The Beet knows what you\u2019re thinking. You just checked Instagram, and you saw that your white, wealthy, private-school friend, whose friends are exclusively fellow whites, has posted a picture–or maybe several–with a young black or Latino child. Your friend–let\u2019s call him Chad–is getting hundreds of likes and dozens of adoring comments. \u201cSo cute!\u201d writes one of Chad\u2019s classmates; \u201cAw!!\u201d cries another; \u201cMy favorite place in the world\u201d says yet another, who herself has posted similar photos a few times. You\u2019re a little confused, and you\u2019re fuming with jealousy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re wondering: Where is Chad? Who is this little child? Why is my very-wealthy, very-white friend who never dares to leave his socioeconomic neighborhood posing next to a person-of-color who–gasp!–also appears to be poor? How do I <\/em>get this kind of attention on social media? Not to worry. I have answers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Chad is on a program where, for two weeks (and not a second longer!), he travels to a developing nation to volunteer with underprivileged children for no more than a total of 10 hours; stays pretty comfortably in a \u2018camp\u2019; takes, literally, hundreds of photographs; and gets to, as he put it in his caption, \u201cimmerse myself in the culture of another country.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sounds pretty great, huh? Well, lucky for you, all you need to do is follow these simple steps, and you\u2019ll be getting loads of Instagram attention and resume-buffing material in no time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1) Pick a destination for your trip. You\u2019re going to want to pick a country that is notable for its poverty. This way, when you tell people where you went, they will instantly understand that you\u2019re an amazing person who did not go on vacation, but sacrificed comfort for the good of others. I would suggest Haiti or perhaps the DR. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2) Preparation. Since you will be there for two weeks, you should probably buy at least six full Indiana Jones-esque outfits. I mean, it\u2019s like the freaking jungle there! You only get what you pay for in this world, so I recommend buying the absolute highest quality clothing–Lululemon, North Face, Patagonia, and the like. Do not worry about spending upwards of $1000 in this category; you\u2019ll make up for these expenses when you\u2019re doing loads of charity work! You will also want to be armed with several cameras, because what\u2019s all this goodwill for if you don\u2019t get pictures of yourself hugging some poor Third World kid? A GoPro, your iPhone camera, and (my preference) a Nikon D810 should do the trick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 3) Advertise, advertise, advertise! This is not so much a step in the process as something you should always have in mind. The trip is pointless if people do not know you went and did a minimal amount of charity work while there. Tell people, post lots of pictures, put it on resumes, and post some more pictures–seriously, when you start to think maybe you\u2019ve posted too much on the trip, post again. In your captions, be sure to suggest emotional intimacy with the native children you\u2019re meeting, even though your interaction with them is essentially the same as yours with a puppy you pass on the street–cute, separated by a severe language barrier, and forgotten pretty quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 4) Do the trip. You\u2019re on the trip. Time to have a blast. You might be thinking, Wait, aren\u2019t I here to do charity work? Shouldn\u2019t this, by definition, be a laborious and earnest endeavor? No! That\u2019s the great thing about this trip–vacation under a different name. Sure, there will be some boring hours where you have to help paint a schoolhouse or something, but that always makes for a great photo op! <\/p>\n\n\n\n 5) Return safely. While these trips can be a fun and enlightening two weeks, it is important that you don\u2019t let them fundamentally change the way you think about the world. Once you come home, continue to interact only with white people and disdain poor people, and be sure to pick back up the same environmentally wasteful habits you had before the trip. \tA trip like this is a great opportunity for a young, wealthy, white teen like yourself to see the world. You\u2019ll get the chance to post some great pictures; have some excellent evidence to reassure yourself that you\u2019re not, even on a subconscious level, racist; and, best of all, take an awesome, stress-free vacation! \u00a0 The Beet knows what you\u2019re thinking. You just checked Instagram, and you saw that your white, wealthy, private-school friend, whose friends are exclusively fellow whites, has posted a picture–or maybe several–with a young black or Latino child. Your friend–let\u2019s call him Chad–is getting hundreds of likes and dozens of adoring comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-beet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/theogony\/2018-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}