I Didn’t Think I Could Miss Anthony Bourdain More—Until TikTok Influencers Started Hanging With The Taliban

The internet wasn’t always such a cesspool…

Or at least, I had no idea if it was back when my dad first let me use his work laptop to log onto DisneyChannel.com to play free games back in the 90s. That slow as molasses dial-up session probably pre-dates the New York Times essay that would change TV legend Anthony Bourdain’s life.

“Don’t Eat Before Reading This” led to a book deal turned best-seller, Kitchen Confidential, which was followed by his first TV series, A Cook’s Tour, featuring a younger Bourdain—not the man we’ve immortalized from his CNN linen-clad glory days, but a slimmer, lankier savant sporting leather blazers, muscle tees, a gold hoop earring, and hair that was still more pepper than salt.

Bourdain always had more street cred in his pinky finger than we could ever aspire to in a lifetime. He was a punk rock bad boy who ate still-beating cobra hearts, but was also a deeply intellectual storyteller who never shied away from the history, politics, or first-person narratives of third world countries. For many Americans, he was their first, if not only, look at food and life in other countries.

Obviously it’s impossible to fully convey the history of the Khmer Rouge or the West Bank in the span of a single episode, and a white American male tourist who doesn’t speak the language will never be able to seamlessly translate a country’s culture, pain, or pride to a television audience on the other side of the world. Throw in the commercial elements, tourist economies, and sensationalism of the exotic (that cobra heart is meant to attract eyeballs), and now we can look at this man, who we miss and admire deeply, in a stark but honest light.

Anthony Bourdain may not have been perfect, but he came off to his viewers as sincere, and would never, ever be accused of the kind of ignorance that is required to circulate the “travel content” taking over TikTok today—influencers glorifying Afghanistan’s Taliban, who they have disgustingly dubbed the “T-Bros”.

CNN’s Isobel Yeung met up with one of said influencers, Keith Sinclair, a man from New Mexico who is driving his purple muscle car across the globe, including a stretch through Afghanistan. He tells her the Taliban are “incredibly kind”, blowing his expectations out of the water, but appears visibly uncomfortable when she asks him further about whether influencer content glorifies the group or ignores the state of women’s rights in the country.

He interrupts Yeung, turning the question back on her, asking if she has spoken to the women’s rights activists herself, and whether they’ve given up hope. Moments after claiming he’s not ignoring the issues, he uses ignorance to argue his defense, claiming he can’t know whether progress has been made since 2021 (when U.S. troops withdrew from the country), because he doesn’t have a baseline to measure from.

Yeung’s segment briefly features YouTuber Addison Pierre Maalouf (known as YourFellowArab) claiming women in Afghanistan have more rights than men. Another video from his account, titled “Taliban Forces Me to Pledge Allegiance”, features men in turbans telling him “it’s time” in a clickbait ploy designed to shepherd viewers over to another platform for an “UNCENSORED” episode.

His channel also touts video series named “100 Hours of Living with the Mexican Cartel” and “Meeting a Haitian Warlord”, where the later garnered media attention for his alleged kidnapping. The Taliban, it would seem, are merely another dangerous organization for him to infiltrate in his quest to generate “likes” and “subscribes”.

Meanwhile, travel vlogger Matt Shoe interviews an Afghan man on his TikTok account, asking leading questions like, “So your wife cooks everything for you?” and “So your wife doesn’t work, right?” and then faces the camera explaining, “This is how it goes in Afghanistan”, and moments later parrots another man who says, “You live like a boss.”

When his host explains that his wife never leaves their home, and instead travels between his different properties for a change of pace, Shoe doesn’t push back, and the wife never gets a chance to share her perspective on whether walking back and forth ten times on one of the properties is enough exercise, as her husband claims it is.

These “influencers” are looking to be “controversial” because they know it will get them views. They know people like me are going to stop in our tracks, stupefied that just over a decade after Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous fight against the Pakistani Taliban, any ignorant “bro” with a camera and internet connection can glorify a group that is barring women from schools, work, and public life in Afghanistan.

And then, there will be the people who won’t or don’t know any better. Who are too young and have no point of reference. Who will see muscle cars and machine guns, turbans atop welcoming faces explaining away any controversy or criticism with a smile. These people will stop to watch simply because it seems “cool”.

These creators aren’t fit to carry Bourdain’s mantle. Hell, they’re not fit to iron his linen shirts, but traditional journalism, and its ethics, are giving way to “content” that is as disturbing as it is devoid of real value.

I don’t know how someone can market as an “adventure” what I know would be impossibly dangerous for me as a queer woman, because that level of ignorance takes effort. To sit there and act like the prospect of never leaving your home isn’t just terrifying, it’s a form of incarceration. As if they don’t know that getting to “walk in the yard” is something even American inmates are allowed to do.

I would love to see someone like a Kristen Kish or Padma Lakshmi add a female perspective to this conversation, or even a CNN host of the Kaitlan Collins or Abby Phillip calibre (Christiane Amanpour has already fought the fight for decades). There is a LOT going on in the world right now, but we desperately need for this to not fly under the radar unless we want the Parts Unknown generation to give way to these “propaganda reels”.

So until someone steps up to the plate and combats this ignorant free speech with better, more intelligent, informed, and higher definition (production value is going to matter) speech, we should be rewatching the classics with the people we care about.

Introduce a friend, child, neighbor, niece or nephew to A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, The Layover, or Parts Unknown and turn it into a conversation. Explain how much fashion has changed since the 00s, what “dark humor” is, and answer questions like “Why is that man eating that?” Show a younger generation just how “cool” travel is, how big and beautiful this world is, but most importantly, that all human beings deserve the dignity and freedom to enjoy it.