The Enshittification of Interesting Places

I’m not going to ask if you’ve noticed it. I know you have. Some things aren’t as fun as they used to be. The internet was once a strange playground of niche communities populated with GeoCities sites and chatrooms. There’s still a bit of that if you take the time to look, but it’s mostly a hellscape of late-stage capitalism and greedy tech bros working to harness our attention and information. An infinite realm of frenetic outrage and advertising constantly shitting in our heads.

At least we can still step out to the offline world where things are still fun, right? No enshittified nonsense out there, amirite?

Just kidding! It’s a shitshow out there, too. The hellscape did what hellscapes tend to do. It expanded until it broke free of its confines.

I visited Yellowstone Park a couple of times in the mid-90s and early noughties. After a day spent driving from northern Colorado, I was rewarded with a quiet place to pitch my tent for a few days. Cruising around the park, I encountered other cars on the road, but not too many. Visitors milled about the geysers and mud pots, but not enough to be frustrating or detract from the experience.

When I took my black lab out for a morning walk at our campsite, I was violently dragged behind her for a few meters when she decided to pursue a squirrel. No one was there to film it. No smartphones to record it. No social media to post it to. My humiliation is preserved only in my memory.

Now? Yellowstone is farther away from me than it used to be, but even if it weren’t, no fucking way would I go there now. People are killing the park. They’re not crowding it out of a love of nature. They’re doin’ it for the Gram. From the growing tourism backlash in Mexico to the Japanese town that had to construct a barrier to stem the flow of badly-behaved tourists, influencers and tourists swarm on a place like locusts, devour what made it beautiful, and then shit it out online for a bunch of likes.

In 2006, my husband and I were on our honeymoon in Ireland. We did a road trip, stopping in places like Cork, Killarney, and the Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs of Moher were lovely, but another place I wouldn’t visit today.

The highlight of the trip, though, was the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin. If you’re meeting me for the first time, then you might not be aware that for decades, I have held a pure and unwavering love of the black stuff. So I was stoked.

On the way to St. James’s Gate, the taxi driver peered at me in his rear view and muttered, “Don’t know many girls that like Guinness.”

Sexism aside, I didn’t think much of it. I mean… it wasn’t THAT popular. I didn’t know many other people who were as bonkers about it as I was.

We drifted through the self-guided tour, taking time to read all the information about their brewing process and how they source the ingredients. We touched the hops, inhaling the earthy aromas, learning how Guinness is crafted and distributed around the world. It was interesting, informative, and interactive. By the time we reached the Gravity Bar on the top floor, our brains were bursting with new knowledge as brains tend to do after a good field trip. A smiling bartender poured us a couple of tasty fresh pints, and we languidly roamed around the bar, which was clean and calm with a breathtaking view of the city no matter which way I turned my head. We sat at one of the empty tables. Feeling chilled out and happy, we enjoyed our pints in peace.

Like I said, this was 2006. We were armed with a digital camera as our only means of recording things from our trip. Soon after passing through St. James’s Gate, I realized the batteries had died, and I’d neglected to bring any spares. Our mementos from the visit were limited to our shared memory and a token souvenir handed out to visitors upon entry. It became one of those small objects that gets dropped into a drawer or box of other tiny things, resurfacing every couple of years until vanishing completely.

For the next 19 years, we joked about needing to return to the Guinness Storehouse to take the photos we missed.

In the summer of 2025, we did return. And it might’ve been a mistake.

The first thing that slapped us in the face upon arrival was the crowd. In 2006, we walked right up to the gate, entered the building, and began our relaxing tour. This time, after booking tickets for an 11:15am entry, we joined the enormous buzzing queue and were corralled into a concrete holding pen. Once all the cattle were stuffed into the pen, our eyes glazed over and we stared up at the screens mounted to the ceiling. A video played on repeat, advertising the supplementary experiences we could add on to our visit. For a few euros more, you can participate in the Guinness Academy, where you will learn how to pour a pint of Guinness! Or, for an added fee, get your face printed on a “STOUTie!” Yes. That’s right. Get a pint of the black stuff with a selfie printed into the foam. Fuck taste and learning. We provide gimmicks guaranteed get you those likes on social media.

This is not a brewery tour. If you want to partake of the actual brewery and historic tunnels, brewhouse, etc., that’s a “premium experience” that’s gonna cost you almost ten times the amount of the standard plebeian experience.

After about 20 minutes or so, our eager herd of mooing bovine were loosed into the building. Immediately, a person armed with a microphone blocked our stampede and proceeded to give an orientation. Despite standing right in front of this person and the amplification of their voice, I heard nothing except the roar of ambient noise. Also, I was not trying to listen. I didn’t care what they were shouting at me. I looked up and around, and the realization that I had stepped into some Disneyfied tourist trap instead of a dignified historical building with integrity slapped me with a bright and colorful intensity.

We began our self-guided tour in earnest. Absent were the informational displays, which required visitors to stop and read. In their place were a series of light shows and fountains with snippets of information designed for short attention spans. It felt like something created by Willie Wonka’s dipshit influencer cousin. The deeper I got into the building, the more chaotic everything became. We’d entered a lousy tourist trap designed to be Instagrammable above all else. The enshittification of online platforms is seeping into the real world. And it fucking sucks.

Displays in the Storehouse are not there to inform. They are there to facilitate the taking of selfies, to look good on social media, to get those likes, and to spread those hashtags. To get users to promote the Guinness brand and this noisy cash grab on social media.

There is a point where visitors can participate in a tasting. Everyone was provided with a teeny-tiny glass of Guinness, which we were instructed to place on a decorative plinth for some reason. Do not hold the tiny glass. Place it on the Instagrammable thingy. What struck me upon observing the occupants of the packed room was how many people seemed to have never drunk a Guinness before… and did not like it. I was there because I love Guinness and have for a long time. Not because it was a tourist destination to check off on a list, or because I’d seen it on a TikTok or Jason Momoa’s Instagram. I saw that I was in the minority. Like Yellowstone and other cultural sites, many visitors aren’t interested in nature, history, or Guinness. They’re checking off a list of major tourist attractions and snapping photos like the ones they’ve seen online.

We passed the whimsical “Instagram Booths” and the hall of historical Guinness advertisements. We made our way through an amusement park of very selfie-friendly objects. The claustrophobia was setting in something fierce.

Fast forward to the end of the visit. The top floor of the Guinness Storehouse. The famous Gravity Bar with its view overlooking all of Dublin. We could barely hear one another over the loud electronic music and thunder of voices from the packed room. After getting our “free” pints, we scanned the room for a table and found nothing. The floor was dirty. The view of the city from the bar is incredible, though it’s not easy to find a place to simply take it in. It’s just too crowded. Sipping a Guinness 0% on my couch is a more magical experience.

Thankfully, a couple that was leaving offered us their table, so we did get a few minutes to sit down, enjoy the view and finish our pints. Until the table next to us, apparently occupied by a roving horde of frat bros, began shouting, “CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!” while pounding their fists on the tiny table. One frat bro was silent, however, as he was obeying the commands of his fellow bros to chug.

Dudes. This is not how you enjoy a Guinness.

That’s when I looked at my husband and said, “Yeah. It’s time to fucking go.” I turned to the couple hovering over our table, waiting for us to leave, and surrendered our place to them. We jumped in the elevator and escaped the frenzy, back out to the real world where things are still fun.

Just kidding!