The faces of Asia’s ‘dirty old white men’ are being plastered online. I have no sympathy for them – but this disturbing new trend isn’t the answer: JANA HOCKING

There’s a new breed of tourist wandering through Southeast Asia.

No, not the middle-aged men with sweaty foreheads and wedding rings stuffed into their wallets, but something just as self-serving: the moral crusader with a camera.

This week, travel influencer Duncan McNaught went viral for posting a video shaming older Western men in Cambodia, filming them as they walked the streets and implying – without evidence – that they were there for sex tourism.

His caption suggested disgust, his followers applauded his ‘bravery’.

But while many patted him on the back for ‘calling out exploitation’, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of discomfort. Because I don’t think this shiny new trend of public shaming, often by people steeped in privilege, is actually helping anyone. It just swaps one kind of exploitation for another.

When I was 16, I went on a school trip to the United States and Mexico. We crossed the border into Tijuana, and it was a shock to the system.

Our bus driver, a kind, local, weather-beaten man named Jorge, insisted on taking us through the backstreets so we could see what life was really like beyond the tourist strip. We passed families living in corrugated-iron shacks, children playing barefoot beside piles of rubbish, and stray dogs weaving through traffic in search of scraps.

I still remember the air that smelt of burning plastic and sweat. That short drive changed me. It was the first time I truly grasped what privilege looked like, me in my new clothes purchased for the trip and travel insurance, staring out a tinted window at people who might never leave those dusty streets.

Later that afternoon, I ducked into a small shop to buy a pair of knock-off sunglasses. The man behind the counter suddenly grabbed my arm, forcing me to stay until I agreed to buy them. I remember the panic and the shock of being physically restrained by a man for the first time.

It was harmless compared to what some women endure daily, but it left a mark. So when I see an influencer strutting through Cambodia filming local women or older men without their consent, I think back to that moment. Because if a 16-year-old blonde tourist could feel frightened in a single encounter, imagine what life feels like for women who have no choice but to rely on those same men for survival.

Let’s be clear, sex tourism is predatory. According to a 2023 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Southeast Asia remains a major hub for sexual exploitation, with an estimated 250,000 women and girls trapped in the trade. The demand is largely driven by Western men seeking what they can’t find – or afford – at home. It’s exploitative, dehumanising and deeply sad.

Personally, I’ll never understand how they can do it.

But does a viral Instagram reel fix that? Hardly. When influencers like Duncan film random men walking through red-light districts, they aren’t dismantling a system. They’re creating clickable outrage. Those videos don’t stop exploitation, they just redirect attention from the victims to the influencer.

But the worst thing about travel influencers who take their cameras out in seedy neighbourhoods is they broadcast the faces of young women simply doing what they need to survive. These women already navigate violence, poverty and stigma. Now they’re also props in someone else’s hero narrative.

I note that Duncan did at least make some effort not to film the women – but I still saw a handful of faces as he panned the camera around the streets of Phnom Penh.

For decades, Southeast Asia has attracted what locals call ‘beer-bar Romeos’ – older men who chase youth and submission.

They deserve scrutiny. Just last week, I had a guy contact me online to rant about how modern women are too outspoken and think they’re ‘too good’ for blokes. So he was hopping on a plane to find a well-behaved Thai wife.

I responded: ‘No, you’re hopping on a plane to prey on a woman in a socio-economically disadvantaged position. And you’re taking advantage of that.’

Yes, he didn’t like that response, but where’s the lie?

But lately there’s a new kind of traveller clogging up the tuk-tuks: the virtue tourist.

He arrives armed with a drone and a moral compass calibrated to engagement metrics. He films poverty, lectures strangers, and hashtags it as ‘awareness’.

Some, no doubt, mean well – and I’m not suggesting that Duncan is being fake or pretending to care for engagement – but the trend still strikes me as performative.

There’s also a deeper ethical issue. Public shaming rarely changes behaviour. Research from the University of Cambridge found that online humiliation tends to entrench, not reform, the people being shamed.

They double down, become defensive, and often shift their behaviour offline where it’s harder to monitor. In other words, moral policing makes the problem worse.

The same goes for social media outrage. One influencer’s ‘call-out’ might rack up half a million likes, but it won’t reduce sex tourism.

So what does? Funding safe-house programmse, supporting education for girls, and empowering local communities to build alternatives to the sex trade.

I’ve watched Duncan’s virtuous video dozens of times. He certainly seems outraged about it – but a link in the caption to a charity, helpline or outreach programme wouldn’t have gone amiss. Imagine if all that digital fury was redirected somewhere useful.

What frustrates me most is the lack of feeling on both sides. The men who fly into these countries and buy intimacy treat women like disposable souvenirs. But influencers who swoop in to publicly shame them often show the same lack of empathy, just from a different angle.

Neither sees the full human picture – the trauma, the economics, the desperation. One buys bodies, the other begs for attention. And both fly home afterwards feeling somehow satisfied.

During my travels, I’ve spoken to local women who enter sex work not out of desire, but because it’s the only viable income. Many are supporting families or paying for siblings to attend school. They deserve compassion, not exposure.

It’s possible to condemn sex tourism without turning suffering into spectacle. I want the Duncans of the world to keep talking about exploitation but maybe talk with the people involved instead of filming them. Use your platform to amplify local voices, not blur them into background noise.

And to the men who think Southeast Asia is their erotic playground: your behaviour is indefensible. If you need to buy affection, it’s not affection you’re after – it’s power. Still, I can’t shake the thought that public humiliation won’t cure that either. Blunt-force shaming rarely creates accountability; it just generates outrage.

That trip to Mexico all those years ago taught me something no viral reel ever could. Privilege isn’t just about money; it’s about mobility, the ability to leave discomfort behind. I could hop back on a bus and return to my safe hotel. The people we passed could not. The same is true in Cambodia today. The influencer takes a taxi back to his villa; the women stay.

So yes, call out exploitation, but do it with empathy, not ego. Because if you’re truly trying to help, you don’t need a selfie to prove it.