My own private Iceland—tourism has never been “authentic”

It seems like instead of authenticity, maybe think about load balancing? A concert hall or park has well-understood capacity limits. With other tourist destinations it's fuzzier but should be handled in a similar way.

There are other places to go and it's good that some people try to avoid crowds.

We stand with our phones in front of our faces, the surging water too massive to consider as reality, as anything other than a picture that we can save to show friends later, shorn of its existential dread. I think of Don DeLillo’s description of “the most photographed barn in America” in his novel White Noise: “No one sees the barn.”

I feel as if visiting places nowadays mostly is about taking cool pictures- instead of being there and experiencing the place yourself instead of through a screen. I'm not saying you can't take photo's, it's just that the experience is about the same as looking up pictures of said tourist attractions on google images from the relative comforts of your living room couch.

Then again, I probably shouldn't judge others' actions on vacations, but it just irks me so much to see phones and screens popping up constantly.