Flexing on social media has been around since the early days of social media, and with status and material possessions becoming the focus of many youths’ lives, the trend has only gotten worse. But it’s one thing to show off online, and another to do it while ironically complaining about how hard you have it by posting things that others genuinely rely on to survive.
South Korea’s “poverty challenge” features users posting images of sports cars, luxury goods, designer fashion, and expensive homes, and mixing in budget items like instant noodles, while complaining about “unbearable poverty.” It started out as a joke, but soon became a controversial social media trend that many believe trivializes economic hardship.
Photos of instant ramen and cheap kimbap rice rolls next to a Ferrari key fob, a bright red Ferrari with bags of instant noodles stacked on its hood, or a room full of expensive artworks captioned “all I have are a few paintings and a dog,” have been circulating on South Korean social media as part of the poverty challenge.
Although the controversial trend has been getting a lot of criticism online for a while, it was highlighted by singer and actor Kim Dong-wan, who publicly raised concerns about the trend on his social media account.
“Poverty is not an emotion to be joked about,” Kim’s post read. “There are words and depictions that should never be used, even for laughs. There are still university students deciding whether they can even buy a single triangle gimbap because they have no money. “I also lived a long time with my single mother in a semi-basement apartment. The word ‘poverty’ always hits close to home.”
Critics worry that trends like the “poverty challenge” reflect a declining social sensitivity toward economic hardship, and a widening divide between affluent consumers and those facing economic hardships.
