Just when you thought it was safe - OK CUPID PART 3: The Return of the WOO!

i mean, what is a dating app for if not to find people who you are interested in, and a lot of people think that stuff is all interesting cool stuff

Hah I was just thinking about the economic aspect, like here's someone who had the opportunity in life to get on a plane to go to a country where (presumably) they don't have any prior connection to

I say that as someone who's been jetting back and forth with China since I was small, and I didn't grow up rich so take that as you will

it's fine, it's just saying that you did this thing that some people find objectionable, which yeah, one woman's interesting cool character builder is another man's objectionable third-world junket

i mean i rmde when an OKC profile has this shit or if its 10 pictures from 10 diff countries, all with captions making sure i know which country the photo was taken in, and sure maybe some of what turns me off is its a gross display of privilege but i don't think its wrong, and i hope that person finds another person to jet set with (nb i am taking a vacation just for fun to a foreign country i have no connection to next month)

what if the primary picture is of the person with a kid who looks related.. and it's on tinder, and it's not their kid?

ok i just looked at the tumblr again and feel sick for even semi-defending these monsters

you had good intentions

Come visit me in China gr80

I'll give ya a good tinder pic

do you hang out with throngs of adorable urchins tho

we should continue this inquiry on content 77 imo

I would have thought that the Peace Corp or a church group would be the poor person's way of seeing exotic countries.

It's the "I probably won't rape you" line that's the big O_o.

NB: I haven't looked at the tumblr, just that one posted here.

you're assuming churches cut across economic strata and people don't just go to churches full of people like them

The whole concept of exoticism is precisely part of the problem.

The people in a given church may be identical, but that doesn't mean they're wealthy. Don't churches do fund-raisers to pay to send their members to other countries? (I'm not defending going to these countries to "spread the word," just saying that a young person who does this isn't necesarily a douchebag.)

And per exoticism, is all travel bad? Or only travel to poor countries? Can you discern their motives from one or two pictures?

seems like something ilx can all agree on

the people running that tumblr are picking some pretty egregious examples but i think gr80's defense isn't bad

xp lol

People from the global north (or whatever you're calling it these days) with racial, economic, etc forms of privilege who go to less developed, less privileged countries to save them from whatever, should be really thoughtful about their motivations and their interactions with the people in those places.

It's not that you can't take pics with people you meet on your travels! Or that kids everywhere aren't great, because they are. It's choosing those pics as representative of you and putting them out there to ppl who don't know anything about the sitch? It's irresponsible to ignore the context of that representation in our society/social circles, whether an individual actor is a "douchebag" or not. The practice of NOT being thoughtful or intentional about representation should be brought up and discouraged on all levels.

idk it's better than fishing pictures

I think the lens that a lot of people are viewing the situation with is in line with a few studies about the monetary effectiveness and productivity of voluntourism, in light of accounts like this: https://medium.com/race-class/b84d4011d17e

how many pippas are there?

idk I think we have a voluntourism thread somewhere

Fishing pics AND white savior pics are both deal breakers for me tbh.

yeah they are both (mostly) disqualifying.

mantaining white neoliberal hegemony over the icthyosphere is less of a problem for me on a political level i guess

my take on it is: go on a vacation to somewhere that could use your $$ and party it up
donate to organizations that help people by giving their resources to build their own communities
volunteer in your own community

also put lots of fishing pics online because fishing is awesome

what i really don't understand is the car selfie

since we're being judgmental abt the way strangers choose to present themselves in dating website photos, its and immediate turn-off for me when anyone who self-identifies as a "photographer" only has photos that are bad/cellphone selfies etc

It's choosing those pics as representative of you and putting them out there to ppl who don't know anything about the sitch?

in orbit very otm. To me it says 'I am blissfully unaware that this could even potentially say anything about me, or about the role of this kind of travel, that is less than positive'.

its and immediate turn-off for me when anyone who self-identifies as a "photographer" only has photos that are bad/cellphone selfies etc

Well it's like that old riddle about the town with two barbers, where one has a good haircut and the other doesn't. The better barber is the one with the worse haircut, because he gets his hair cut by the other barber! What I'm saying is demand the person send you pictures of their friends

mentioning your myers-briggs personality type is an immediate turn-off for me.

also this is probably shooting myself in the foot but, given two identical profiles, one of which mentions radiolab, i will go for the one that doesn't mention radiolab.

Wow, I do an hour of actual work and the thing blows up.

It's choosing those pics as representative of you and putting them out there to ppl who don't know anything about the sitch?
- in orbit

in orbit very otm. To me it says 'I am blissfully unaware that this could even potentially say anything about me, or about the role of this kind of travel, that is less than positive'.

― ljubljana

I see these points, but I think we're doing a lot of contextual assuming about these pics. Benefit of the doubt and all. After all, it's a dating site, not a personal essay on where the person fits in the world. Now if the person loads the site with those kind of pics, and offers lots of text about all the good he/she's done, then I'm with you. I did look at the site since my original post, and the one page I saw is just individual pictures in isolation.

^judgmental but correct

xp to caek

xp The context for the photos is the existence of racism, colonialism, et al. They're not context-neutral UNTIL we look at them--the idea that "we" are adding the context in our viewing is one of those fallacies that neutrality is desirable or even possible.

I don't know what radiolab is but that's similar to my position on people who have tried stand-up and/or sketch comedy classes.

mantaining white neoliberal hegemony over the icthyosphere is less of a problem for me on a political level i guess

― goole

so you're saying there's still a chance for us <3 <3 <3

xp haha, harsh!

i'm imagining a slight alternative where people have pictures of themselves and their travels *without* any of the residents of those places. "here i am in tanzania" etc. it's rare but it does exist. which does call into question the purpose of those trips, sure -- when in pisa, stand next to the tower; when in guatemala, next to the woman working in the market.

almost all of my traveling has been in the US but i couldn't imagine asking someone, hey, take my pic next to this guy working at a fruit stand or w/e. even if i was there for a long time and we got to be friendly.

but yeah nick kristof style liberalism is a thing, lotta people love it and can't imagine what would be wrong with it.

^ otm ^

would like to see the ultimate ilx dealbreaker profile:
picture with smiling african kids
coldplay shirt
malcolm gladwell books everywhere

wite

I'd add: every photo is of you engaged in some outdoorsy pursuit

confidently untroubled by the world and its painful complexity

lol I saw one the other day that used the word "indoorsy" and I approve of that.

Obviously completely ruling out outdoor activities wouldn't work for me or almost anyone (for inst I kind of refuse to date someone who refuses to ride a bike, because the logistics are just too annoying), but I like the admission.

I do not give a flying fuck what your enneagram is.

My myers briggs is IH8U

I'm just glad Amelie doesn't turn up as every woman's favorite film anymore.

Ohhh boy.

i saw a girl on tinder the other day who's tagline was "I'll spare you the Marilyn Monroe quotes" and i swooned for a sec

yeah jesus where did that even come from