There’s a well-known adage that the optimal time to plant a tree was two decades ago, and the present stands as the second-best opportunity. When it pertains to embracing the lifestyle of a digital nomad, don’t allow yourself to be deceived into believing that you’ve missed the chance simply because someone who ventured out earlier claims so. We are currently experiencing a prime era for digital nomading and remote work. This is an exceptional period to be a location-independent professional.
There’s an intriguing trend that affects many long-term explorers, digital nomads, and expats. Regardless of their age, they yearn for “the good old days” and wish to close the door behind them, preventing any newcomers from “ruining” the spots they feel they’ve uncovered. The irony lies in the fact that those who arrived a decade prior would have eagerly barred the later arrivals if afforded the option, thus it’s all about when you entered the timeline.
It’s a frequent complaint on forums that “Now that place is ruined” or “It used to be way better.” I’ve encountered locals in my city, Guanajuato, Mexico, tell me, “You shouldn’t publish any articles about this place. We don’t want more people coming here!” As if it should solely remain their private sanctuary, frozen in time with just the few hundred foreign residents already living here throughout the year.
I am aware that overtourism is a genuine concern and gentrification can disturb the local real estate market. Both can push long-standing residents out of the market and are legitimate issues. It’s effortless for a journalist to highlight stories that resonate emotionally and to attribute displacement to foreigners. The xenophobia card isn’t exclusively for furious orange dictators; it’s always simpler to blame “the others who aren’t like us.”
However, addressing these civic challenges usually necessitates more careful and long-lasting solutions than erecting a fence (whether physical or virtual) or attempting to exclude travelers and immigrants. For each displaced resident, there are countless local individuals making a living thanks to all the outsiders.
I bring this up due to a recent article from bloggers Brent and Michael of Going Places that has been circulated through the Yahoo Creators Program. It’s circulating among those who prefer to look back rather than forward, and the self-satisfied veteran nomads who assert that things are ruined now. It serves as excellent material for habitual complainers who wish everyone else would just go elsewhere instead of disrupting their own personal paradise.
With the sensational title “The golden age of digital nomading is over: it was great while it lasted,” their article falls into the pitfall that many trend pieces do by offering plenty of anecdotes but lacking actual facts. There’s a deficiency in the journalistic rigor that would have lent credence to their arguments, resulting in a poorly supported opinion piece. I found myself saying, “Really, are you serious?” while reading it and felt compelled to write this rebuttal.
I bear no grudge against these individuals personally; they provide valuable guidance on their blog and I wish we could have connected when they visited my town recently. I’ve even referred to their well-rounded article on gentrification in San Miguel de Allende in my Nomadico newsletter on Substack. That piece was more balanced, featuring quotes from residents and business owners of diverse backgrounds.
But as someone who has enjoyed a location-independent lifestyle for 20 years, I have numerous concerns with this article. So here’s why this is the most favorable time ever to be a digital nomad. If you’re preparing to embark on your journey, don’t let the skeptics dissuade you.
Being a Digital Nomad Isn’t New, but Now It’s Recognized
They assert in the introduction that they had never even encountered the term “digital nomad” until they set off in 2017. Well, sorry guys, but it was prevalent on social media well before that and was even appearing in mainstream media. I’ll refer to the excellent historical overview shared by James Clark on Nomadic Notes. One might argue that the trend began in the 1990s and has certainly gained momentum since 2007 with the release of the iPhone and The 4-Hour Workweek. By that time, there were already numerous travel blogs with “nomad” in their titles, and the phrase “digital nomad” started to appear in various articles.
Coworking spaces emerged in 2008, around the same time the remote work movement gained recognition in The Economist, The Times of London, and other traditional publications. That year, Airbnb was established under a longer name, obtaining the domain we currently use in 2009. In that same year, the technology company Dell used “digital nomad” in a white paper, The Washington Post featured it in an article, a /digitalnomad Reddit discussion began, and the TBEX travel bloggers conference was launched.