Poverty porn is a concept used to refer to sensational media content, typically using a voyeuristic, schadenfreude-style viewpoint when portraying poverty to generate controversy and traffic and it is exploited by filmmakers, advertisers, and others for profit.
It typically feels like it satisfies our need to feel ‘better’ about our own life choices; they make us feel guilt-free about buying 10 liters of garbage that we don’t need because people are starving across the world every day, they make us feel grateful that we don’t live in a hut, surviving on insects and boiled grass.
It’s click-bait because it panders to the cosseted preconceptions of our own ‘first world’ problems. And yet, poverty porn is everywhere online.
Poverty porn also targets those with privilege because it elicits an emotional response from them, prompting them to act and there’s also an underlying assumption that people want to help impoverished folks via your purchase — but realistically most likely have grabbed your attention with some bizarre type of product price tag first.
Maslow View
Food comes ahead of almost everything else in common sense. As a result, vulnerabilities are wide open to exploitation, one of which is poverty porn/charity vlogging.
Poor people are often at the mercy of those with power over them; thus, their ability to make decisions about their future is limited. When outsiders come to take advantage of the destitute for profit, this power balance changes. As a result, the destitute incur more debts and have nothing left to show for it except humiliation or a few days worth of food.
Gray Area
There is a gray area when it comes to charity vloggers and poverty porn.
On one hand, many people argue that charity vloggers are exploiting the poor for views and donations. On the other hand, many people argue that charity vloggers are providing a valuable service by bringing attention to global poverty and raising money for charitable causes.
What do you think? Are charity vloggers exploiting the poor for views and donations, or are they providing a valuable service?
The activity of filming can be profitable for vloggers and other social media users because it often generates a lot of views.
Some people argue that poverty porn is necessary to raise awareness about the issue, while others argue that it only serves to exploit the poor and does nothing to help them.
I believe that poverty porn must be stopped because it can be harmful to both the people who are being exploited and to those who are watching.
Also when people watch poverty porn, it affects their sense of dignity and self-respect. They may start to think of the people in the videos as inferior, or as objects that exist for their entertainment.
This can be very damaging to the people involved in the videos, who are often already struggling with poverty and lack of dignity. It can also be harmful to viewers, who may start to feel contempt or pity for the people in the videos, instead of empathy.
In an academic view, Immanuel Kant views ethics and morality in a very specific way.
For Kant, morality is about acting in a way that is consistent with the Categorical Imperative. This principle requires that people always act in such a way that they could will that their actions become a universal law. Similarly, ethics involves people making decisions based on Universal Law.
For Kant, morality is not about the consequences of actions, but simply that it possible for everyone to act this way if they wanted to.
In this sense, there is no difference between ethics and morality. To Kant, the two are essentially the same.
The tricky part is that it can be discussed that morality is not a static thing. it can be fluid. This means that what is considered moral today may not be considered moral tomorrow, and vice versa. There are several reasons why morality can be fluid. One reason is that our understanding of right and wrong can change as we learn more about the world. Another reason is that cultural norms can change over time, leading to different interpretations of what is moral and what is not.
Still, there is a big difference between actual charity and charity vloggers. Actual charities are nonprofit organizations that help people in need without expecting anything in return. Charity vloggers, on the other hand, are people who make videos about their charitable work to get donations from their viewers.
Charity culture can potentially be bad because it can make you lazy and not want to do anything at all because you feel like someone else will take care of it for you. This can be really dangerous because it can lead to us being completely dependent on others and not being able to take care of ourselves.
Consequences
The sociological consequences of poverty porn are that it sensationalizes the issue of poverty and makes it into a spectacle. This can have several negative consequences, such as making people feel guilty or helpless or distracting from the real issues that poverty entails.
The moral consequences for indulging in poverty porn are either misleading or helping people to get more sympathy for themselves.
Realistically, the people who suffer from poverty do not need any more exploitation, and the people who produce poverty porn do not need any more attention.
When someone posts a video or photograph of a person who is living in poverty, it can be for one of two reasons:
First, it is to mislead people into thinking that this is the only kind of poverty in the world. Second, by showing this person who is living in poverty, it appears that poverty only exists in this one specific case.
This can be very harmful because then people will think that no one else is living in poverty when there are many other types or kinds of poverty.
How To Stop Poverty Porn
There are a few ways to stop the spread of poverty porn: The first step is to be aware of the images and videos that are being circulated. You can do this by staying informed and keeping up with the news.
The second step is to respectfully speak out against poverty porn as a concept when you see it. You can do this by posting on social media, contacting the organization responsible for producing the content, or even writing a letter to the editor.
The third step is to support organizations that are working to fight poverty. You can do this by donating your time or money, or by spreading awareness about their work, the work, not the poverty behind the work.
Conclusion
We need to find a way to confront the problems of the world without indulging in this type of voyeurism.
Most importantly, the creation of the dependency cycle and the country’s potential to be seen as pitiful by the rest of the world, as well as the erosion of a person’s self-respect, are all unavoidable results.
That’s not to say that we should bury our heads in the sand; we must be aware of the issues around us. But maybe we should focus on the solutions, rather than the problems.
Poverty porn is not helpful, and it’s time we stopped consuming it.
We need to be proactive in our approach to global inequality, not reactive. And that means looking critically at the way we live our own lives and being willing to change them for the better.
