Though I should loathe to participate in the same identity politics that I detest, there are some aspects of this article that stuck out to me to suggest that this is an exaggerated piece meant to play into the culturally dividing social justice warrior mentality rather than an intellectual analysis of how much harm versus good is done by travelling and offering aid to socioeconomically disadvantaged foreign countries.

First, the author opens by immediately explaining away the fact that she uses Tinder. Clearly, it was important for her to immediately establish herself as "not the type of person who would be seen using a dating app." Instead, she makes an excuse that she uses it to pass the time like one would with some attention-grabbing pointless game like candy crush. Yet, she immediately follows this with a statement that she doesn't expect men who use it to stray away from their "programming." Is she not doing the same thing as them? While they're labeled as mindless biologically programmed robots... strange.

She also lends credulity to herself through the usage of novel words (e.g., blanditude, which isn't a word, by the way; misogynoir) and through almost instantly establishing herself as 'one of them' as a local to the area. While not inherently bad tactics to engage the audience, I believe the usage of these tactics immediately sets the stage that this is a piece that's more wrapped up in the identity and ideology of the author (and those who identify with this ideology as readers), rather than as objective piece holding any real meaning.

The article cites several examples of wrong-doing portrayed by individuals in the situation she's writing about. While no one would excuse such behavior, I think it's important to recall that these are extreme cases of wrong-doing that are identified to aid in the argument that she's portraying. What this makes me think of is the inherent evil in mankind at the individual level. A lovely quote in this regard recently appeared in some of my social media memories... "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." - Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. With this in mind, it seems, at least to me, that evil is bound to appear even in the context of acts that are meant to be social goods. It is easy to label "white people who travel to Africa to 'help'" as the evil doers who need to be gotten rid of, and to simultaneously justify oneself as a good being without having to do anything.

The bio of the author lends further credence to the claim that the author is writing this as an ideologically based hit-piece rather than any type of objective look at a social issue. I'll leave the interpretation of that to the reader :)

Best,