Summer travel and social-media documentation have surged, with many people posting trips and curated adventures. A generation has embraced the 'digital nomad' lifestyle catalyzed by COVID-era remote work, positioning travel as aspirational and performative. Anthony Bourdain emerged as that generation's avatar, celebrated for crossing cultural lines and connecting with a wide array of people and places. Bourdain's mix of celebrity encounters and intimate, offbeat encounters made him broadly relatable and endlessly quotable. Those quotes and images have been repurposed into a cottage industry of 'Bourdainposting' that fuels travel montages and meme culture. Posthumous reverence for Bourdain has grown, sometimes veering into deification that likely conflicts with his own sensibilities.
There's a good chance you've seen it on your social media feeds for the last three months: everyone you've ever met in your entire life is getting out of town, out of the state, or out of the country. It's what summer is for: Lay on a beach, hike an exotic canyon, swim with a dolphin, try and fail to surf for the first time.
Across four TV shows and countless pages of writing, Bourdain transcended the rank of food and travel personality to become one of the great advocates for becoming a more global citizen of the world. This is a guy who ate noodles in Hanoi with a sitting United States president but also hung out with a dominatrix in Tokyo, Iggy Pop in Miami, and narcos in Mexico.
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