Originally published at: Amidst Lahaina tragedy, elite tourist staying at "White Lotus" hotel demand fun | Boing Boing
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Repulsive behaviour. Either go home or help out.
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Seriously.
How hard is it to at least do the MINIMUM and be fucking respectful of the situation.
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When you’re paying $10,000/day to stay in a hotel, you are within your rights to expect the hotel to transport you to an alternate timeline where the fire didn’t occur so you can keep your dinner reservation.
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Go the fuck home, you useless, sociopathic assholes.
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Generally? Bad. But:
I’m going to need more context on this. It probably is bad, but there has been a lot of travel coverage encouraging people to get out into disaster-hit areas and support local economies. There is a tiny chance this person may have been well intentioned.
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I dunno. I don’t depend on tourist money to pay my bills and frankly enjoy the peace and quiet when there are fewer tourists out and about That being said. A shit ton of people lost their jobs when Lahaina burned down. The businesses in Wailea, Paia, and elsewhere? they’re being flooded with applicants. Yet they too are already laying people off as they are all dealing with cancellations and sending out refunds because a lot of people are being respectful and cancelling their trips.
I’m seeing pleas from locals on both sides of the issue. From 2000+ miles away it might look all black and white and easy to pick sides but up close? It is not so simple.
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A truly well-intentioned guest would have gone all Jimmy Carter and organized other guests to start helping with recovery. Maybe even proposed that the 4Seasons contribute half of each guest’s room costs to buy equipment for each guest that works on recovery.
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Yes, the local government is actively asking tourists to keep coming to the island, just not to go to the burn areas.
To me the most charitable explanation for this tourist’s question was that it came the day after the fire, when the scope of the disaster was much less clear and someone who was on vacation and unfamiliar with the area literally may not have known if the restaurant was in the affected area or not, even if the answer may have seemed obvious to locals.
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The issue here isn’t whether tourists should still come to Hawaii on vacation. The issue here is that many of those tourists are acting like insensitive, entitled assholes in the wake of a local disaster. There aren’t really “two sides” to that issue. If you’re going to come to the island and support the local economy, fine—but don’t act like your tourist dollars should be enough to make everyone act like things are normal.
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Some of the comments here are saying things like “go home useless fucks” or the subtly racist references to cannibalism. I mean the article says some of the tourists are sympathetic and some are complaining their activities have been cancelled. I don’t find it impossible for an individual to be sympathetic and still feel upset about how it impacted them (even if it is extremely trivial by comparison).
And there have been government officials and locals telling folks to not come to Maui at all. Some them are starting to walk back those comments some are not. Some of the folks telling people not to come don’t even live here.
I know when a day after the fire my friends asked if they should cancel their trip at the end of the month my gut reaction was to say yes. Now I question it. There are with out a doubt a lot of videos being passed around of locals complaining that anyone surfing/snorkeling/swimming in any of the areas are disrespectful and there are videos of locals begging people to not cancel their activities or trips because they depend on that money to feed themselves.
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Yeah, they fucking should.
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That’s right; I said it.
I’ll say it again:
THEY NEED GO THE FUCK BACK HOME.
Virtue signaling can miss me.
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That is the correct response to tourists who make unreasonable demands of locals in the wake of a major disaster. If you’re going to behave like a decent human being, then stay as long as it’s safe to do so. If you’re going to whine about a lost dinner reservation because the restaurant is a pile of ash and the people who operated it are now charred corpses then you should take yourself and your tourist money elsewhere.
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It’s not as if this is some weird hot take, either. Native Hawaiians have been highly marginalized in their own country by white since the 19th century (if not earlier). You know… when white people came in and literally overthrew their government and subjugated them to second class citizenship.
If people can’t come to the islands, and treat the place and the people there (especially the indigenous people) with respect, they should fuck off back home.
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Not at all. I have friends who are native residents, and that is their sentiment I am echoing.
Like others (who don’t seem to see this conversation as a pissing contest) have already said, well intentioned tourists could decide to willingly cut their vacays short and start fundraising to help the locals. They could ask the hotels donate their fees to help.
And maybe some will.
But those who still expect uninterrupted luxury treatment in the middle of a tragic disaster?
FUCK OFF AND GO HOME; YOU’RE NOT HELPING.
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Let’s not forget the early days of the American colonies also had some cannibalism… So much projection from white people…
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Apparently my comment was misunderstood. When I said the term has a problematic history I was referring to western caricatures of Pacific Islanders as cannibals, not that actual Hawaiian people are or were cannibals. Choosing to use the term “long pig bbq” seemed to be related to the fact that we’re talking about a Pacific island but maybe I’m mistaken and @KathyPartdeux uses it in other contexts too.
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