Has COVID-19 Ruined The Digital Nomad?

How the pandemic inverted millennial values

It’s the millennial manifesto: experiences over things, community over privacy, minimalism over consumerism, optionality over stability.

These values are trumpeted from every direction — self-improvement podcasts, pop psychology books, and glistening instagram feeds. They’re proclaimed by individuals like self-styled millennial philosopher and digital nomad Nathaniel Drew.

His philosophy is as attractive as it is one dimensional: all you need to be happy is less social media, more travel, and cold showers. His videos are millennial evangelical sermons, shot in 4k and set to Lo-Fi Hip Hop. Minimalism porn at its finest.

You know the type: you don’t need a therapist — you just need a backpack.

Nathaniel Drew is a symptom of a recent cultural obsession with digital nomadism — the platonic ideal of millennial philosophy. It’s certainly not a new idea, but sometimes we forget how recently it went mainstream.