[3][6] He later taught English in Busan, South Korea before embarking on a pioneering multi-year digital nomad journey,[2] writing from-the-road travel dispatches for such dialup-era online outlets as salonmagazine.com (which later became Salon.com).

[3] Poets & Writers later noted that, "the story, far from being an account of a simple-minded stunt, was actually a fantastic narrative mixed with meditations on the 'shadowlike ironies of travel culture,' Walker Percy's 'traveler's angst,' and 'the greater struggle for individuality in the information age.

'"[3] In 2022, more than two decades after "Storming 'The Beach'" went viral, Uproxx noted that it "ushered in a new era of young, web-first...travel writing that influenced a generation.

[10][11] In addition to writing about travel, Potts has also written about U.S. military reading lists for The New Yorker,[12] Islamist Sayyid Qutb's travel memoirs for The Believer,[13] mockbuster B-movies for the New York Times Magazine,[14] Allen Ginsberg's poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra" for The Nation,[15] and the murder of small-college football player Brandon Brown for Sports Illustrated.

[23] In "Burn Rate," a 2022 episode in the sixth season of Showtime's Billions, Rian (Eva Victor) brandishes a copy of Vagabonding while "visualizing" a long-term journey in her office ("Rolf shows us how," she tells a coworker).