Poverty | Media and Journalism | Politics
What is Perseverance Porn, and Why Do We Fall For It?
The system failing isn’t inspirational
A ten-year-old kid sells lemonade every day out in front of his house. He’s working hard, filling his jar full of cash from his neighbors. He’s got it crammed close to the lid with nickels and dimes, and after a week’s work, it seems like so much money!
He runs inside and shows his mother the jar. Is it enough? No, honey, it isn’t. So out he goes again, back to the lemonade stand. Every single day.
Is he saving up for something? Certainly. A very special thing.
See, it’s like this — his family is very poor, but his little sister is really sick. He knows they can’t afford her treatments, and he wants to help.
Sooner or later someone finds out about this, and they call the local media. The little boy is interviewed for the radio, and a call to action goes out. People’s hearts are touched by this tiny hero’s words, and by his dedication to take care of his little sister.
They’re deeply moved and impressed by this child’s decision to take a stand and try to help someone he loves instead of playing games and hanging out with friends like most kids would be doing.
People rush to the lemonade stand, and they pay twice what he’s asking. Some people just stuff money, real money into the jar without buying anything. People turn up to the house and just offer his mother cash, and checks, they want to help in any way that they can.
Everyone loves an underdog, and everyone is inspired by the little boy’s perseverance in the face of extreme adversity.
Nobody stops to think…how has the system failed this family so badly? Why are they so mired in poverty, and why does poverty mean they can’t get life-saving medical care for a child? Does her family’s financial status mean that she doesn’t deserve to live?
Why does a little ten-year-old boy have to work to raise money so his sister doesn’t die?
That’s perseverance porn. Don’t think about the real problem, just be inspired by people helping other people.
You’ve seen variations of this story a million times by now. A poor person facing impossible odds does an incredibly arduous thing over and over again, everybody cheers them on.
Maybe they even achieve their goals after some incredibly kind individual sees their struggle on the news and magnanimously steps in to solve the problem with money.
We eat that shit up, don’t we? We love a news story where someone hears a homeless man’s voice and gets him a job on a radio show so he can turn his life around.
And to be fair, it’s great that it happened for him. I’m glad it did, and I’m never one to throw shade on an act of kindness that gets results.
But it’s so, so easy to get lost on the one success story and forget that there were thousands of other homeless people, in the same city, who didn’t get help.
That’s the trouble with perseverance porn. We see the one time there’s a grand and fabulous tale of incredible luck that pays off. But all we see is the story; we don’t get to see the reality behind the scenes.
And when I say luck, I do mean luck. What helped Ted Williams was a YouTube video going viral and catching attention about his case in particular.
That kind of luck is like winning the lottery — almost literally in his case.
This kind of narrative is not a healthy one for society.
If you know people on the more conservative side of the political spectrum — or, if you personally land over there — then you’ve heard the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” a million times.
Personal responsibility. Work harder. Don’t be lazy.
Do you know what the original meaning of that phrase was, by the way? Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps used to mean ‘an impossible task’. You can’t do it. You physically cannot pull yourself up off the ground by your own bootstraps.
It’s funny how language changes, isn’t it?
Go ahead; do the impossible and stop being poor!
It’s the same mentality that has people looking at a homeless person on the street and thinking, “Just get a job instead of begging for help.”
Good idea, man. I’ll bet he totally didn’t think of that. Never mind that a huge portion of the homeless population actually do have jobs, they just don’t make enough to cover the cost of living…let’s assume he doesn’t.
He’s got no phone, no computer, no home address or reliable way to take a shower and wash his clothes — assuming he even has clothes nice enough for work. He certainly can’t shop for them if he doesn’t.
He doesn’t have a car or money for a cab, but I’m sure he can find a way to write up a resume, apply to a bunch of jobs online, get called back, and show up presentable and on time for interviews. I’m sure he can absolutely manage to arrive on time, fully presentable, for every single shift as well.
Even if he does manage to swing all of that, you’re assuming that all of the jobs he’s qualified for are currently hiring and that they decide to hire him.
But for guys who think like that, perseverance porn stories give them a headline they can hold up and say, “See? This guy did it. If he can do it, so can everyone else.”
Every time I go downtown I see people sitting on the street who can’t. People who are in just as much need of assistance, but they just don’t get the same attention. They’re too generic to go viral.
I don’t make enough money to solve their problems. Gods above, I wish I could. If I were a billionaire I would get them off the street, they don’t deserve to be stuck there.
The Man With the Golden Voice didn’t deserve to be stuck on the street, at the mercy of a stranger’s kind-hearted whim, because he developed an addiction. That’s not a moral failing, it’s an illness that requires treatment.
And remember the made-up story I started this article with? The ten-year-old boy selling lemonade for his sick little sister?
Psych! He was actually 9, and it was his baby brother.
Or wait, no. Maybe it was actually the 7-year-old girl who was selling lemonade to help fund her own brain surgery.
Savvy readers will notice something these two stories have in common; the families are using sites like GoFundMe to help collect donations, and social media awareness is what’s really drawing the crowd.
“We provide relief for a lot of people. But there are people who are not getting relief from us or from the institutions that are supposed to be there. We shouldn’t be the solution to a complex set of systemic problems. They should be solved by the government working properly, and by health care companies working with their constituents.” — Rob Solomon
And he is absolutely right.
The reason the government exists, the reason it collects taxes, is so that it can provide and maintain systems and infrastructure that protect and care for its citizens.
In my country, we’re fortunate enough that our government does do that. Part of the reason my family made it through our bad financial years was that our medical costs were covered — we could always get the care we needed, even in the times I only had hand-me-down clothes.
Hundreds of millions of other people aren’t so lucky.
When we see perseverance porn, it’s tempting to stop at the headline and just smile to ourselves. It’s tempting to feel inspired by a story of overcoming adversity and to carry that message throughout your day.
I would challenge you to stop and think a little further though. Think about how these people ended up in the situation they’re in, and why the onus is on them to try and build a ladder across a gap that shouldn’t even be there.
By all means; go and buy a cup of lemonade. That kid’s family still needs help.
But also, maybe send an article about it to your government representative and ask why this family isn’t getting the help they need in the first place. Why is medical care out of reach for low-income families unless they go viral on Facebook?
Why aren’t there better supports for people who are struggling to make ends meet so they don’t end up homeless?
That’s the real question that we should be pondering when we see perseverance porn in the news.
Solidarity wins.
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