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There are a couple of aspects to this. Certainly there is some element of globalization making people everywhere who are plugged into international culture more or less the same, and the longer the internet exists the more it will cater to the lowest common denominator (Eternal September never ends). Many people who travel nowadays are doing it just for instagram photos or a quick story, and not to be challenged or to learn anything meaningful about the world.
Any place that is beautiful, fun, and accessible is going to become a tourist trap nowadays, so for a place to not be one either some of those things must not be present (say some mountain village in Bhutan that is hard to get to and where nobody speaks English) or there must be extenuating circimstances (right after the end of covid lockdowns was a great time to travel, mask mandates aside, as is, forgive me for saying, a normally nice city where there has been a recent terrorist attack or some similar tragedy and all the famous locations are empty e.g. Paris right after the Bataclan attacks).
To get some firsthand knowledge, it's best to build relationships with individuals who have that experience, and what do you know, this just might the place. I'd wager we have Mottizens who are from or have been to many of the places you'd like to visit, and we have had many threads in the past either seeking similar advice as you, or offering reflections on what various obscure corners of the world are like.
My "method" for more grounded traveling was learning basics of the language, and then hitchhiking and dating trying to be very open-minded about invitations. That doesn't work since I am not single anymore and have a full-time job with limited vacation days..
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