What’s a poser, and why is the West full of them?
Migration to the American West is in full swing, and all of the newcomers share a trait – they all want to be seen, and seen doing novel things in novel places by their friends back home.
Caution: The following post is laced with heavy sarcasm and some downright mean depictions of New Westerners (charlatans) … fans of selfies, inauthentic identities, social media fakery, and online trip reports may be offended by the contents of this post.
There is one personality trait that is shared among many migrants flocking to the West right now – they all want to be seen by their friends and family doing something “adventurous” with the landscapes of the West as their backdrop. And they want to be seen doing adventurous things in these places in the same way they’ve seen these things done in social media, advertisements, movies, and TV. They pose for photos to post on their social media accounts, which are then delivered to their base of friends who are likely to entirely concentrated in their home areas.
I know, it’s super judgmental – but it’s pure insanity to endure migration patterns that cause population doublings and triplings over short periods, completely by people who want to be part of the imagery of the West and what they perceive to be the identity that the landscape bestows upon them. And, yeah, that’s not how they think about it, but it’s how many of us see it … it’s completely inauthentic, and the people doing this are participating in a system that happens to just drive more people to relocate to get in on the granola-glam imagery.
The great irony here is that all of the transplants (migrants, whatever you want to call them…) depict themselves in wild-looking spaces of the West to construct their new and artificial online identities, meanwhile creating demand in these places for more of the domestic, colonial environments they came from – you know, bluegrass yards, an England-style home, invasive tree and plant species to make the yard, and all the infrastructure that comes with adding more people to a space that has never had this many people.
The irony of building your image with a backdrop of non-domesticated spaces, meanwhile transforming the environment into a domestic space just so you can be there...
We’ve known about posers for a long time in the West - they used to be called Charlatans. The first huge boom in Colorado started with John Denver in the 1970s. Quick fact; His real name is, “Henry Deutschendorf, Jr.” - John Denver was his stage name — and spoiler alert — he’s not from Colorado. He kicked off the first huge pop-culture-driven migration from the cities of the east and west coasts, to Colorado. He was the first person to use mass media to bring Colorado out of “flyover country” status and into the mainstream in the minds of the fashionable coastal urbanite. The boom caused by his pokey-dokey shtick has inertia even today, with current hipsters thinking he’s some kind of folk hero. Conversely, any deep-rooted Coloradan should despise Deutschendorf’s fake lyrics, and anyone who has researched anything about this person will realize he’s nothing shy of a total farce. The lyrics of his biggest hit is a transplant anthem hidden in plain sight.
! - Urban Dictionary defines a poser as, “one who attempts to appear to others as something they are not, especially by their manner of dress; a charlatan”
The modern poser in the West has a few common traits – first, they’re always from an urban center far away from the interior West, and:
They are almost always urbanites with haughty urban educations.
They are always social media addicts and definite narcissists — with well curated images of self posed online, staged everywhere from a beach in Greece to a 14er in Colorado.
They always have no prior experience in the outdoors, and had some epiphany that they wanted to move to the West to be “closer to nature.”
They don’t know anything about Colorado’s environment, how it was formed, how its ecology functions, and that their “discovery” of these places is likely entirely due to some marketing campaign.
They love Denver, because it’s familiar to them and has a novel view, even though the deep locals absolutely despise what Denver has become.
Their cars are always covered in stickers of expensive outdoor gear brands and places they’ve been (you know, those oval-shaped ones).
And they always have huge social networks in the places they’re from – and they almost purely form new networks here with people from their home areas, having only a couple locals as their novel and token friends.
That whole list adds up to the human equivalent of what a botanist would call a “noxious invasive species.”
Even though posers have been present through most of the West’s colonial history, the internet and social media amplified the pattern to a level that was simply unimaginable prior to about 20 years ago. The explosion in numbers of people who previously ignored the Western states as flyover country, finding and spreading word and image of themselves in the West to their eastern and other urban and suburban peers went fully off the rails in the Facebook and Instagram era.
Imagine the broadcast that happens when one person with 1,500 “friends” from New Jersey shares an image of themselves on top of a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado (a “14er” - aptly named by tourists, for tourists), to those 1,500 friends. If they inspired 1% to go hike that 14er (of course they geotagged, named the peak, and told you how to get there, too), you now have 15 new people to then share that image again, and again … even better, it might even land you a slew of new friends and visitors from your home state who want to go hike with you. How exciting, you forerunner, you! Hygge!
Being a poser isn’t just an external label – it’s an archetype – and a personality trait. It’s the conveyance of imagery that implies something about your identity – that which is false and inauthentic.
I recognize that authenticity isn’t relevant to many people – but it is to me. Some people don’t care that someone’s picture of themselves rock climbing was taken four feet off the ground with a hired guide, instead of 400 feet off the ground, self-supported. I get the reflex to do this – but I think it’s fake, like vegan cheese and makeup. Just like some people in the past didn’t care if someone shot a caged lion that had been starved and clubbed before being hunted – just so long as they shot the lion and brought it home stuffed to display in their living room (that’s legit, right?). I view the categories of actions as borne from the same mentality.
The better part of the poser archetype is that their intended audience also can’t decipher the presence of a farce. They see one of their friends who escaped Garden State, New Jersey, up on a rock overlooking a valley on top of Gray’s Peak, and they assume they’re looking at someone who’s taking life by the horns and being adventurous…
Sad news; When I look at that image, I see a New Jersey urbanite who found Gray’s Peak on the internet, used social media to find their way there, and then walked up a 1.5 mile established dirt path up a tall hill, only to take a poser picture of themselves with the peak’s name and elevation written on a piece of cardboard along with about 1 million others like them just this year, just so they look like they climbed Everest to all of their astonished friends back home. There’s nothing adventurous or authentic about that, at all, and the cardboard sign is a peak charlatan move.
Here’s the real rub; Posers inspire other posers and get validation from yet other posers. It’s a big ole poser snowball. Any evaluation from someone with any experience would reveal bottom-rung tourists simply finding their way into places they would never have found or been able to navigate without the advent of the internet, cell phones, and the fashion trend of “outdoorsiness”.
Here are some signs you’re interacting with or observing a poser:
Numerous online-posted Selfies – They’re taking lots of images of themselves in a place, and the images are definitely going on their social media profiles.
Trip reports – They’ve either found the place via other peoples’ trip reports or they’re writing them – for other posers to go find and do (if they wrote it first, they’re like Christopher Columbus – they discovered it, and are now sharing it with the new world)
Emulation of TV, movies, or social media influencers – They’re emulating the “experts” they’ve seen in documentaries, and things like the Mountain Film Festival, and wearing clothing they needed to go do this thing in this place …
Super expensive gear – They went to REI with Daddy’s credit card and went to the 9s on gear. They got the latest, greatest, and the stuff the real doers can’t afford … just the best, for the best.
Asking for location recommendations – You can always sniff out a poser by their asking about places to go, where a photo was taken, etc – they’re always looking to see only what has been seen and conveyed by others. Why? Because they can’t do it on their own, and only want to go to places that would be a great backdrop to put themselves in.
Wearing technical outdoor gear to school and work – You know the guy or gal – the one wearing their Italian mountaineering boots to the office. Guaranteed, they’re always from some east coast city and are “wearing their boots in” for a hike they’re doing in a couple weeks. Never wearing in on the trail … only wearing in the office.
Rapid and short travel patterns - You know how the “peak baggers” (as they call themselves) hike up a Colorado 14er at 6 am, and are down by 9 am? That’s just enough time to get there, snap a couple photos, and turn back around … no risk, no time spent, and only doing it to capture some flair for the ‘gram.
Their Language - You can always tell a poser by their language. They use words like: Gnar, shredding, peak bagging, bagged a peak, Class 2 Fun, epic, dirtbagging, and a variety of other poser outdoor slangs by and for the newcomer.
Posers are a problem for the West, because they’re everywhere, and they drive more posers to places. And without a good mentor, even the locals can fall into this pattern. It’s just too juicy to turn away from. Being able to convey your identity only in images of yourself, or of beautiful landscapes is like free alcohol in the brain of an alcoholic – and humans are a bunch of codependent, addicted socialites. The idyllic images drive population growth, the worst dimensions of tourism, and brings people only interested in a place’s surface-level image to the West. It creates a viral load that the local culture’s immune system can’t fight off – and eventually kills the host.
The reason we should all be mindful of the presence of posers is that they’re the gasoline driving mass conversion of the West into the familiar spaces of the urban areas of the Country. The great irony of coming to a place for it’s natural character and driving urbanization by creating demand for more urban spaces so you can live there – based on imagery and a false love of a place is – abjectly insane. The drive to depict yourself in a place with some wild character to fellow urbanites is the 2000’s iteration of British-style colonialism.
Let’s face it – we all develop networks in our home areas, and when we move, we are conveying our imagery back to that home area – and inspiring more to follow in our footsteps. And by doing that, we’re not doing it for an authentic reason or an inherent drive or purpose — we’re doing it for our own ego and image.
In the end, I’ve decided that posers are the new colonial force in the world, and especially the West. The West is particularly juicy to posers because of the backdrops it provides in constructing a new or novel identity for the people back home or “back east” (as they say). The broadcast to far-away audiences (friends, family, and your 2,174 fake social media friends) inspires others from the remote audience to do the same thing – and even to go to the same place – because if ‘Jenny Jetta’ can do it from Chicago, Illinois, so can you! The best part about posers is how obvious they are – you can smell it when you find someone from Ohio up in Nederland, Colorado, who came here for “the mountains,” or the unexpected prince from New Jersey who decided to go hike a 14er in Colorado and write it all up on Instagram. Yeah, they’re here to walk up the trail in fear, take pictures of themselves at the top, and walk back down – all for the ‘gram. They’re all just posing for pictures to send back to their urban tribes and add it to their overwhelmingly unremarkable [online] identities.
The Fleeting West is written by a deep-rooted Westerner with a sharp tongue and a watchful eye for fakery — sniffing out posers like a bear from miles away.