Weekly Delight: Why I declined payment for an awareness campaign collaboration

It's not because I don't need the money

On December 13th someone reached out to me on Instagram about a collaboration opportunity. When I think about a collaboration opportunity, I think of an influencer pretending to enjoy a “healthy” smoothie which makes their life so “great” for money. But this wasn’t it. The person reaching out to me wanted to do a paid collaboration for me to spread awareness about Smurfit Kappa, an Irish packaging company, deforesting trees in Cauca, Colombia to plant their own trees for paper. Now y’all already know that attacking corporations for being evil is something that I currently do for free. So this request was like asking me to get paid to eat Oreos, offering to compensate me to do something that I already enjoy for payment. 

It’s not like I don’t need the money. I do. My unpaid student loans are a constant reminder that I’m broke and Joe Biden is a liar. I’m not saying that I shouldn’t be paid for my labor. However, I had to say no because I didn’t want this to be the beginning of me lettin…