[presidentcarter]

Why is it that if you say you plan on traveling in EE people look at you like you've gone bat shit crazy and even tell you so whereas if you say S America or Asia they act like it's a legitimate adventure? No ones opinion has influence over my decision, but this seems like a widespread bias (one that works to my favor no doubt but also one I'm trying to understand).

[jimukr104]

Never had that happen.

[thegmanifesto]

(12-17-2012 01:05 AM)presidentcarter Wrote:  

Why is it that if you say you plan on traveling in EE people look at you like you've gone bat shit crazy and even tell you so whereas if you say S America or Asia they're act like it's a legitimate adventure? No ones opinion has influence over my decision, but this seems like a widespread bias (one that works to my favor no doubt but also one I'm trying to understand).

Simple answer:

People are retarded.

[Branimir]

(12-17-2012 01:05 AM)presidentcarter Wrote:  

Why is it that if you say you plan on traveling in EE people look at you like you've gone bat shit crazy and even tell you so whereas if you say S America or Asia they're act like it's a legitimate adventure? No ones opinion has influence over my decision, but this seems like a widespread bias (one that works to my favor no doubt but also one I'm trying to understand).

Because some of the people around yourself are pretty much ignorant.
Infact any place in EE is probably safer than the ghetto neighborhood in you average american city.

Given you're from the US...

[Sourcecode]

Subconsciously..people think that asia and south america are un-developed.
They don't look like the average "white" traveler.

[iknowexactly]

I've been surprised over the last 10 years how people don't think of it as Mars anymore. Most interestingly, the young chicks who I thought would be all judgmental and suspicious of me seem to be matter of fact about it. Don't quite get why though. Feminism's angriest branch is dying out.

[presidentcarter]

The ignorance has to come from somewhere...I think it's largely due to the FSU aspect as well as the idea that going to a place with strong economic growth is somehow more acceptable.

[thegmanifesto]

(12-17-2012 01:25 AM)thegmanifesto Wrote:  

(12-17-2012 01:05 AM)presidentcarter Wrote:  

Why is it that if you say you plan on traveling in EE people look at you like you've gone bat shit crazy and even tell you so whereas if you say S America or Asia they're act like it's a legitimate adventure? No ones opinion has influence over my decision, but this seems like a widespread bias (one that works to my favor no doubt but also one I'm trying to understand).

Simple answer:

People are retarded.

I should also add that maybe they have watched that video of the Polar Bear attacking that girl in a Junkyard in Russia.

Three days later, I am still a little wierded out by that video.

[Ovid]

I think a lot of it is a generational thing. Younger people today are part of the Internet generation; they have friends online all over the world, went to college with more than a handful of foreign students, probably have been to Europe or the Far East at least once, or know people who have, and aspire to travel.

Older folks, for the most part, were raised in an era, pre-Iron Curtain disintegration, where the USA was regarded as hands-down the "best," most civilized, cleanest, most "free" country in the world -after all, millions of immigrants came here to form a new life, so why go back to the Old World for sightseeing, when the New is so 'clearly' superior? Consequently, foreign travel, especially to Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact countries, has a stigma attached to it. At best, it's seen among these types as stupid ("why would you want to visit a formerly-Communist shithole?") and at worst, sort of viscerally unpatriotic, like you're colluding with the enemy or somesuch. Basically, some people's worldview is out-of-touch with reality from anywhere between 20 and 150 years. International travel didn't become affordable, let alone anything close to mainstream, until rather recently.