It was 3 a.m. and Natasha Scott was awake as the rain hit the roof of her truck, listening to the murmurs of animals outside. The barrier between the world and her bedroom was paper thin.
Moments like these made her feel like “the only person in the world,” she tells Fortune. Atlanta-based Scott, 33, pointed to that night as the moment she realized the glamorous van life advertised on social media was simply “glorified homeless.”
You don’t have to look far to see videos featuring lifestyle content from families packing all their belongings into a van and hitting the road. Known as #vanlife on social media, the phrase has 13.9 million tags on Instagram and 10.7 billion views on TikTok. The alternative lifestyle became popular in the 2010s with millennials longing for a nomadic adventure and accelerated during the pandemic as an option for remote workers and those looking for a more affordable alternative to buying or renting in the middle of a very high inflation.
Idealized as a simplistic magical life form, it was enough to draw Scott in. A former pilot recruiter with a small business next to her, she often dreamed of trying out the nomadic lifestyle after watching the #vanlife videos that filled her “for you” pages on YouTube and TikTok.
She finally launched after receiving notice last year that the rent on her one-bedroom apartment was going up. She used her savings to buy an unconverted van (not equipped with carpeting or plumbing) for $5,000.
But Scott soon discovered that the reality of life in a van wasn’t so sunny, and he began documenting how his idyllic lifestyle turned sour on the TikTok account @nomadgonewrong, renaming his account this month to @ nomadgoneright. Gas was high, the road was lonely and the truck often needed repairs, he said. Everything made her nervous.
“Life in a truck is harder than it looks on the videos,” says Scott. “It’s harder than I would have thought, honestly.”
Lifestyle content isn’t all it seems to be when you’re actually living it
Shortly after embarking on the life of a truck, Scott lost her job as a driver recruiter during a series of layoffs, forcing her to rely on freelancing. An unstable income made living on the road that much more difficult.
Without a home base and with the prices of everyday goods rising as a result of inflation, Scott says he found himself spending more on gas and food, as well as other expenses, as he tried to refurbish the truck to make it more livable. He, too, had to pay for unexpected emergencies along the way, including a blown tire.
“If you’re trying to cut back on your finances, you’re just eating junk,” Scott says, adding that #vanlife renderings don’t show the portion you live on from food purchased at gas stations. She feels they tend to portray happy people living in a van relaxing in their lawn chairs enjoying a grilled burger, but says no one talks about how hot it is or how you’re stuck inside the van if it’s raining. They also don’t show how van-dwellers shower or find bathrooms if they’re not in a converted van, she adds.
When the weather got too extreme or she didn’t feel safe at night, Scott started staying at Airbnbs. She realized that ultimately it would be too difficult to remake his truck to be habitable, so he ended up selling it to buy another truck that was easier to convert.
Meanwhile, Scott was figuring it out on his own, without a family support system to turn to.
Digital nomad or wanderer?
Scott’s reality isn’t that different from others who have tried to emulate #vanlife content. Content creators Gene and Shay of @geneandshay, who live in a converted van, shared the downsides of the lifestyle in a video: endless repairs and having to pay for a hotel when it’s too hot to sleep in a van. As @bylandnjeep puts it bluntly: “Van Life influencer culture is full of shit.”
Scott says that the creators approached her and told her that they had been through similar experiences. At the same time, her videos have critics arguing that Scott made the wrong choice in embarking on the lifestyle in the first place. But she thinks people are resistant to the idea of breaking this #vanlife fantasy. The same kind of person goes viral on social media and displays the same kind of glamorous narratives, Scott adds. She was showing everyday life. “But that’s something you don’t put out there because you’re supposed to keep it a secret,” explains Scott.
Wallpapering the cracks can lead to misconceptions online. Social media is a highly personalized advertising tool that can be used to make younger audiences feel like they need to buy items or a lifestyle. Some 64% of social media users reported regretting an impulse purchase they made when viewing an ad, according to Bankrate. Not surprisingly, people like Scott are even more disappointed when they’ve invested their savings in a lifestyle that doesn’t live up to expectations.
When homeless people in Atlanta began asking Scott if she needed help, she began to question how they viewed her. “Outside of social media, no one saw it as a van life, they saw it as homeless,” she says.
Scott suggests that people do their research to prepare for life in the truck instead of learning on the feet, and try it for three weeks because the “honeymoon stage” might be over by then.
At this time, he continues to post content documenting his experience, rejecting the one-sided narrative he believes pervades TikTok. He has given up life in the van, saying that in the end he lost money from the entire company. He is currently living in a hostel, saving for an apartment, looking to go back to school to major in a more stable field like UX design or technology, and trying to rebuild his life.
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Source: news.google.com