Discouraging young adults from traveling is apparently becoming kind of a thing, isn't it? Last time it was predatory safety companies trying to convince single women that traveling alone will get them raped and killed, but his time it's a Huffington Post travel consultant giving kids a Don't Let It Happen To You lecture; "It" in this case being an airport-heavy lifestyle that takes them away from The Really Important Things In Life.
The article oozes with awkwardness, from artificially opaque jumbled writing to moments of forced bluntness, and phrases like "a tip of the fedora" (because if you're going to speak to the young hipsters, it's important to be ironic!). There's some corporate branding going on behind the scenes—the author is a Travel Website "punk marketing" specialist and the CEO of the "only independent PR firms that’s actually fun to work with"—but that's an issue better left for another time. We'll even concede that the article has some valuable moments, reminding its audience to keep petulant "pay attention to me" travel demands to a minimum because no one cares.
There's a dangerous underlying hostility to travel, though, that runs through the entire piece. It's not much more sophisticated than "kids these days are just so crazy and naughty and they never appreciate real life" tsk tsk'ing. It even has soccer mom phrases like "Ms. BlackBerry or Sir iPhone." But it's more than enough to raise our ire:]]>