Noturiphobia It is a term that appeared in recent years on social media and online communities, to describe an increasing and widespread feeling like the fear or anxiety of not being able to travel “enough” or “like others”. From a sociological point of view, it is not a clinically recognized phobia, but a cultural construct that intercepts an existential tension of the contemporary. In a historical moment in which the trip was transformed into Identity, performance and shareable experiencethe Noturiphobia presents itself as one anxious answer to the symbolic and social pressure of mobility. Behind this fear there is not only the desire for escape or leisure, but the profound feeling of being excluded from a horizon of value and recognitionmore and more tied to moving, exploring, documenting.
What is the Nottriphobia: the journey as the capital between mobility and privilege
In our collective imagination, the journey is often experienced as one individual choice and a universal rightan activity within everyone’s reach. However, this representation risks conceal structural inequalities which determine real access to mobility: traveling requires economic resources, free time, security, documents, social networkconditions not equally distributed in the population. There Noturiphobia It is the term social to describe the fear of not traveling enough or not doing it as others do it. Reflects the social pressure to travel as an identity experience and to be shared, typical of our times.
According to Urry – “Mobility has become the norm, and immobility the stigma” (Sheller & Urry, 2006) – The journey is not only a physical shift, but also a way to distinguish, show their status And accumulate social valuejust as it happens with other symbolic goods. In this perspective, we talk about Mobility as a symbolic and social capital: Traveling, especially towards “exotic” or culturally recognized destinations, increases personal prestige. However, Not all travels have the same social weight: the symbolic value depends on where you go, how to travel And what is told of the experience; The journey thus becomes a means for express one’s identity, differentiate from others And communicate a specific “style”, in line with what Bourdieu (1984) said.
In this context, the Noturiphobia it can be read like A dissonance between cultural expectations and material possibilitieslived with frustration by those who perceive themselves excluded from a desirable idea of life.
Experiential capitalism and identity performance
Especially until the mid -1900s, traveling was an experience limited to a few: was linked to work needs, migratory paths or elite tourism. There was no collective narrative of the trip as a personal realization. With the transformation of the consumption society into experiential capitalism (Pine & Gilmore, 1999), and later in affective capitalism (Illouz, 2007), The journey has changed meaning. We no longer travel to “possess places”, but to feel transformed, regenerated, made better. In this perspective, the journey turns into a real emotional product: must arouse authentic, deep, memorable sensations. At the same time it becomes one form of identity investment (we start “to find yourself”, “to reconnect with nature”) and a narrable contentto photograph, share and consume socially. Those who do not travel, or cannot do it, risk feeling excluded from this construction of meaning and value. The Noturiphobia was born right here: when it internalizes the idea that only those who move they have an interesting and recognized identity, while those who remain firm ends up appearing to appear out of time, irrelevant, invisible.
Travel to be seen: Instagram as a distinction device
THE social media With their visual culture, they are a privileged point of observation (and reproduction of this mechanism). On platforms like Instagram, the journey is cared for, aestheticized, mounted in narrative formtransforming itself into a showcase of the self.
In this sense, the journey is no longer just an experience to live, but becomes one public performance: “I see, so I exist”. Those who do not leave not only deprive themselves of experiences, but risk disappear socially: does not enter the stories, does not appear in the feeds, does not participate in the cultural conversation. When they say that “Mobility was moralized”we mean this: traveling has become A meter to measure human and social value. It is no longer a simple freedom of choice, but a implicit duty, an imperative. The immobility, on the contrary, is perceived as failure, apathy, marginality.
The self as performance: subjectivity and pressure to visibility
The Noturiphobia fits into a wider paradigm: that of performative and visible subjectivity. As Erving Goffman (1959) explained, in everyday life we all recite social roles, just like actors on a stage; But if once there were moments of break from the scene, today the performance is continuous, public, incessant. In this scenario, the journey becomes one of the main stages on which to stage one’s existence. Thus was born a identity paradox: we are asked to be unique, original, to distinguish ourselves, but at the same time we seek legitimacy and belongingimitating each other, sharing the same places, the same stories, the same photos. Byung-chul Han (2012) defined all this as The Society of Transparency: a world in which Showing is mandatory And in which opacity, silence, absence become suspicious, almost guilty.
In this perspective, the Noturiphobia It is not an unmotivated fearbut the coherent symptom of a system that rewards visibility And penalties penalize invisibility. Don’t leave today is equivalent to does not exist in the collective story of the personal realization.
