Dear Sundog,

　　I was looping through a campground looking for a spot, and found them not only full (no big surprise) but filled with Mercedes vans whose occupants were typing at laptops, buds in ears, even a few satellite thingies mounted on roofs. In other words, they were working. It felt so unfair that the very limited number of sites, which are maintained with our tax money for people on vacation, were now subsidizing cheap rent for #vanlife. Shouldn’t telecommuters be banned from public campgrounds?

　　—Mom Against Douchey Drivers

　　Dear MADD,

　　I suspect that “work” is not the specific problem. Would you be upset if some geezer camped next to you was whittling walking sticks to peddle from his tailgate? I doubt that the technology is the exact issue, either: I bet you’d be less irritated by a large family streaming Finding Nemo in a campground, or a tourist FaceTiming a friend to rhapsodize about the day’s hike. And lastly it’s not precisely a problem of the expensive rig: six-figure motorhomes have been traveling our landscapes for ages, but when captained by retired Cal and Marge from Kalamazoo, they don’t inspire the same revulsion.

　　You see, MADD, your query is notable less for the offense but for the offender. In a mere decade, “vanlifer” has won a spot among epithets like “yuppie,” “gentrifier,” and “Californian” that signify the easy-to-hate villain in any story of rapid social change. I thus want to articulate the unspoken emotional thrust of your question:

　　Why Are #Vanlifers So Insufferable? The answer lies in a sprawling Venn diagram of wealth, demographics, access to technology, privilege, and self-congratulation, at whose very center sits the digital nomad. Let’s quickly acknowledge the obvious elephant in the room: our own jealousy. Wouldn’t it be cool to work only a few hours a week, but get paid real wages that materialize in the bank account as quickly and silently as a meteor crossing the sky, to live among creation’s most spectacular landscapes, not in the mildewy, leaky tent of yore; but in luxury, with a tiny efficient fridge and stove and heater, and a queen bed with a down duvet? Of course it would. But back to that Venn diagram.

　　First let’s talk about money. If these folks were boondocked in VW campers or old Econolines we’d think they were cool. But the $100,000 Sprinters show immense wealth. Of course, living under late capitalism in which the richest pay half the tax rate they did in 1981, the rest of us are accustomed to gazing slack-jawed, envious or resentful, at the obscene conspicuous consumption—from private rocket ships to battleship SUVs—while we struggle to pay the rent.

　　But in the past, when we went camping, we could look away from it, at least for a moment. The outdoors were a place for cheap fun, where low- and middle-income people could plunk down a tent for a week and experience the splendid democracy of nature, where class distinctions dissolved, a far leap from such aristocratic playgrounds as country clubs and yacht docks. The Mercedes parked at the trailhead, festooned with solar panels and $8,000 mountain bikes, brutally reminds us of how our economy rapaciously rewards a sliver of winners while punishing the rest as losers.

　　Next, let’s address work. The reason we might hold some admiration for the old-school dirtbag living in the back of a pickup is that she has sacrificed career and opportunity in exchange for the privilege of climbing or paddling year-round. Leaving the city for the hinterlands required a certain vow of poverty. The van-lifer has made no such sacrifice, and continues to make a bundle on the “information economy” of coding, consulting, or marketing; tasks perhaps not essential to the survival of civilization. They are not doctors, nurses, policemen, firefighters, plumbers, carpenters, repairmen, schoolteachers, cooks, farmers, or daycare workers.

　　Is it safe to say that work performed from a camper van does not spread justice, peace, and equity as much as it aids in consolidating wealth and power for billionaires? MADD, you’ll have to decide that one on your own. We suspect that those van dwellers are Bezos’ henchmen and Zuckerberg’s handmaidens who seem to have exploited a loophole in the social fabric. Maybe the police and the county commission had agreed not to enforce vagrancy laws at that spot down by the river because, well, we didn’t really have anywhere else for the disenfranchised to live, and now there’s a fleet of Sprinters with Texas plates parked there six months a year.

　　And who are they, precisely? The stereotypical digital nomad is white, hetero, college-educated, and child-free. For this they need not be punished, or scorned. My point is that vanlifers generally do not represent racial or economic diversity. They may even represent its opposite, as they not only come from the demographic groups that have always had first dibs on nature, but they also have the money, privilege, and freedom to go wherever they want. When they overstay or crowd public lands, it gives the sense that the commons are being hogged by an elite swath.

　　Moving on to tech, obviously, the invention of the internet and satellites allows them to work from the edge of wilderness. But we must also consider the fabulous advances in vehicle technology. In the past, six-figure motorhomes were confined to pavement, front-country campsites, and Wal-Mart lots, which is to say, out of sight and out of mind to those of us drawn to backroads. Now the combination of high clearance, four-wheel drive, and GPS means there’s no place a vanlifer can’t get to. With huge water tanks and solar panels on their vehicles, they can stay as long as they damn well please, absolutely dominating the rivers, beaches, crags, and hot springs; winter, spring, summer, and fall.

　　Finally: the narcissism. It is unfair to assume that every couple inhabiting an upscale sportstruck is also writing a self-congratulatory blog about it, but it sure seems that way. The Instagram feeds with the paid sponsorships and product links are especially egregious, combining the worst elements of the American hustle: they drape their prosperity with the language of religion (bliss, awakening, pilgrimage) while at the same time capitalizing off of something—nature—that is actually sacred.

　　But Couldnt We Just Ban Remote-Working Vanlifers Entirely? So, MADD, there’s plenty to dislike about campground telecommuters. As to your question of banning them: I don’t see an ethical or feasible path to do it. Everyone is subject to the same limits on how long they can camp, and rangers and hosts don’t have the bandwidth to poke around every site looking for evidence of work occurring, nor to tally the sales price of each vehicle that rolls through the gate, nor to estimate the net worth of its driver—and of course we don’t want them to. What’s more, just because vanlifers are annoying doesn’t make them unethical. They are simply working a system that already favors them to their full advantage, for which I can’t blame them.

　　Trying to stop the rich from overrunning these precious parts of the natural world is a game of whack-a-mole, as they simply have more money, wits, and free time than the local governments that try to regulate them. The solution lies with the Feds, but for decades Congress has cut taxes on the wealthiest while slashing the budget of land managers at the Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management. The result: fewer campsites, higher fees, and more traffic jams in parks, which leaves your average weekender out of luck, while handing over the jewels of nature—more remote, less regulated—to Broseph, Brosephine, and their magnificent machines.