of you guys talking down about the van life....
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Hey I can't speak for anyone other than myself....but I sure wasn't "talking down the van life." I seriously love it. And I admire what you're doing, actually going full-time is awesome!!!
What IS a bummer (for me anyway) is seeing something really special (van life) become a "cool with the trend-seekers" kind of movement or "thing"....and mostly only because suddenly vans got more expensive....and they suddenly started to get stolen more too. It was really enjoyable to "travel invisibly" before everyone was suddenly hip to the livable van thing (and started noticing them.....)
I'd really (again, personally) rather that it remained a more under-the-radar kind of thing....that only a humbly-intentioned group of dedicated and passionate van-life-peeps were out there chasing their "live by their own definitions" kind of dreams....but not trying to **capitalize on those dreams**.....craft themselves into social media celebrities.....start van-life reality shows....
But hey, let me check myself. Am I (or are we?) being elitist here? No different from the guys who stop liking a musical group "once they become popular"? And who am I to poop on trends and capitalism?
The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. We simultaneously ENVY those gorgeous van-life celebrities., for rapidly leveraging their genetics/good looks and savvy marketing chops to quickly surpass the van-life experiences most of us have been able to have.
....AND....we also curse them.....for luring not-insignificant numbers of fame/cred-seekers into the van-life fray.....possibly turning our passion into just yet another tool of the savvy hipsters to be leveraged for personal gain. But damn, that sounds like grumpy old man talk. And I'm too young for that yet, haha....
On the positive side:
As a result of all this new van-life hipness....at least people don't joke these days any more about my van looking "rapey."