Member-only story
The beauty was real, until we turned it into a product we could sell.
These Things Became So Popular That They Ended Up Being Ruined for Everyone
From thrift stores to national parks, I saw how mass attention stripped the soul away.
It always seems to start out pure.
A new experience, a hidden gem, a simple pleasure. Then we share it. Then they share it. And before you know it, we have now killed the very thing we loved.
I saw this in real time when I moved to the United States to do my master’s. I was enthralled, the food, the technology, the ecosystem, the people. Everything was new and exciting.
But over time, I began to notice the same strange underlining pattern. The best things in life, no matter what they were, seemed to rot after their popularity seemed to rise.
Either through greed and resorts, or influencer culture, or just the sheer exhaustion of the overuse. Everything good in life eventually turned into a bad experience.
And this isn’t just something that is happening in America. This is global.
Let me show you how we ruined beautiful things by loving them too much.
