Very fun piece. But: "live like a local" as in sleep an hour's commute away from the city centre, eat at McD's, never visit any of the sights and have very little leisure time?
I thought not. ;)
It's useful shorthand for not being cocooned in chain hotels, of course, but those travellers who believe they are *actually* living like locals are usually sadly mistaken, and it's often a sign that they don't really understand what locals' lives are like.
PS: The people I see on planes with eyeshades, neck pillows and so on are almost invariably GenY or GenZ. It never fails to amuse me that they consider them necessary on a two-hour flight…
PPS: As a just-post-Boom GenXer I, too, have more in common with the GenZ stereotypes here than with the Boomer ones. In fact, just as a diversion, I estimated my percentage of Boomer-like behaviour and percentage of GenZ-like behaviour for each of the 13 categories in the article. Turns out I’m 71% GenZ, 29% Boomer. :)