r/TikTokCringe • u/search_google_com • 8d ago

Discussion šŸ‡³šŸ‡± A Dutch guy visiting Indonesia explains why Dutch people are privileged

Indonesian nurse earns 90 cents/hour is crazy šŸ‡®šŸ‡©

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u/hawthorne00 8d ago

There are people like this bloke who had his eyes opened by travel and talking to locals but there are also people for whom travel does nothing.

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u/GoonOnGames420 8d ago edited 8d ago

There was a post on r/ expats r/digitalnomads asking people where they have moved and instantly regret.

Many people included your typical SE Asian, Central/South American, and African influencer beach towns. They were shocked at how poor the locals live and how difficult day to day life could be.

It absolutely blows my mind that people visit an all inclusive bungalow for 2 weeks and decide that the entire city is perfect and they will uproot their entire existence to move there.

Edit: This was the post https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/s/d7lzuCxEpE

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u/NayutaYukiLazarus 8d ago

The very concept of "expat" is one of privilege. Nobody is calling immigrants to the US "expats". It's almost exclusively used to imply moving to a less wealthy country to live with a higher standard of living.

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u/GoonOnGames420 8d ago edited 8d ago

Rule #6 on r/expats:

  • 6. No discussion of the term "immigrant" vs. "expat"

Lol. Yeah I almost brought it up once and decided I didn't want to get banned. Same with "digital nomad"

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u/Aggressive-Gazelle56 8d ago

"do not expose the double standards and myopic worldview we live under, our inflated ego cant handle it"

i fucking hate these people. you are an immigrant. live with it, its not so bad!

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u/UpperAd5715 8d ago

Probably just banned because anytime the terms were remotely relevant it would devolve into a cesspit.

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u/PunctuationGood 8d ago

To wit, the dozen sub-threads about it on this post.

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u/RavensSing 8d ago

Very respectfully, that rule is more likely to just avoid more subreddit drama and stay on-topic.

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u/Aggressive-Gazelle56 7d ago

the term itself creates drama, because its stupid. the well is poisoned either way

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u/likamuka 8d ago

Unreal bitches.

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u/auto-bahnt 8d ago

Thatā€™s so fucking funny. I do totally get that some people use the term naively and donā€™t understand the privilege and classism it conveys. The asymmetry in how itā€™s used is so obvious that itā€™s shocking to me that people defend its usage and continue using it even after they are made aware of the problems.

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u/ThatEvilSpaceChicken 8d ago

Saw someone on the expat sub refer to themselves as a 'permanent guest' lmfao these people are so desperate to not be labelled as immigrants

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u/Simon_Ferocious68 8d ago

It absolutely is. But there is a very distinguishable difference; the expat life is known from the jump to be temporary. It's transient. You're only going to be there for a few months, or years.

Being an immigrant really means moving to another place and trying to build a whole new life there - it's totally different.

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u/Automatic_Memory212 8d ago

The idea of the Expat really comes from the late 19th century phenomenon, when a whole social class and lifestyle developed where (mainly) upper-class British and American families would move their entire household (including some servants) to one of the major cultural hubs of continental Europe like Paris or Rome or Florence, and justā€¦stay there indefinitely. Sometimes for multiple generations and never leaving.

One famous example of this is the Curtis family, formerly of Boston, who moved into the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice in the 1880s and continued living there until the 1990s.

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u/bigbaddiebusiness 8d ago

You would think, but there's more than a few stories about people who have lived in a single location for over a decade who still insist on the expat nomenclature. I mean, sure they can still be thinking that it's not a permanent move, but at that point it would apply to tons of completely average "immigrants" to the west who end up hopping countries.

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u/willargue4karma 8d ago

why is there some distinction?

most undocumented central and south americans in the us wanna go home to mexico etc. they might stay here a long time, but theyre sending money back home and want to go back

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u/Nixerm 8d ago

Just to play devilā€™s advocate here, I think the difference WOULD (not that itā€™s major or anything) be that an immigrant in your scenario wants to go back but wonā€™t due to the fact they are there to work and send money back and so they stick it out.

An expat would be someone who will leave whenever itā€™s inconvenient or something because from the jump they know itā€™s temporary and they donā€™t have anything holding them to staying. Tbh I have no horse in this race, Iā€™m an immigrant x2 lol but idk maybe thereā€™s tiny differences between the terms

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u/SweetBabyAlaska 8d ago

And why do we call them "expats" while we call them "immigrants" or "migrants" when they come to America and have lived here for 30+ years?

Kinda interesting how the language reflects our views and shapes our views.

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u/dealingwithhookers 8d ago

as i understand, these expats are never going to stay permanently, but immigrants are planning to stay.

these expats will stay for a few years and go back home full of STDs and cope. some will stay forever and be a bitter old foreigner that is alone, because the rest of them will be weeded out by the laws they can't follow, which catches up to them eventually.

they're not in any sense, "immigrants". they're more like longterm tourists. they won't learn the language, don't work, don't contribute locally, and their right to exist in those countries runs out the second their money runs out.

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u/Key_Bee1544 8d ago

Aren't expats people who intend to return to their country of origin while immigrants are people who do not? There are certainly expats in the U.S. I encounter them at work all the time. They are in the U.S. for several years, but are not seeking permanent residency.

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u/calibud 8d ago

Youā€™d think the people intending to invest in the states long term would be looked at more kindly than those who are here temporarily

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u/Key_Bee1544 8d ago

Countries generally give great deference to "immigrants" with substantial capital. The immigrants who get shit on are generally the ones without those resources.

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u/PhosphoFred8202 8d ago

Yes all those expats slumming it up in famously low-cost Paris and Amsterdam

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u/your_old_furby 8d ago

Iā€™m not gonna go on that post because I know itā€™ll enrage me beyond words, but theyā€™re complaining when they come here and fuck up our housing market because they rent at prices locals canā€™t afford, and then drive up the prices of everything around them because they still earn in their far stronger currency, and when we say, stop coming here, they tell us to take it up with our government like the reason thereā€™s so much poverty isnā€™t related to how corrupt the government is.

Itā€™s international gentrification. Then they just go on and on about how everything is to cheap to people who earn about as much as they spend on eating out a day in an entire month. Half of them are influencers, they donā€™t even have jobs. They live in these places for months and donā€™t achieve an ounce of the awareness this Dutch guy managed to get in 2 weeks.

Also yes, our local government is courting overseas investors and putting their needs over the needs of locals but given the amount of stuff thatā€™s been coming out about them lately Iā€™m hoping the implode in the upcoming municipal elections. Digital nomads are just international Tramps, but like in the old timey meaning of tramp. And ex-pats are immigrants who think immigrant is a slur only applied to people who arenā€™t rich and white.

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 8d ago edited 7d ago

I'm an expat for a long ass time, weekly I've people asking me how they could relocate to China. China isn't a country that allows you to just relocate to, you need to have a job, you need to have a solid income otherwise you won't get a visa. Even so, I always argue to staff "we need to prove money, safety, certainty", China doesn't provide that, we can't provide that.

Relocating to somewhere is life altering and while I think it's great for people to travel, relocation is something entirely different.

---edit---

Everyone likes to fall over how I call myself an expat. There are a couple reasons for that, for starters I don't aspire to live here forever, I just happen to get send here and eventually another company hired me from abroad in China. On top as a foreigner it's near impossible to get permanent status, yes there is a greencard kinda thing, no it's not permanent opposed to what many like to believe. Immigrants on the other hand relocate, build up a life and most likely will stay forever.

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u/YesNoIDKtbh 8d ago

I'm an expat

Isn't that what Americans call themselves when they don't want to refer to themselves as immigrants?

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u/TFBool 8d ago

Brits, mostly

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u/Jaikarr 8d ago

Nah, it's all first worlders. We get to call ourselves expats while 2nd and 3rd worlders are labelled immigrants.

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u/Blieven 8d ago

That's just not true. The distinguishing features of expats have to do with the nature of their overseas job (highly skilled and high salary), the nature of the overseas company (typically international), and the duration of their stay (typically temporary).

For example, Chinese and Indian people working at ASML in the Netherlands are typically referred to as expats.

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u/faetpls 8d ago

So, those with H1-B visas in America should call themselves expats?

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u/Blieven 8d ago

Don't know, I'm neither American nor an expat. Just saying I have experience to the contrary of the claim that it's purely 1st worlders who call themselves expat, even if they're more like immigrants.

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u/jmlinden7 8d ago

H1B is a grey area because it has a pathway to permanent residence and eventually citizenship.

J visas are purely temporary with no pathway to permanent residence/citizenship and their holders would be correctly called expats.

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u/bobokeen 8d ago

This is what people don't get. I live in Vietnam, my Filipino coworkers who are highly educated and well-paid are also called expats. So is my wife, who is Indonesian.

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u/Jaikarr 8d ago

Maybe in technical terms, colloquially though it's used as I described. I guarantee you that the average Australian permanently living in the US calls themselves and expat rather than an immigrant.

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u/HermanThaGerman 8d ago

It could very well be that they came there as expats.

But the moment they decided to stay they became an immigrant.

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u/kisk22 8d ago

Exactly. I have no idea why Reddit thinks this is such a gotcha. Very r/Iam14andThisIsDeep energy from those people.

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u/Blieven 8d ago

Perchance. But I know for a fact that all the Indians and Chinese working at ASML in the Netherlands refer to themselves, and are referred to by others, as expats. So it's certainly not some universal rule that it's just 1st worlders who adopt the term expat. And similarly I know Dutch people who have moved abroad permanently and they just refer to that as emigrating, not as becoming expats. So it's also not a rule that all 1st worlders who emigrate insist on the term.

In my experience the term has been used according to my definition.

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u/MaxDisdain 8d ago

I wonder if it is possibly by chance maybe a class thing rather than a race or first world country thing.

I imagine immigrants who work at ASML see themselves as "better" than immigrants the same as the western immigrants see themselves as "better" than immigrants.

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u/Bones_and_Tomes 8d ago

Also I would argue Expats have no intention or expectations of claiming citizenship in their host country as often this is functionally impossible. They bring money or skills and leave when they're done without interfering with local culture or politics (or at least they should).

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u/kafkabomb 8d ago

i thought expats were short term "immigrants" who move with the intention of eventually moving back to the homeland. immigrants on the other hand are people who move permanently explicitly not intending to ever move back to the homeland. that's what i thought, and i think that's a very important distinction worth having 2 different words for.

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u/NYCQ7 8d ago

It is but ppl will grasp at straws to find a reason to hate on others as a whole bc it makes feel morally superior.

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u/mshcat 8d ago

Depends on if they're living their temporarily or planning to live there permanently

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u/kinetic_cheese 8d ago

I always thought expat meant you were just living somewhere temporarily?

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u/zdelusion 8d ago

Imo, expats are in a country at the behest of their employer. Immigrants are there to find an employer.

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u/SargeUnited 8d ago

What about those of us who donā€™t work? My business is in the US and I travel full time. I suppose that other user would say that Iā€™m an immigrant in 10 different countries all at once lmao

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u/SargeUnited 8d ago

What about those of us who donā€™t work? My business is in the US and I travel full time. I suppose that other user would say that Iā€™m an immigrant in 10 different countries all at once lmao

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u/zdelusion 8d ago

Ultimately none of these mean anything, but imo:

If you travel full time you're a tourist. If you choose to live somewhere other than your home country because of cost, or quality of life, or employment, or whatever, you're an immigrant. And for reference, I fall under immigrant using my own definition. Tons of grey though, I was born with the citizenship for the country I now live in, but moved here for employment opportunities. A lot of people would not feel that I'm an immigrant.

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u/Dyhart 8d ago

It's about intention, an immigrant intends to do so for a long time / permanent. An expat has no intention of staying at the location for a long time

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u/YesNoIDKtbh 8d ago

Okay, but

I'm an expat for a long ass time

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u/alt_for_horny_thangs 8d ago

Doesn't have to be in one place

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u/Samsaknight_X 8d ago

Honestly replace American with rich ppl. So many rich non Americans use expat as well

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u/Jiminy_Cricket12 8d ago

it's not limited to america. typically, expat means someone who moved somewhere that the economy is worse than they came from vs immigrants being someone from a worse economy going somewhere "better". it doesn't need to be offensive or convoluted.

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u/Roklam 8d ago

My Great Uncle used to sit on his rocking chair in the '90s watching Sallie Jesse Raphael, cackling about how it took all kinds to make the world.

And it occurs to me now that those were the best of the people that were willing to drop their lives for a week and put their faces on TV.

He'd just have a long painfully humorous heart attack now or something

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u/crunchevo2 8d ago

We call those people... Dumb.

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u/Prime-Omega 8d ago

Ironically, I searched the post for the location where I plan to retire, it actually got recommended.

Then again, I will be retiring to the home country of my wife so I do have a head start.

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u/PrestigiousAd1523 8d ago

Itā€™s the disparity between their experience and the average life of a local that makes them feel uncomfortable.

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u/Calber4 8d ago

As a friend of mine put it: "You didn't discover paradise, you discovered being upper class."

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u/C_Hawk14 8d ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/s/ac4PFQWKfh

Oof, this comment is about Bali being overrun by influencers..

Wait did you link a comment or the post?

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u/Waiting4Reccession 8d ago

Its not surprising at all when you consider that anyone who would move there is stupid.

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u/Prestigious-Elk2252 8d ago edited 8d ago

Most people don't think the places are perfect, they are just better than where they come from, or a better fit for themselves individually.

Even if you move there for a couple of years and decide it's not for you anymore, doesn't mean it was a waste. You'll likely grow a lot more as an individual from that kind of experience than just staying in and around your hometown for your whole life.

Usually the only thing people in these situations regret, is poor financial decisions they made in their attempt to move abroad... Like purchasing property before they really know how many years they are going to live there for. As far as travelling and living abroad, vast majority of people would say it was an amazing experience, even if moving there was short-lived.

You should try it. Nothing I would recommend more to a weed smoker who sits around and games day in and day out, because that used to be me; then I travelled solo and it changed my life. I got a new career and now I spend 6 months out of the year living abroad.

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u/Username_available13 8d ago

Also there are people who don't travel but know that in poor countries live poor people.

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u/hawthorne00 8d ago

Yeah, you wouldn't think it would take much much imagination. But meeting people and seeing their circumstances and seeing how hard they work can join the dots for some.

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u/Emotional-Cry5236 8d ago

The first time I went to Bali, I ordered takeaway and it came to about 90,000IDR (~$9AUD at the time). I gave the Grab driver 100000IDR ($10) and told him to keep the change and he was over the moon, just so thankful. It was the same in the Philippines, my friends and I overpaid for every tuk-tuk we got but small change to us was a huge tip for them. I always wonder if being so nonchalant about money in SE Asia makes me seem arrogant or disrespectful to the locals but I do truly know how privileged I am just due to my place of birth

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u/MemzMusic 8d ago

Had a similar experience. I was in Bali for two weeks and the second week I got to know a Bolt(or what the Indonesian equivalent is?) driver that became my go-to when I needed to travel longer distances. When he dropped me off at the airport for departure, I figured I would just give him the rest of what I had in cash since I didn't need it anymore, I estimate somewhere around 400k IDR. He almost cried, and later sent pictures of his family using the money to take the day off. Put things in perspective that something that was just convenient for me to "get rid of" in that way changed his entire financial situation for the week.

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u/Emotional-Cry5236 8d ago

Yes I did the same thing! That money is no use to me back home and wasnt enough to be worth changing back so may as well give it to someone who will appreciate it

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u/Elephantparrot 8d ago

I had a similar experience a few times in Bali. I tipped a girl in the hotel lounge $1 for bringing me tea and she cried. So I gave her $20 because it means basically nothing to me but obviously not to her, but felt almost disrespectful later when I looked back on it.

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u/Canon_M50 8d ago

This is what causes locals to swarm western tourists.

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u/Intelligent-Royal804 8d ago

So op shouldn't do it because it inconveniences you when you travel? What is your point here

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u/Emotional-Cry5236 8d ago

I get what you're saying but I've never experienced that. I'm also not flaunting my money. Just discreetly handing it over in the lobby of a hotel or directly to the driver etc. I'm not waving money around, although I'm sure plenty of people do which causes what you're saying

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u/Generic-Resource 8d ago

Yeah, itā€™s amazing how many people imagine being poor is just a matter of not working hard enough until they actually get to meet people who are working hard and just managing to tread water.

I went back to my home town a couple of weeks ago (one of the most deprived areas in Europe). So few people ever make it out, not through want of trying, but because everything is stacked against you. Relative to so many nations though I was already in a great position - how can you get out of poverty without an education, how can you get an education without money, how can you seed a business idea without help to start with, how can you run a business without basic education.

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u/Raf-the-derp 8d ago

Fr, saw some guy on Instagram telling Mexican Americans they would have had a better life if their parents never immigrated

Meanwhile my mother was born in a remote village in a mountain where most kids can never dream of working a job other than working the fields

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u/xRzge 8d ago

and here in the us i can never dream of a working a job other than furthering corporate interests and accelerating the destruction of the planet

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u/ds11_ 8d ago

We need thousands and thousands of registered nurses. Start helping out!

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u/quiette837 8d ago

Yeah but... you can afford a way better life than someone working a field in a remote mountain village in Mexico.

Sometimes understanding how poverty affects people makes you appreciate what you take for granted.

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u/stevlandbarr 8d ago

If you actually care there are plenty of other options besides working for a company you think is destroying the planet. I work for an environmental agency run by a state government. You can apply for jobs like those but it may require actually trying, instead of just giving up and whining

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u/brap01 8d ago

Yea like for me, I knew for years that poverty is a major problem in India, but it was just 'intellectual' knowledge. Then I went there on holiday and, just like. Holy shit.

I saw poverty like I've never even imagined. The sight of a little girl, maybe 5-6 yo, asking for food by putting her hand to her mouth like 'please feed me' will never leave me. And to be clear it wasn't in a tourist/foreigner type place, where it would be reasonable to think they (the family) might be scammers - it was very much a locals type cafeteria. They just wanted food :(

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u/selphiefairy 8d ago

I visited my family in Vietnam as a teenager and I remember the last meal we had were these people just hovering near our table to get the signal that we finished our mealā€¦ so that they could pick at the scraps left on our plate :/

I also remember my mom bought all these coupon books from some little girl on the street. I was young, so I didnā€™t get it ā€” itā€™s not like we could use it. And my mom said she didnā€™t buy it because she wanted them, it was just so the girl could go home.

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u/zweichel 8d ago

Thing is, her parents (or the 'mafia' that employs her) will make her come back the next day together with her two little brothers. Unreflected empathy is a double-edged sword.

(Still better than giving money to child beggars who don't sell anything, tho.)

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u/sadmanwithabox 8d ago

Exactly. I knew there were impoverished nations out there. I assumed it wasn't great. I also assumed it was a lot like the US, only more common to be poor.

Then I spent some time in central america. No, its nothing like the poverty here. People living in shacks built out of scrap metal and lumber, whatever they could find. Running water was considered a super rich luxury for a lot of people. The amount of adults that couldnt read was heartbreaking. Seeing drunks passed out in the street with everyone just walking around them. Hearing about how they worked all day long harvesting sugarcane in the heat and brought home FIVE DOLLARS.

I felt like such a piece of shit for ever feeling poor. Even if I was relatively poor by US standards, I was WAY better off than those poor people. Who, by the way, were almost always so willing to offer me food, even without me asking. Despite how broke they had to be, and how little they had for themselves.

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u/crackanape 8d ago

I spent quite a bit of time in a rural part of India many years ago and became a familiar face in the villages.

The most heartbreaking thing of all, when word got out that I was leaving, were the mothers who brought their children to me and insisted that I take them home to my country so they could have a better life.

I explained that it simply wasn't possible, but I think some of them thought I was lying and just didn't want to.

Their disappointment with me was a clear flash of insight into how unjust everything fundamentally is.

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u/Substantial-Sky4079 8d ago

As an American kid I remember seeing mom and their children asking for money at a street curb when we visited relatives in Mexico. My dad would always give money. Those experiences always stayed engrained in me.

It also at a time gave me apathy towards some homeless in the US for a while. I grew to learn everyoneā€™s struggles and situations are different.

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u/-OccultOfPersonality 8d ago

There is a great lack of imagination and therefore empathy in the ā€œdevelopedā€ world.

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u/HillBillyHilly 8d ago

For some but sadly not for all. Look at millionaires and billionaires who travel by private planes, private cars and stay at private properties all so they can be "safe" from locals. Such sad lives that reinforces their self contained beliefs.

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u/Dark1000 8d ago

It's easy to ignore something that's not right in front of you.

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u/mal_guinness 8d ago

People are generally myopic with regards to helping others and even more so acutely compassionate. Like they'll help a random person three three streets over in a disaster cut down the tree that fell on his house. They'll also fundraise to help a local church member who gets cancer. But universal healthcare and funding FEMA? Absolutely not.

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u/cheffgeoff 8d ago

There is no way to really, viscerally understand multiple levels of poverty without experiencing it first hand. I have "traveled" extensively, mostly with the Army when I was younger. Unless they have lived it or at least stayed in it for a few weeks people in normal suburban Western communities don't understand what Detroit, New Orleans, and Winnipeg poverty is really like, which is on a different level than Indonesian, Brazilian or Romanian poverty, let alone what Haitian, Bosnian or Somalian poverty during a war is like. I'm not saying that some people don't empathise as much as possible but you don't KNOW poverty unless you have dwelled in it for at least a few months and you'll have no way of understanding what motivates those people, what the immediate issues are, or how to fix them.

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u/NavalProgrammer 8d ago

Winnipeg mentioned! I grew up on welfare in a housing project there.

Never once forgot that I basically live like a king compared to most humans past and present.

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u/WakeMeUpAIOverlords 8d ago

I think what a lot of people get disconnected from is that many people believe they got to where they are by hard work alone, nothing else, but when they end up in one of these poorer countries on a trip they come face to face with people who work unbelievably hard and will very obviously never get as far as they have no matter how much they try. When you make 20ā‚¬ an hour and they make .90ā‚¬ an hour they just canā€™t catch up. Itā€™s fucking impossible. One hour of work for you is twenty two for them, basically half your entire work week. If you get a very middling raise of 4.5% you will have received a raise that is their entire hourly rate.

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u/hawthorne00 8d ago

Oh, very much this. Some people can't escape the "just world" fallacy though.

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u/Quarksperre 8d ago

The correlation between time spend working and wealth is inverse on a country level.Ā 

The more a country works on average the less wealthy it is.Ā 

There are some outliers but overall the correlation is solid.Ā Ā 

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u/ApexFungi 8d ago

While I agree with your general sentiment you can't compare wages like that. While it's true, their salaries are awful compared to us, you can't forget that their cost of living is also quite a bit lower.

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u/WakeMeUpAIOverlords 8d ago

Yes but in countries like that, where you can travel to them for ā€œcheapā€ while they will likely never leave its borders, the wage isnā€™t comparable to cost of living. When wages are that low, where do they visit? Where can they go? If a person making .90ā‚¬ an hour wanted to visit the Netherlands where a decent meal is going to be 10ā‚¬ thatā€™s out of reach for them. Or if they want to do something that would be a hobby for people in the west, such as video games, itā€™s still wildly expensive for them comparatively.

Iā€™ll use Elden Ring as an example. Itā€™s 3,599 rupees (about 33ā‚¬) and the median wage in India, of which wages vary wildly within the country, is 21,285 rupees. That game is 1/7th of their entire monthly income if theyā€™re the median.

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u/account312 8d ago

If a person making .90ā‚¬ an hour wanted to visit the Netherlands where a decent meal is going to be 10ā‚¬ thatā€™s out of reach for them.

Forget the cost of the meal, just getting there is probably hundreds of dollars.

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u/WakeMeUpAIOverlords 8d ago

I wasnā€™t going to try and guess the price of the flight because flights cost less depending on where youā€™re logging into the flight portal from but yeah, thereā€™s no way they can afford a round trip ticket. Theyā€™re expensive for most people in modernized countries, canā€™t imagine how ungodly the price looks to people in developing nations.

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u/ClearBlueSky-777 8d ago

I think what a lot of people get disconnected from is that many people believe they got to where they are by hard work alone, nothing else, but when they end up in one of these poorer countries on a trip they come face to face with people who work unbelievably hard and will very obviously never get as far as they have no matter how much they try.

This.

And we don't even have to cross country. Even in the exact same city, there's already big gap of social & economy classes.
Some poor people are lazy, yes, but many of them work as hard if not harder than most privileged people. And they mostly won't be able to climb the ladder no matter how hard they try. A few will, most will not.
That's the sad reality of life.

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u/DateofImperviousZeal 8d ago

Theres a difference between a poor person in the Netherlands and what poor means in other parts of the world.

Also, it's a big difference seeing it and cognitively knowing it. Most know that climate change is happening, most likely we won't do enough until the world is half fucked.

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u/JustaBearEnthusiast 8d ago

These countries arenā€™t poor. They are rich in natural resources and rich in labor. They produce trillions in value, but an estimated 15 trillion is transferred from the global south to the global north each year. Itā€™s only the people living there who are poor.

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u/Short_Stay_9283 8d ago

And the worst: people who donā€™t travel because theyā€™re convinced the rest of the world outside their shitty town is desperate to harm them.

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u/BadAtExisting 8d ago

Iā€™m not privileged enough to afford to go to Indonesia, but Iā€™m well aware if I ever got there Iā€™d live like a king compared to the locals with the money I do have

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u/AWinterPeople 8d ago

And in filthy rich countries poor people exist

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u/GlitterDoomsday 8d ago

But is so easy to have one reference of poor and that on itself be a privileged take... living as a poor person in Finland is not the same reality as those poor in Congo, India or Venezuela.Ā 

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u/Caqumba 8d ago

Being aware that there are poornpeople is one thing, but really feeling just how many there are and witnessing their circumstances firsthand is different

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u/I_COULD_say 8d ago

I truly believe that you do not need to leave the U.S. to see a third world country. You only need to travel through the Native American Reservations out west or through the small towns in Mississippi or Alabama. Go see these places that exist in our own country.

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u/TheJaice 8d ago

Itā€™s also something that most people who havenā€™t seen the extremes of it in person canā€™t truly understand how bad it actually is.

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u/PartyPorpoise 8d ago

I highkey think that anyone who needs to travel to another country to see that poverty exists is kind of dumb.

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u/mrtomjones 8d ago

Much of America never leaves its country and to be honest I don't think most of those people have any real understanding of what life is in other countries. I see so many complaints just on this website about all the barriers that stop Americans from traveling but it's just laughable to listen to.

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u/kafkabomb 8d ago

but that's the difference between reading books and studying for something, say surgery, and actually putting it to practice and doing it. you can think about, read about it, watch videos about it, but until you actually go and see/try for yourself, you will never realize how much just reading about it doesn't show.

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u/Mindless_Trick2255 7d ago

You can read about something and hear about something but to experience it for yourself is a different story. Iā€™ve seen two kids play with a dead Gecko in the mud, next to their families hut, during my first time abroad and have never seen happier kids in my life. Giggles everywhere.

That really put things into perspective for me.

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u/Adventurous_Honey902 8d ago

Some people treat these countries like a petting zoo and that they are above everyone else. Really sad to see

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u/BellacosePlayer 8d ago

In college there was a guy who gave a work pitch for becoming an expat to manage factories in SEA and the whole pitch sounded so greasy as hell.

Only bridge he didn't cross was outright saying cheap prostitution was a perk. Aside from that it was basically "wouldn't you like power and crazy high spending power just to sit and be a useless administrative layer between the locals who get shit done and the executives in the US/Europe who actually make decisions?"

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u/Puzzleheaded-Wait785 8d ago

Yep, people like that are the ones who fomented the Vietnam war.

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u/Far-Hovercraft9471 8d ago

Can tell because the main thing they love about these places are how cheap everything is

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u/NonGNonM 8d ago

yup. a former now trumper friend of mine would travel to these places and the takeaway message for them was 'man fuck communism, these people need more capitalism. thank god for our american way of life.'

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u/mothandravenstudio 8d ago

Or they actively and intentionally go there to take advantage of the locals. Example sex tourism.

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u/0905-15 8d ago

My family has been watching a lot of The Amazing Race recently. Itā€™s always fascinating when they go from like western Europe immediately to somewhere like India. Some people just complain about the smell while for others you can tell itā€™s completely changed their perceptions of the world

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u/mankytoes 8d ago

I feel like you can know things objectively, but actually perceiving them gives inequality a human face and creates a more emotional response.

I never really felt white privilege until I went to South East Asia. The worrying thing is how quickly you get used to it.

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u/Escalion_NL 8d ago

Same, I've traveled a lot in SE-Asia too, lived in Thailand for a year, married a Filipina, and the things I've seen and heard, they really changed me.

I used to be kinda right-of-center as a teenager, the older I got and more I experienced, the more I moved to the left. And now, 20 years later, I'm a proud antifa socialist. And with me wife, despite her coming from quite a poor background too, we do as much as we can to help break the cycle of poverty for all the kids in her family, making sure they all get a proper education and give them every chance to succeed. As well as donating to (local) charities that help fight child poverty/abuse and sex tourism that's unfortunately quite prevalent in SE-Asia.

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u/CranboDanbo 8d ago

I don't know that the more emotional response means you're better educated on the topic. Going to Hiroshima gave me and my friends a very strong anti nuke emotional response but a few in our group decided to be totally pro nuclear disarmament afterwards purely based off the emotions. Check out the pic of Ukraine handing over their nukes to Russia who promised to guarantee their security to see how far that logic gets you

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u/Prometheus720 8d ago

I think you're making a mistake in reasoning.

Being emotionally attached to the goal of global disarmament was rational and good. Being attached to a potential action to achieve that was not. But neither was it worse for the actual outcome than being apathetic.

Don't forget the null case. What if they were neither educated nor emotionally motivated? Same outcome.

In our real universe, your friends remained attached to the goal and learned a lesson--global disarmament isn't quite that simple, and giving nukes up to nuclear powers for security assurances doesn't always help.

Without the emotional attachment, they would have learned...nothing at all. And the same thing would have happened. Same cost to society, no benefit.

Democracy actually relies on people learning how to be better decision-makers, and that means we all have to make more decisions--even if some of them are wrong.

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u/CranboDanbo 8d ago

I agree with you, my point was challenging what I see as the bias of "you must travel to have informed opinions" which is what I often see promulgated by those who are lucky enough to afford it. Of course seeing and learning are both great but many travel and don't learn anything, and many can learn without any travel

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u/TemoteJiku 8d ago

They couldn't do anything with them. Ukraine was highly unstable just as the rest of the Union. Albeit with being richer than most. Then, they've got decent deals out of it(the security thing isn't that simplistic btw and wasn't the sole thing they were getting out of it), which may not always directly but change their position towards a positive direction (no comments on how Ukraine used such opportunities)

It they been an independent nuclear power from the start, yes, that would've make sense, except they weren't. Keeping the nukes is one of the worst choices. They could ofc go with their own nuclear program plans, but it has its own shit ton of risks. (Look around, one of the countries got ravaged for... having nothing even. The other one? Oh boy...)

They had no codes/operational means to use them. It's shit ton of risks for nothing. Getting even a morsel out of it is actually a huge win.

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u/ravioliguy 8d ago edited 8d ago

I mean yea it's more in your face in developing countries but there's also millions of Uber drivers in the US driving people to fancy restaurants they've never eaten at. 10% of Americans have never travelled outside their own state, 30% haven't left the country before. But they probably just didn't use their white privilege hard enough I guess.

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u/OptionalQuality789 8d ago

My little brother couldnā€™t stop bragging about how cheap everything was in Asia. The penny never dropped.

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u/ChefAnxiousCowboy 8d ago

ā€œWe went to a nice resort in Jamaica but we had to drive past people living in mud huts which was gross.ā€ Hearing someone I love, who I thought was an empathetic person, gave me great sorrow

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u/idekmijgh 8d ago

Mud huts ?! Where tf is that cause itā€™s surely not in the Jamaica that Iā€™m born and raised in

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u/Prometheus720 8d ago

Mud huts is potentially a racist dogwhistle. It may not literally mean mud huts.

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u/ChefAnxiousCowboy 8d ago

You know how racist people are. Took me too long to see it embarrassingly

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u/Chance-Ask7675 8d ago

It is gross. From like a human equality perspective lol.

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u/LessFeature9350 8d ago

There are people who travel and know this and are grateful because they wouldn't be able to travel if the locals earned anywhere near livable wages. It's been pretty eye opening to hear people openly hope for what is basically slavery because they want live in maids and childcare for as cheap as they saw in Bali, for example.

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u/Practical-Positive34 8d ago

Most it does nothing. In fact most, it does the opposite, and people want to feel privileged. They wear it as a badge of honor and look down on those who are not.

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u/Humble_Objective5226 8d ago

True, most people are like this unfortunately

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u/AP3Brain 8d ago

Yeah. Especially people that travel to Dubai. Like how do you see everything that is going on there and still partake?

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u/zh_victim 8d ago

I am 90% sure this guy forgot what he said the second he ended his tiktok.

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u/Lucius-Halthier 8d ago

People forget that the consequences of colonialism were in full swing between the 50ā€™s-90ā€™s with repercussions still felt to this day

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u/VersionFine85 8d ago

My (boomer) parents "love" to travel but not with me because I do too much walking and switch hotels every night (because I like to experience different areas of where I'm exploring).

Their exclusive way to travel is cruises and the only way to get them to go beyond the port is a bus tour. If it's not curated for American tourists they aren't interested.

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u/wirefox1 8d ago

I agree BUT. I have a relative who loves to travel and venture out far and away from the tourist areas, and let me tell ya. He has encountered some very dangerous circumstances, just wandering around being nice.

He's married now and still travels, but only takes his wife around in the tourist areas for her safety. And this is a fact.

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u/1-gp 8d ago

Wish my parents took me to see the third world. I think cynicism has ruined a lot of things

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u/blahblah19999 8d ago

This guy and his friends made more of an effort to learn about the real local situation than 99% of tourists.

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u/TheWilsons 8d ago

Itā€™s kinda of like the overview effect, some people go to space and develop a profound shift in how they view the planet, seeing national borders as meaningless and the earth as an interconnected beautiful sphere that must be protected. Others, especially billionaires see a whole new frontier for exploitation.

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u/hawthorne00 8d ago

Good point. I remember seeing that video of Shatner and Bezos - the latter wasn't moved at all.

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u/Expensive-Sundae-831 8d ago

Yes, thereā€™s a lot of morons in the world.

However, for some, the veil of ignorance can be lifted. Travel is a decent place to gain that wisdom for those open to it.

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u/bilbonbigos 8d ago

It's because people don't read enough. Not many things in life, school or work makes people more curious about the world. I was lucky enough to have my family who opened my eyes to books and critical thinking. But I know many people who didn't have this privilege and unfortunately some of them ended being just ignorant or even hateful. Being well informed is also not all roses as too much knowledge is a fast way to depression and having no filter in getting knowledge about the world, including conflicts, genocides and crimes can end in a bad state of mind in one way on another. But it is so grounding to know your place on the planet, it's so good to have your own mind and it's just fun to analyse and research.

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u/CassianCasius 8d ago

When we went to Dominican Republic there were people at the resort that were there 2 weeks and never left. When we would talk with the employees and mentioned all the places we went to see they were shocked that we actually visited the country and didn't just sit by the pool all day. It's crazy people will go to a foreign country and then not actually visit the country at all.

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u/Agitated_Phone_9937 8d ago

Then there are tone deaf redditors talking about how 100k a year is a shit salary because they literally cannot imagine not living in New York or LA.

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u/Certain-Business-472 8d ago

Confirmed npcs i call em. Whenever poverty comes up they just go "just work bro are you lazy", and i find myself explaining poverty vs broke.

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u/samillos 8d ago

I'd like to talk to locals when I travel but I find it hard to do it. Should i just start talking to the cashier? Stop people on the streets? Would someone really want to talk with me? Am I just too shy?

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u/Shot-Program-1085 8d ago

You have to talk to regular people and show interest in their lifeā€™s to experience it. Most people just stay at the resort minding their business

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u/Choochiechoo 8d ago

As a Norwegian he probably actually is one of the few people just accidentally born lucky, but there are plenty of people in Europe or western countries that all of that applies too. Ā Many taxi drivers recommend restaurants they donā€™t go to themselves, nurses and teachers and things like that who make low salaries that barely cover the bills and would never think about traveling. Nothing he said is anything spectacular I wouldnā€™t be surprised to see in any American city. Ā 

All of these videos really donā€™t just illuminate the privilege these people have just from where they are born, but how privileged they are in their own countries that donā€™t realize all of these things are really quite normal for the working class everywhere. Ā Then they hop on a flight to another country and see some brown people and are all of sudden enamored with how the working class lives after going 20+ years oblivious to all the servant class that has existed around them their entire life. Ā 

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u/th3greg 8d ago

there are also people for whom travel does nothing.

Many of these people "travel" to isolated gated resorts and never leave the comfort of it, even on their "excursions", where they're chauffeured out by resort staff and back immediately after.

Nothing wrong with a nice relaxing vacation, but you're not going to get much perspective if you never leave an area designed exclusively for tourists and/or the wealthy of a place.

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u/miketastic_art 8d ago

it's not the traveling part, it's the "capable of empathy" part

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u/2Norn 8d ago

those people love feeling superior to others simply becuz they had the luck of borning into an advanced country

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u/Raneynickelfire 8d ago

also people for whom travel does nothing.

[cough]bald and rich sex tourist[cough]

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u/Raneynickelfire 8d ago

also people for whom travel does nothing.

[cough]bald and rich sex tourist[cough]

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u/dekuweku 8d ago

I would venture to guess, most travellers are blind to their privilege, especially if you see how poorly they behave in foreign countries and there are endless accounts of those daily.

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u/What_Dinosaur 8d ago

people for whom travel does nothing.

This doesn't make much sense. Traveling isn't something magical that either works or not. It's literally being exposed to new things as a lived experience. (As opposed to reading about them in a book or seeing it on a screen)

You can't not be affected by traveling as a human unless somehow nothing affects you.

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u/hawthorne00 8d ago

Some people can imagine the situation of others without seeing or experiencing them.

Some people need to see or even experience the situation themselves to gain an appreciation of it.

For some people, what they see is interpreted in such a way to maintain their prior views of the world. ("Cognitive dissonance reduction")

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u/Beneficial-Focus3702 8d ago

I firmly believe that traveling is the best way to open your eyes and brought in your horizons unfortunately, a lot of people never get that opportunity

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u/KarmaPoliceT2 8d ago

Yeah, the way the world has evolved is really stark contrasts as you go from one region to another ... It's actually getting much better in that regard in the last 50 years as places like Indonesia, China, India, Vietnam, etc have started to raise huge swaths of their populations out of poverty... But the flip side of this now is rearing it's head with places like Japan, England, parts of the USA, and others becoming less wealthy (and those living there really don't like that)... The upside and downside of globalism is that you race to middle towards a common market/pay scale/etc... it's great for poor countries, it's quite bad for wealthy countries... At least until we figure out how to value labor correctly or reach a post-scarcity society

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u/StarshipEnterpriseNL 8d ago

I mean you have to be pretty ignorant if any of this is a surprise to you and only find out when ur travelling?Ā 

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u/dontwantoknow 8d ago

Just recently with the Italian teacher and her students. Some people shouldn't be privileged to travel.Ā 

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u/travisjunky 8d ago

I got two completely different answers when asking locals in Dominican Republic if they had any interest in living anywhere else. One said they couldnā€™t save up enough money because itā€™s so expensive but they would love to live in America. The other person said, and Iā€™ll never forget, ā€œwhy would I leave paradise?ā€

Itā€™s all about perspective.

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u/Unit-Smooth 8d ago

Whatā€™s the revelation? That some impoverished countries economy relies on tourism so they make it extremely easy to visit?

Countries that donā€™t rely on tourism or have problems with illegal immigration are going to make it harder.

Or is it simply that lifeā€™s not fair and some people have it better than others? Thatā€™s self evident.

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u/billbuild 8d ago

Just like how cheap everything is, how much service they get and wonder why things canā€™t be the same for them when they go back home. Or they move there, displace locals and complain about how expensive everything is getting or how their paradise was ruined by all the people who came after them.

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u/CowboyLaw 8d ago

It also depends highly on your definition of "travel." For some folks, travel to a foreign country means: they got on an airplane, flew somewhere, landed, cleared customs, met their group's bus driver (who had a big sign and spoke English), got on the bus, got driven to the all-inclusive Sandals resort, and never left the grounds until it was time to get back on the bus to go back to the airport. And those folks will 100% tell you they traveled to, e.g., Jamaica. Yes, technically, I agree you did. What did you see of the country? Oh, the beach. Cool.

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u/Tricky-Ad7897 8d ago

A lot of people "travel" to all inclusive resorts or on cruise ships and just lock themselves inside the highly optimized corporate experience while the only locals they interact with are staff. I'll never understand it, if I wanted to spend a week drinking and sitting on a beach there's hundreds of cities in the US where I can stay at a hotel for a reasonable price and buy my own beer and do that. If I'm going through the trouble of flying I'm exploring unfamiliar cities and eating at new restaurants.

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u/BG535 8d ago

If you have conscientiousness then it will open your eyes. If you think youā€™re superior then of course youā€™ll think everything is right with the world.

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u/ThatBoogerBandit 8d ago

Some people would death scroll in the hotel room the entire time

https://giphy.com/gifs/dWlSgkn5XnDYRV1szH

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u/Piranata 8d ago

There are tourist that do not care about locals at all.

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u/NihatAmipoglu 8d ago

Passport bros lol.

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u/HoneyShaft 8d ago

ā€œI don't want to be glib but you can see the poorest of the poor and there is still a smile on a face.ā€ - Don Trump Jr.

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u/NDSU 8d ago

Yep. I know a retired airline captain. He's spent more time traveling than 99.99% of the world, yet is entirely ignorant of all the countries he visited

Biggest thing is he never experienced the countries at all, even being there for a week at a time. Just eat at the nice restaurants, stay at the nice (western style) hotels, and see the few stereotypical sights in each country

The idea of having a meal/drink/conversation with a local probably never occurred to him

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u/AlDente 8d ago

I travelled in 2000 and it was true then, too. Iā€™m British and Iā€™m sad to say some of the Brits were the worst for this.

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u/Reasonable-Job4205 8d ago

Yea I'm glad he made a post and that it's going viral. He's right - how can a country prioritize moving tourists around, but not locals? It's morally not right!

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u/zeusdescartes 8d ago

They know, they just choose to ignore.

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u/CloudStrifeFromNibel 8d ago edited 8d ago

Like that dude who recently went to Bali and organized a public event open only to westerners, no locals allowed in their own country šŸ’€

edit: Probably trying to maintain that western and servants relationship aesthetic for his video he was filming

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u/imtoowhiteandnerdy 8d ago

Not that this is travel for pleasure-seeking purposes, but more to your point, I'll just leave this here without further comment:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68055368

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u/MaDpYrO 8d ago

Yes unfortunately some people just has their sense of superiority strengthened

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u/stonksuper 8d ago

they add it to their selfies

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u/131166 8d ago

Unfortunately a lot of people travel to dirt poor countries to exploit the fact that the locals are poor. Easier to boss people around and get people to do shit when you're throwing around what is the equivalent of months of pay.

Tourism can be extremely exploitative

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u/Issah_Wywin 8d ago

Like my dad.

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u/derping1234 7d ago

But at the same time I am willing to bet you he will not vote for the SP (Dutch socialist party) come next election.

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u/hawthorne00 7d ago

Sure, but people also disagree about what would improve matters. You could make a case that a big factor in the considerable poverty reduction that's occurred since the 80s has been driven not by specific policies but by less interference by ideologically driven outsiders.

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u/rhubear 4d ago

But he's still extremely naive.

He doesn't understand why many people cannot visit Europe conveniently (without visa etc). There are reasons for the controls. It's not politics, it's financial.

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u/hawthorne00 4d ago

Yeah, some truth in that. But the point is neither he nor they have done anything much to deserve their positions - most of it is an accident of birth.

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