Using "poor" to caption first-class seats and luxury brands
Criticism grows over "gamifying" poverty and ignoring real suffering
As the so-called 'Poverty Challenge' spreads across social networking services (SNS), posts in which people flaunt their wealth while ironically calling themselves 'poor' are facing criticism for making a mockery of poverty. Critics argue that these posts turn a blind eye to the weight and pain of real poverty, reducing it to a self-deprecating joke for consumption.
Recently, on platforms such as Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), posts featuring the phrase 'this dreadful poverty' alongside displays of luxury spending have been appearing one after another. Examples include photos of someone sitting in a first-class airplane seat with the caption 'this dreadful poverty,' or images of kimbap and ramen placed next to the smart key of an expensive foreign car with the comment, 'When will I escape this poverty?'
There are also posts attaching the same phrase to photos of luxury brand purchases, or showing the interior of a home with a spacious living room and expensive artwork, accompanied by captions like 'All I have are a few paintings.' While these posts appear to be self-deprecating about poverty on the surface, they are in fact an indirect way of flaunting economic affluence.
As this 'Poverty Challenge' rapidly spreads online, the response has been cold. Netizens who have seen these posts have criticized them, saying, 'Can poverty really be a subject for jokes or trends?', 'If they had just shown off their wealth, I might have been envious, but this is just unpleasant,' and 'No matter how trendy it is, there are lines that should not be crossed.'
The core of the criticism is that the real pain and social context of poverty have been erased. The actual issues that accompany poverty have disappeared, leaving only the word 'poverty' to be consumed as a meme.
Singer and actor Kim Dongwan commented on his SNS, 'To call this a self-deprecating joke is to treat someone else's deprivation as a prop,' adding, 'Poverty is an emotion that is difficult to use as a joke. There are things you simply cannot say for the sake of humor, and there are portrayals that should be avoided.'
At the same time, a line from author Park Wansuh's short story 'Stolen Poverty' has been resurfacing: 'I never realized that for them, having only outstanding educational backgrounds and careers was not enough, so they wanted to steal poverty as well and use it as another episode to make their colorful lives even more colorful.' Many are saying that this perfectly describes the current 'Poverty Challenge.'
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