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Glorifying poverty has become a social media trend

Poverty has always been romanticized by those who have not been through it. Often we come across photographs of old men with countless wrinkles, old women looking up in the sky in despair wishing for rain, little children with runny noses and watery eyes, lots of children running after a rubber wheel on a muddy pathway. Such photographs and paintings have always won competitions because there is nothing more exotic than poverty. For those who have not experienced the hardships of poverty, it is an art that needs to be admired from a distance.

Stop glorifying ‘Poverty Porn’

This reminds me of a friend who always had an issue with such images and called it ‘poverty porn’. He was kind of right.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2420663598019994&set=a.155362271216816&type=3&theater

Glorifying poverty on social media is nothing new

Social media is all about validation from the strangers you have never seen and might never see. It is all the game of likes and retweets. And what works more than poverty? Hence people often post pictures of poor people and their humble settings to ‘win’ the hearts of others. Maybe, their purpose is just to express their own admiration but the results as the same as mentioned earlier. Recently, someone posted this image of a humble kitchen in India where an elderly lady is cooking while an old gentleman is sitting on the floor devouring his meal.

https://twitter.com/djaywalebabu/status/1157546540757467136

Social media users who had experienced poverty were not pleased

This image glorifying poverty is of a humble kitchen at night. Probably, the people in the picture did not even think about what was happening and were only having their regular dinner. However, the tweet is there to glorify the simplicity (read poverty) in the image. As expected, this did not go well with many Twitter users and they decided to give the original tweet a piece of their mind.

People who had been through similar circumstances posted about how their lives actually felt.

Poverty makes you die a little every day

We often keep hearing phrases like money is not everything. They say money can not buy happiness. People also look at the poor people in awe saying they sleep soundly at night. Although no one wants to become poor, everyone takes pride in glorifying poverty. People who have no idea of how it feels when you are not able to bake both ends meet and afford your child’s school fees love posting ‘poverty porn.’ When you have to let go of many necessities and basic needs in life which even affect your relationships, poverty is no fun. It makes you die a little every day.

It is easy to romanticize poverty when you  are not poor

Only those who have not experienced poverty have the guts to say that money is not everything. If not everything it is the facilitator of most of the basic needs of life. Glorifying and romanticizing poverty is an insult to those who die a little every day because they are unable to provide their loved ones the basic human needs of life. Real-life is much different. It is less romantic and more bitter.

Not amazing but true realities of life

But how would those who haven’t stepped out of their air-conditioned living rooms know the heat of a one-room house in a village of Sindh? How would the one enjoying rains through their marble balconies know the misery of a dripping roof? How would the ones sending their children to British private schools know the sadness of a mother who had to make her daughter quit school because she could not pay even the meager fees? Some realities of life are not amazing but true.

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