Why Travel, Hobbies, and Life Are Becoming Increasingly Similar
1. Why Are Our Experiences Becoming So Alike?
Scrolling through travel photos online, familiar scenes appear again and again.
Similar cafés, identical poses, the same backdrops, almost interchangeable captions.
Hobbies follow the same pattern.
Trending workouts, recommended activities, and “hot right now” interests spread rapidly.
Although we live separate lives,
the shape of our experiences is becoming strikingly similar.
This question naturally arises:
Why are “personal experiences” slowly disappearing?
2. How Recommendation Systems Flatten Experience
AI-assisted imagery:
A person hesitating in front of a recommendation screen, surrounded by repeated choices.
2.1 The Age of Algorithmic Choice
Today, many experiences begin not with exploration, but with recommendation.
Travel destinations are introduced as “most saved places.”
Music arrives as “playlists curated for you.”
Hobbies are presented as “what people are doing most right now.”
Algorithms reduce decision fatigue efficiently,
but they also guide experiences along similar paths.
In exchange for convenience,
we receive experiences that are increasingly standardized.
2.2 Social Proof and the Comfort of Safe Choices
Psychology describes our tendency to value what many others choose as social proof.
Likes, reviews, and view counts function as indicators of quality.
As a result, people select experiences that seem less likely to fail.
Unfamiliar or uncertain experiences are avoided,
and this repetition gradually erodes diversity.
2.3 When Experience Becomes Performance
Experience is no longer just something we live through.
It becomes something to display, document, and explain.
Places that photograph well are favored.
Experiences that are easy to describe are preferred.
Personal yet inexpressible moments quietly disappear.
3. Is Experience a Commodity — or a Trace of Being?
Philosophically, experience is not something to be consumed or exchanged.
It is a trace of time that shapes who we are.
Standardized experience shifts the question from
“What did this mean to me?”
to
“How will this look to others?”
At that moment, experience becomes an external product rather than internal accumulation.
True experience is often inefficient, difficult to explain,
and sometimes includes failure.
Yet it is precisely there that people discover their own rhythm and sensibility.
4. Conclusion: Reclaiming One’s Own Experience
AI-assisted imagery:
A solitary figure reflecting in a quiet space, recovering personal experience.
The problem is not recommendation systems themselves,
but our uncritical dependence on them.
When we follow the same paths without asking what they mean to us,
our lives begin to resemble one another.
Wisdom today does not lie in endlessly seeking novelty.
It lies in pausing before a given choice and asking:
“Why does this experience matter to me?”
Returning experience to the individual —
that is the most personal form of resistance
in an age of standardization.
📚 References
- Han, B.-C. (2017). The Expulsion of the Other. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Han analyzes how sameness replaces difference in contemporary society, offering insight into how standardized experiences weaken individuality. - Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. New York: PublicAffairs.
Zuboff examines how platforms and algorithms predict and shape human behavior, revealing how experience design is shifting from individuals to systems. - Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (1999). The Experience Economy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
This foundational work explains how experiences become economic goods, providing a framework for understanding the commodification and standardization of experience today.
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