Clickbaity travel videos by foreign vloggers: Are they helpful or just plain condescending?

Growing up, I remember hearing a story from an uncle who traveled to Europe for vacation. When the Europeans learned that he was from Malaysia, they were surprised and asked him, “Is it true that Malaysians live in trees?” I heard this story roughly 30 years ago. A lot has changed.

Today, foreigners no longer ask such silly questions but when you search for travel videos of Southeast Asian locations on YouTube – specifically those from developing nations – you’ll begin to notice a trend. Nearly all of the videos created by foreign travel bloggers (or vloggers), depict some form of surprise or shock at a Southeast Asian country or city. Reddit user u/UsernameGenerik shared the screenshot of the suggested videos above on YouTube in r/malaysia with the question, “What do they expect Kuala Lumpur to be anyway?” With mouths gaping open, displaying shock or surprise and with words such as “didn’t expect” or “Malaysia surprised me!”, all of these videos are clearly clickbait, enticing YouTube viewers to click and engage.

There are many similar videos on Southeast Asian cities, particularly those from developing nations. Several Reddit users in r/malaysia observed that there’s a psychological reason behind the design of these videos. 1.

The majority of the vloggers are of European origin (and that means, at some point their forefathers had played a role in colonizing Southeast Asian nations). 2. Many of the countries they travel to are developing nations (in other words, where travel is super cheap for them).

Considering the economic status of these vloggers who come from historically wealthy nations, such videos are bound to garner an interest from Southeast Asians who generally don’t have a good impression of their own country – which is odd because the actual target audience for these videos are actually expats or foreigners thinking of traveling to or moving there. In the context of Malaysia, a nation embroiled in a political crisis, inflation, and economic uncertainties, seeing such videos is cocaine. One Reddit user puts it succinctly, “Many M’sians are thirsty for angmoh’s validation hence the clickbaity titles.

” Angmoh is a racial descriptor used to refer to white people. The observation is somewhat true because looking at the comments in these videos, you would rarely come across any negative comment outrightly pointing this bias. Instead, many would recommend other locations these vloggers should travel to.

Many of these vloggers, such as josie lifts things for instance, eventually travel to these locations to experience the sights, sounds, and food for themselves. This then brings me to the crux of this post: Are these clickbaity videos actually helpful or just plain condescending? For context, all of the four videos about Malaysia are pretty recent (released on YouTube sometime between August and September 2022, during the National Day celebrations). There’s a very high probability that these vloggers (who are also influencers) were engaged to promote tourism in Malaysia considering the fact that this was the most battered industry globally.

With economies opening up and the US$ strengthening against many Asian currencies, many foreigners are flocking to Southeast Asia once again. Among the nations that are jostling to gain more tourists include Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. In fact, many of these nations are collaborating to help one another ( Malaysia and Thailand , for example).

While it’s unfortunate that titles and even visuals depicting condescending and patronizing visuals are used to promote tourism in Southeast Asia, the little publicity that local tourist players get goes a long way to stay afloat. But the publicity is only narrowed to a few local cafes and locations. Countries such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam are huge! There’s so much to see and experience and even promote.

I just wish these vloggers expanded their focus further, deeper into the actual hearts of these nations. As for the use of condescending tones for the titles? I foresee it no longer being trendy as people would eventually learn that you’re clickbaiting them. It would be interesting to see the tables being turned.

Imagine a Southeast Asian traveling to one of these countries and releasing videos such as “We were WRONG about New York!” or “Paris is NOTHING like what it is” or “DIDN’T EXPECT THIS IN LONDON!”. Now that would be something. Foreigner in Hong Kong gets bad tummy pain after eating ba zhang the wrong way Singapore added to Russian government’s list of ‘unfriendly foreign states’ M’sians worry new expat policy will scare off too many high-net-worth foreigners Nigerian in Malaysia alleged victim of racism after job interview says no to foreigners Cover image sourced from Dany #gotaworldtosee / YouTube and Shev and Dev / YouTube.

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