History Main / RichKidTurnedSocialActivist

* Deconstructed in ''Your Driver Is Waiting'': Damani’s girlfriend Jolene is a wealthy white woman who spends much of her time going to the city’s many protests and volunteer work. But despite her best intentions, it’s clear Jolene doesn’t fully understand how exploitative Damani’s job is or how the poor survive due to her privilege. [[spoiler: And she’s not without her biases. Damani learns that the hard way when she takes her friend Shreef’s jokes about bombing the rideshare headquarters as fact, resulting in her calling the police, getting the Doo-Woop shut down and several immigrants deported. She also dumps Damani and dates another working class woman of color, implying that she HasAType.]]

* Deconstructed in ''Your Driver Is Waiting'' Damani’s girlfriend Jolene is a wealthy white woman who spends much of her time going to the city’s many protests and volunteer work. But despite her best intentions, it’s clear Jolene doesn’t fully understand how exploitative Damani’s job is or how the poor survive due to her privilege. [[spoiler: And she’s not without her biases. Damani learns that the hard way when she takes her friend Shreef’s jokes about bombing the rideshare headquarters as fact, resulting in her calling the police, getting the Doo-Woop shut down and several immigrants deported. She also dumps Damani and dates another working class woman of color, implying that she HasAType.]]

* ''Literature/LesMiserables'': Les Amis de l'ABC are a group of privileged students who nonetheless empathize with Paris's poor and try to stage a rebellion in their name. Their leader, Enjolras, is specifically mentioned to be born to a wealthy family.

Compare/contrast with CrimefightingWithCash. Contrast RevolutionariesWhoDontDoAnything - those who say that they're an "agent of change" and yet do nothing meaningful, while here, the rich kid actually does something to improve the society, hands-on.

Helping people ''[[RuleOfEmpathy with faces]]'' (and sometimes names) will [[PetTheDog look better to the audience]], regardless of efficiency. If a wealthy character never donates any money to charity but sneaks out every night in disguise to volunteer at a soup kitchen, they serve to humanize them more than donating money to an anonymous charity organization, even if that would actually help more people. This might be justified if their wealth comes from parents who don't want to donate to charity - the rich kid might not have access to any money they could donate, so volunteering might be the only way they can help.

Compare/contrast with RichIdiotWithNoDayJob and CrimefightingWithCash. Contrast RevolutionariesWhoDontDoAnything - those who say that they're an "agent of change" and yet do nothing meaningful, while here, the rich kid actually does something to improve the society, hands-on.

* ''Series/{{Andor}}'' presents Mon Mothma as a middle-aged version. She's from a wealthy and influential Chandrilan family and uses her money and status as a senator to fund a variety of social initiatives. She's ''aware'' that her image as an annoying rich kid with inconsequential charities don't make any dents in the Empire's oppression...and it's an image she keeps up since it hides her real and more system-fixing motive, which is to begin the Rebellion that will eventually overthrow the Empire.

Some of them might be SecretlySelfish types who do it for PR or who tell themselves that GoodFeelsGood, but they still invoke/exploit the notion of this trope. Still, others may be doing it purely to annoy and defy their parents.

Helping people ''[[RuleOfEmpathy with faces]]'' (and sometimes names) will [[PetTheDog look better to the audience]], regardless of efficiency. If a wealthy character never donates any money to charity but sneaks out every night in disguise to volunteer at a soup kitchen, it serves to humanize him more than donating money to an anonymous charity organization, even if that would actually help more people. This might be justified if their wealth comes from parents who don't want to donate to charity - the rich kid might not have access to any money they could donate, so volunteering might be the only way they can help.

* Narsus in ''Literature/TheHeroicLegendOfArslan'' is a nobleman and a genius strategist who is morally opposed to his country's tradition of keeping slaves, [[DeliberateValuesDissonance an attitude that makes him highly eccentric within the setting]]. He freed his family's own slaves as soon as he inherited his father's title, and is so outspoken about it that before the series he was declared no longer welcome at the king's court despite his strategems having saved the kingdom only a few years earlier.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin Peter Kropotkin]], Anarcho-Communist activist, writer, and philosopher who was born a prince, a descendant of the Smolensk branch of the Rurik dynasty who ruled Russia prior to the Romanovs. Kropotkin's father owned large tracts of land and nearly 1,200 male serfs in three provinces. Kropotkin himself, however, dropped his princely title by age 12, expressed great concern over the treatment of peasants and serfs through his youth, and spent a portion of his adult years spreading revolutionary propaganda before finally writing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conquest_of_Bread The Conquest of Bread]], a classic of anarchist literature.

* Narsus in ''Anime/TheHeroicLegendOfArslan'' is a nobleman and a genius strategist who is morally opposed to his country's tradition of keeping slaves, [[DeliberateValuesDissonance an attitude that makes him highly eccentric within the setting]]. He freed his family's own slaves as soon as he inherited his father's title, and is so outspoken about it that before the series he was declared no longer welcome at the king's court despite his strategems having saved the kingdom only a few years earlier.

* Charlotte Dalrymple in ''Film/{{Hysteria}}''. She's a young daughter of a rich medical doctor who used her dowry to help the poor in VictorianLondon. She runs a settlement welfare house and personally teaches poor children. She helps prostitutes (for example, Dr Dalrymple's maid Molly is a former prostitute) and is unapologetic about her progressive opinions. She also tries to raise more money from other rich people of her acquaintance.

* ''Theatre/{{Ragtime}}'': After a life of RichBoredom, the "Brother" of the play's archetypal wealthy white family finds a purpose for his life when he happens to stumble into a socialist rally led by activist Emma Goldman, a HistoricalDomainCharacter. Her speech awakens him to the reality of race and class struggles in early 20th Century New York, and he later abandons his family and life of comfort to join the revolt led by black protagonist Coalhouse Walker. The epilogue reveals that following the disbanding of Coalhouse's revolt, he migrated to Mexico to join the peasant revolution led by Emiliano Zapata.

* ''Theatre/{{Ragtime}}'': After a life of RichBoredom, the "Brother" of the play's archetypal wealthy white family finds a purpose for his life when he happens to stumble into a socialist rally led by activist Emma Goldman, a HistoricalDomainCharacter. Her speech awakens him to the reality of race and class struggles in early 20th Century New York, and he later abandons his family and life of comfort to join the revolt led by black protagonist Coalhouse Walker.

* Sitara of ''Videogame/WatchDogs2'' is a hacktivist who despite coming from a wealthy family has chosen to dedicate herself to the [=DedSec=] cause of trolling Big Tech and harassing TheMan through graphic design.

Some of them might be SecretlySelfish types who do it for PR or who tell themselves that GoodFeelsGood, but they still invoke/exploit the notion of this trope. Still, others may be doing it purely to annoy and defy their parents. In any case, the Rich Kid is almost always SpoiledSweet.

Some of them might be SecretlySelfish types who do it for PR or who tell themselves that GoodFeelsGood, but they still invoke/exploit the notion of this trope. Still, others may be doing it purely to annoy and defy their parents.

* ''Film/AcrossTheUniverse'': Lucy Carrigan starts the film as the only daughter of a rich [=WASP=] family; she later becomes entrenched in the bohemian lifestyle and becomes entangled with anti-Vietnam War activists.