tragitourist
1. Someone who visits the scene of a tragedy, like a natural disaster, humanitarian catastrophe, or a warcrime, as if it were a tourist attraction and/or for the photo op.
2. Someone who volunteers as an aid worker at the scene of such a tragedy out of morbid curiosity, a desire to feel heroic, or in order to be able to brag about it, rather than to offer real, skilled humanitarian relief.
3. Well-meaning volunteers who come to perform aid work during humanitarian disasters, but who are not qualified to do so and get in the way of professional medical aid workers, engineers, food aid administrators, and other experienced personnel, often accidentally hindering or undoing the professionals' aid work in order to feel useful.
2. Someone who volunteers as an aid worker at the scene of such a tragedy out of morbid curiosity, a desire to feel heroic, or in order to be able to brag about it, rather than to offer real, skilled humanitarian relief.
3. Well-meaning volunteers who come to perform aid work during humanitarian disasters, but who are not qualified to do so and get in the way of professional medical aid workers, engineers, food aid administrators, and other experienced personnel, often accidentally hindering or undoing the professionals' aid work in order to feel useful.
On the way to deliver much-needed tents and tarps to Port-au-Prince after the earthquake in Haiti, the aid truck could not pass the roadblock at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic because the border officials there were swamped with hordes of tragitourists trying to obtain entry visas and asking which hotels to stay in.
tragitourist by taliesin_myrddin March 9, 2010
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