Are Foreign Vloggers Creating a Filtered Image of Pakistan?

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The year was 2019. I like many of my peers wanted to utilize my summers to the fullest. In that pursuit, I decided to go on a cross-cultural exchange to Egypt. Egypt had always been a country that had fascinated me, hence this trip was a dream come true. Fast forward to two weeks into my internship and I had already met people from 15 different nationalities. Yet that wasn’t the amazing bit. It was rather their reactions when I would introduce myself as being from Pakistan.

Comedy Gold

“Wait what’s Pakistan?”

“Isn’t that the country where they found Osama?”

“I’ve heard every man in Pakistan has a beard, and that women can’t go out without wearing Burqas”

“Do you people have cars in your country, or do you use camels and mules as transport?”

Now I know what all of you are wondering, that all of this sounds rather absurd and outlandish, but I kid you not when I say that this is only half of what I’d been asked.

Debunking the stereotype

All of these misconceptions made me realize how badly we have been misrepresented in the west and other countries. They see us as nothing more than an extension of Afghanistan. Though in all fairness the years of terrorism and negative media representation hasn’t quite helped our cause. But as Pakistanis, we can ascertain that the security situation in the country has greatly improved and that we’re past our darkest hours.

A testament to the improved security situation has been the influx of foreign vloggers. In today’s day and age, it is these vloggers that play a pivotal role in dispelling all forms of misconceptions. Misconceptions created by years and years of irresponsible journalism.

For Pakistan, their contribution has been the same. When you have influencers like Eva Zu Beck coming and telling her 751K followers of how “Pakistan could become the number one tourist destination in the world”. Or vloggers like Mark Weins telling his 6.85 million subscribers on YouTube as to how Pakistan is awesome and how he felt completely safe. Even people like Drew Binsky brandishing how everything is free in Pakistan, you feel like, man we live in the best country in the world.

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The cold hard truth

The problem is you and I aren’t being shown the full picture, and so aren’t the many millions of people that watch these vlogs in and outside of Pakistan. This is a fact that was highlighted by US-based vlogger Alex, or more popularly known as Lost with Purpose. Having visited Pakistan 5 times, she was slated to speak at the Pakistan tourism Summit in 2019 but was dropped last minute because of her rather searing evaluation of the entire touristic experience. This though did not stop Alex from using her youtube account to express her views. “Despite the purpose of the summit being to talk about travel in Pakistan, it seemed like no one was actually ready to be critical about it,” Alex said.

Alex highlighted how an overly positive social media coverage of Pakistan may bode dangerous for the country’s tourism industry in the long run. She highlighted how most of these vloggers are accompanied by security entourages in the more dangerous parts of the country, and thus do not showcase a true picture, which may bode dangerous for those inspired to frequent these places based on the content at hand.

Alex said: “Tourists might not realize that maybe they should keep their beliefs silent at the dinner table. Couples might not realize that they can’t be kissing in public or even holding hands.”

What do you think?

All of these revelations do beckon the question, are foreign vloggers really helping revamp our tourism industry? Is the false picture they’re painting going to hurt us in the long run? I’ll let you all decide.