[jsmthrowaway]

There’s an imagery created by your story of you, standing next to your half million dollar airplane in your aviators and fancy khakis you bought just for this trip, annoyed you can’t get LTE for your next leg’s wx, and putting your hands on your hips and muttering to nobody in particular, wow, these native folk sure have it rough, huh? No Starbucks in Greenland, it turns out.

Please, enlighten me of the point of your story. You ferried across and stopped over in several less advantaged places, then felt compelled to explain to a community of mostly wealthy people that one time, while flying your airplane to Europe (and for some reason while thinking an iPhone has any relevance whatsoever to your situation in an RNAV emergency), you discovered the fabled “worse off” people that you knew existed but had never seen. What would you like me to feel in response to that story? Sad, like you? I am sad, but I’m sad that you’re describing a community in which you stopped over as if you’d discovered a species of three legged unicorn. Had you been in trouble, those sad, poor indigenous cultures likely would have given you everything off their back. Then you swing that brush everywhere: first it was “people up north” (of where? Atherton?) then for some reason instead of deleting that silly grouping, you decided to correct it in a parenthetical and swing right for the natives.

Did you take a bunch of pictures of the communities? When you got back, did you lay awake, troubled, wondering how you could write an app or raise some VC for a nonprofit to help them? When you told this story to your buddies at the FBO, did you include even worse observations that you chose not to type here? The weird irony of your story is you casually refer to “arctic Canada,” of course completely unaware that those First Nations cultures you were prodding and dissecting for a couple hours predate the word “Canada,” all the while lamenting a subtext of “why don’t we help them?” while discarding centuries of colonial attitudes. And then sharing one. What the hell is a “cultural attraction?” You think they’re hunting whale to amuse you?

Congratulations on your... enlightenment?... that there are people out there who can’t afford a SR22, I guess, and thanks for taking the time to call out the specific model so the rest of us pilots know you’re not screwing around. (If you don’t fly, specifying ‘my SR22’ instead of saying ‘my airplane’ or even ‘my Cirrus’ is in the same vein as saying ‘my Lamborghini,’ a phenomenon unique to SR22 owners.) I’m happy you got to experience that and teach a bunch of tech folks that the natives sure are a disadvantaged and lesser species somewhere up north, where the trolls live.

EDIT: Pump up the jam, it’s a using a flag as a super downvote party! Silence the uncomfortableness of the heathen! WTB a vouch

[mikeash]

I have to wonder about the point of your comment. The one you replied to is an interesting tale posted in the comments of a very similar story. It seemed to have many points: technology is making the trip easier, it’s well worth making, and there are a lot of seriously poor people living along the route.

Your point, on the other hand, seems to be that the other poster should feel really bad for being wealthy enough to make the trip. Which is a pretty crappy point to make.