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Amtrak is reintroducing free ride residencies for people who have a special knack for social media—and they swear they don’t mean “influencers.”


Traveling by train makes the transition from one place to another one of the most important aspects of your journey; there’s actually time and opportunity to observe the changing landscape around you, walk around, and talk to other people. It can be a wonderful experience for anyone who has the time to travel and the cash. Amtrak is willing to take care of the latter issue with the new #AmtrakTakeMeThere Social Media Residency program, which offers a free round-trip on one long-distance route, and $1,000 for travel costs, according to My Modern Met.

You might assume they’re looking for Fyre Festival- level influencers to ride the rails, but Amtrak insists they just want people with a creative approach to social media:

If you’re interested, we hope you’re a leader in your social media community, and your creativity and energy allows you to connect with your followers at a deeper level. You daydream about cross-country adventures, and as an unconventional traveler, you’d bring a diverse and unique perspective to travel. You feel like the #AmtrakTakeMeThere Social Media Residency is on track with your passions, and you could probably come up with a better train pun than that.


The application on their website is due January 31, and it includes a few questions about you, your online community, and why you’d want to travel with Amtrak. I mean, there are some pretty incredible photo opportunities, to start:

They also ask for links to your social media handles, including YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Presumably, they will check your follower count, but more importantly, they’ll check that you engage with social media at all. You don’t have to be Gigi Hadid, but you should have something to show that you’re not just going along for the train ride. For the right person, this could be the trip and #content of a lifetime.