Are rich people okay?

[blindpig]

Can I Talk My Shit Again?
Are rich people okay?

Just some stream-of-conscious ramblings about Taylor Swift, gaudy mansions, and food influencers.
Sam Colt
Oct 22, 2025



Shortly after The Life of a Showgirl dropped, legions of disaffected Swifties tried to figure out why they didn’t really care for this album. Many fangirls have taken this question on, and while the inquiry has produced some amusing takedowns, there were strikingly few profound answers. There’s nothing revelatory about finding that things you care about in one phase of your life matter less to you in another; there’s nothing inherently significant about it, either. There comes a time in nearly every person’s life when they find that they don’t enjoy playing Hungry Hungry Hippos as much as they used to. There are other people whose passion for a thing never diminishes, and whose personalities are forced to grow in strange gnarled shapes around that strange and unflinching devotion, and those people will find as they get older that they are profoundly angry that not enough people talk about how fun and actually important the game of Hungry Hungry Hippos is and would like to live their lives inside the universe in which Hungry Hungry Hippos unfolds. This is why our popular culture is how it is.

Assessing why this album is lame isn’t very complicated. It’s a product of Taylor Swift The Brand usurping Taylor Swift The Musician. Billions of dollars and immense fame and a toxic parasocial cult following have insulated her from criticism, which is a detriment to creating quality art. In an alternate universe where Taylor Swift exercises some degree of quality control, The Life of a Showgirl could’ve worked with some uptempo 1920s jazz and swing while tackling topics like soaring to this level of astronomical fame, her struggles to perform to perfection night after night, the pressure she faces from her fans, her love for Travis Kelce and how that helped her get through the Eras Tour, what it’s like to achieve this level of success and how she can sustain motivation to keep challenging herself artistically. Instead, we were treated to half-baked aesthetics, some cringe lyrics about Travis’s dick, and an album cover that looks like she just noticed a hidden camera in her hotel bathroom.

As someone who has listened to Taylor Swift’s entire discography (including her Vault songs) somewhat against my will, there was something particularly grating about knuckling through an album so deeply awkward, insecure, and inauthentic about everything, despite it coming from one of the most powerful, famous, and rich women on the planet. She’s almost-married and closing in on 40, and song after song, she’s desperate to convince us just how happy and fulfilled she is while simultaneously fuming over some British B-list pop star vaguely alluding to her in a song that was released a year ago.

There have been plenty of studies that illustrate how extreme wealth is incredibly damaging to a person, but I’m trying to wrap my head around how many of today’s elites are so fabulously lame. I watched a ketted-out Peter Thiel fumble to answer a simple interview question about whether the human race should persist, and Elon Musk on Joe Rogan talking to an AI voice and cackling about how incredible it is. These people are horrific subhuman freaks, and it is truly enervating to think about how their massive fortunes enable them to control significant swaths of our national politics just because they were the first to make an online payment processing website.

It’s really their lack of imagination that’s troubling to me. If I had that kind of fuck you money, I’d donate a good chunk of it to charities or progressive causes, then use the rest to experience everything the world has to offer: Try every food, read every famous book, watch every acclaimed movie, travel to every corner of the planet, and take up as many hobbies as possible. I could be the patron of a grand work of architecture so epic, it would make the Cologne Cathedral look like a four-year-old’s sand castle. Live as a farmer in Mexico for a few months. Learn pottery. Get a six-pack. Become a master of Kung Fu. Throw parties with weird dress codes, like everyone has to wear an animal head or something. Collect obnoxious, edgy art. Open a monkey sanctuary. Plant redwoods everywhere. Build the world’s greatest botanic garden with butterflies. And when I’m old, I’d buy a nice villa somewhere in the Italian countryside and write a novella. But all of these ghouls are hollow vessels of pointless ambition, motivated by nothing other than obsessive ladder climbing and maximizing their net worth. It’s a stupid mantra to adhere to, and when Succession roasted people in boardrooms trying to be happy, it was a subtle and cold indictment of extreme wealth in the neoliberal era. You never want what you already have, so even when you have half a trillion dollars, you want more. J.K. Rowling is worth $1.2 billion, and her public life is oriented around a pathological Twitter-brained conniption fit to immiserate trans people who have no impact on her well-being.



Even their homes look like they were designed by an algorithm with a cocaine problem. Empty glass boxes with no story, no scars, no life. I saw a video tour of this one mansion in Los Angeles, and the front door was about two stories tall, and the rest of the building was similarly oversized. There is no sense of scale or proportion. They believe wealth is only measured by size, and they are willing to forgo all forms of comfort in exchange for sterile, soulless grandeur. It makes a perverse kind of sense that they wouldn’t want their houses to have soul, considering the reason they can afford them is because they don’t have one. The aura is a combination of a tech company office, a minimum security prison, and a black site. They’re made of raw concrete and glass with fully sharp edges. They portray a dark and nihilistic influence—no aspiration, no belief in anything. These are walled-off, geographically isolated compounds with every possible amenity—multiple kitchens and complicated showers—since running any daily errand from there is logistically impossible.

And these mansions are somehow less ridiculous than the ultra-wealthy doomsday preppers who’ve built luxury bunkers that require a staff to maintain. It’s a perfect swan song to their complete disconnect from reality—especially a hypothetical distant reality where society is collapsing, but a social construct like money will somehow still confer power to them. “Yeah, boss, we understand why you wouldn’t let our families onto the escape helicopters. Nah, it’s cool that you get to relax inside a 4,000-square-foot spa, and the rest of us have to shack up in bunk beds. We’ll definitely be your lifelong servants in a world without governments or money. Anyway, a few of us have to start our 12-hour night shift of manning the electric fence and guarding the food. You sleep tight!” I remember watching a bunker consultant give a TED talk, or something like that, and whenever he brought up how it would be impractical or even impossible to maintain a staff and security, it was evident that these rich assholes could not comprehend the possibility that their employees would ever turn on them. It’s easier for the elites to imagine the end of the world than a world without servile brown nosers.

There is an existential comfort in knowing that, no matter how fancy the faucet or tantalizing the toilet, they still dispense the same tap water. It seems like the more luxury you attain, the more you notice its absence. As the ultra-wealthy seek out larger homes with more amenities and rack up AC bills at national debt levels, they externalize the cost through tax avoidance, a massive carbon footprint, and backing politicians who cut social services to fund tax breaks for the wealthy. And it doesn’t trickle down. The landscapers who work at these mansions drive the same trucks as the gardeners who work at a public high school. These people live in a different world, one that degrades the soul by the second. No elegance, no taste, all mediocre. Very late-stage declining empire nonsense. And their homes, the monuments to their wealth, look like the architectural equivalent of an influencer’s face: Overfilled, overfiltered, and completely forgettable.



A common trope you’ll hear in defense of neoliberalism and all the stark wealth disparities it produces is that rich people are more responsible with money than the general public. When vast sums of wealth are in their capable hands, it will be managed properly and dispersed in accordance with the most efficient and practical ways to grow the economy, as determined by the free market and a meritocracy that conflates net worth with competence. Clearly, anyone who still believes this has never seen an influencer describe a $30 peanut butter and jelly sandwich as “iconic.”

It’s bad enough to derive an identity from what you consume, but there is something truly bleak and deadening to watch the eyes-widening look of an influencer after they take a bite of something and squeal, “LITERALLY OBSESSED!!” Considering how competitive the attention economy is, it is strange that food influencer is the least charisma-demanding media environment outside of MAGA political commentator. These are otherwise unemployable nepo babies who have somehow carved out a niche that involves hocking overpriced products that any half-discerning consumer could easily identify as a rip-off. And this is money that could otherwise be taxed and spent on, say, public education or funding Medicare-for-All.

(All videos unavailable here at link.)

@olivialarodriguez
Massive Erewhon breakfast mukbang #erewhon
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Erewhon has to be a social experiment. $150 gets you a pathetic-looking breakfast burrito, a half-filled cup of blueberry overnight oats, a green juice, and a matcha smoothie. Guess that’s one way to stay thin. I’m about to open a “healthy” restaurant and charge $50 for some lettuce and tell people I grew it in the fields of Valhalla.



@theviplist
The most elite dining experience in NYC, go cry about it. #carbone #mcdonalds #nyc
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And the snozzberries tasted like snozzberries! Whoever is running this supper club must’ve pocketed that $10,000 membership fee and repackaged some McDonald’s orders. This lady speaks in a tone like how Christopher Columbus “discovered” America, and she definitely has full-blown conversations with her Labubu because no one else will listen.



@alexgeorgy
Order the Home Alone Ice Cream Sundae w/me at The Plaza Hotel #homealone #theplazahotel #newyork #roomservice #vlog
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This is $15 worth of ice cream and toppings that cost nearly $400… All that money was blown on some Wal-Mart-tier ice cream, and there was barely anything on her spoon. It’s the forced joy of the influencer shimmy-dance that pains me. And why is she speaking in lower-case?



@sweetportfolio
DIY breakfast at Pfunky Griddle in Nashville It was a little far from the city, but such a fun experience. They don’t take reservations so I’d say get there early!! . . . — #nashville #nashvillefood #nashvilleeats #nashvilletn #breakfastideas #breakfast
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When Korean BBQ is too “spicy,” so they gentrified the DIY concept and turned it into something white. If you eat here, do you have to mop the floors and do the dishes after you’re done eating? I can experience this at home for half the price, triple the portions, and waddle 10 feet away to collapse on my couch.



Apparently, this is an avocado salad sold in Las Vegas, and it’ll run you $8. And it’s not even sliced, so she paid almost $10 for someone to cut an avocado in half. These people would call a basket of fries a potato salad. How is anyone influenced by this? If influencers would pay $8 for half an avocado, I want to know what they’d pay for a watermelon.



@snackeatingsnacks
Never had a pizza where the cheese and toppings are uncooked. How do you feel about this??? #pizza #betospizza #pittsburgh #pittsburghpizza #onebite
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I’m going to leave some frozen pizzas to rot under the sun and open a pop-up restaurant called Thaw’d.”



“It’s the best in New York City!”
— girl from Minnesota

RUN—don’t walk—to the BEST up-and-coming French restaurant called Au Bon Pain. We got the Santa Special, which is a freshly baked Chocolate Chip Cookie and a Cold Glass of Milk. And OHMYGAWDYOUGUYYYSSS, the cookie was SOOOOOO GEWWWYYYD. I’d give it a 7 out of 10 because the chocolate got all over my fingers…



@cassidym92
a perfect match #lpm #lasvegas #vegas #food #fyp
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Imagine being so out of the income tax bracket that you find preparing your own food to be a fun novelty. It’s not even an heirloom tomato. Her drink order must’ve been helium on the rocks.



@livelaughlatoya
When life gives you lemons, make your own Lemon & Tomato Salad. • • • • • • #lpm #weightwatchers #weighthealth #lasvegasfoodie #lasvegasrestaurants
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Why are they dancing like it’s so much fun to cut a tomato? Ladies, did y’all go to bed as a child and wake up in the body of a 30-year-old? I bet the waiter introduced this dish with some bullshit about how this is their spin on a classic, their locally sourced tomato medallions, ceremoniously baptized in artisan olive oil and dusted with rare crystalline salt—a masterclass in restraint and culinary grandeur.

So the CEO at LPM did an interview with PEOPLE and said this about the tomato and lemon “salad”:

“… the vibrant markets and relaxed spirit of the South of France inspire everything we do. Guests are welcomed with complimentary ripe tomatoes, lemon and our signature olive oil — served with a warm baguette — and invited to create a simple tomato salad at the table, just as families do in the French Riviera. It’s a small, thoughtful ritual that sets the tone for the experience: bright, elegant and full of Mediterranean warmth.”

This has to be a giant middle finger to influencer culture.

Observing this particular class of elites is like thrusting yourself into the impossibly vast black hole of human despair. In a better world, these people might still exist. They would not become nearly as rich or unaccountable as they are in this one, but there is no reason to think that they would be broadcasting their overpriced meals or gaudy mansions as some form of ragebait. In that world, these rich dullards would not be any better than they are in this one, because they are what they are by nature—mutants of appetite and ego, and outliers from the rest of humanity in both the depth and breadth of their need to consume. But in that other world, in which they are merely rich and terrible, they would only threaten the vibes of the other people sharing those spaces with them.

In this world, though, these vainglorious and hedonic strivers somehow shamble on atop the culture even in their curdling mediocrity. From that commanding position, they do dumb rich people shit—pursue their endless blowsy feuds, scheme and carp, film themselves at some tacky restaurant and post the nontent on TikTok, and where the opportunity presents itself, commit various white-collar crimes and exploit tax loopholes. Far above the struggles of everyday life, these brittle titans squabble and peacock. For all the ways in which the toxic runoff of inequality can be currently felt in the broader culture, the fact that these prissy and petty quasi-aristocrats can distort our politics with their anti-values exposes one of the great lies of how capitalism is a conduit of democracy. It is one thing to see so much of our popular culture narrowing and flattening to suit their crude and idle whims, but it’s something else to realize that we are cooking this planet to preserve and perpetuate this shit.

https://thatguyfromtheinternet.substack ... %20problem

Tip of the hat to Greg Bear