For the love of God, please stop thinking the ultra-wealthy are your friends
I’ve been a writer for most of my life, and I’ve read a ton of books about writing to improve my skills and learn some tricks here and there. The first piece of great advice was from an old editor I had who said, “Write as though your reader is stupid,” as a reminder to simplify my writing. The second piece of advice that I’ll never forget came from Neville Medhora in his 54-page book This book will teach you how to write better. In it, he has a chapter titled “No One Cares About You”, as a reminder to provide value to the reader. But Neville’s advice applies to so much more, and you don’t have to be a cynic to understand why.
It’s hard enough in life to find truly ride-or-die friends who don’t put their self-interests above helping you. But to think the ultra-wealthy are your friends who care about you is, for a lack of better words, really, really stupid. Nevertheless, people get manipulated by these multi-millionaires and billionaires, and it regularly blows my mind.
When people fall for this bullshit, it honestly makes me think of the “Hmmm. He seems like a nice guy” scene from Tommy Boy when Richard is explaining to Tommy that this man is actively harming them.
I apologize for not pumping the breaks in this piece, but some of you need some tough love.
Being a realist without being a depressed pessimist
I need to start out by explaining that you’re not reading the ranting words of some depressed pessimist who thinks the worst in people. I’m actually one of the happiest people you’ll probably ever meet, and my optimism is borderline delusional at times. I’m a former drug addict who should be dead, so each day that I wake up is a blessing.
In addition to walking on sunshine, I think most people are good. I try to see the best in people even if they’re people who others would think are pure evil. I empathize with people more than most because I’ve worked with thousands of addicts and have seen how drugs and the wrong priorities can make good people do awful things. One of my favorite books that I think everyone should read is Roy Baumeister’s book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty where he lays out what he calls “the myth of pure evil”.
However, much like falling for misinformation and conspiracy theories, a lack of healthy skepticism will make you look like a fool.
While I have faith in people, my default is not to trust. This stems from a messed-up childhood with an alcoholic mother. From a young age, I learned that promises could be broken, and if you can’t trust your mom, anyone can screw you over. As years went on, I saw how others could hurt you like friends backstabbing you or significant others cheating on you.
By no means is this a healthy way to live, which is why I’ve done a lot of therapy as well as work on myself through other means like 12-step programs and other forms of self-help. But, sometimes I wonder if it’s better to start off how I did and then find the balance or be the “normal” person who trusts by default and has an obscene amount of optimism bias.
Aside from personal relationships, I quickly realized that people with money don’t care about you. I grew up broke and watched my dad struggle to care for me. I realized that nobody was coming to save us. I also realized there were people in situations far worse than us who weren’t going to get any help either.
Then, when I was 23 years old in the wonderful year that was 2009, it really sunk in. I actually just told my son this story as well. He was less than two months old, and I was laid off along with so many others. My boss knew I had a newborn son. The owner of the company had four or five houses in the United States, a home in Italy, and a private jet. But the owner had to maintain his lifestyle, and my boss couldn’t fight for me because he needed to maintain his, so I was SOL.
I met the owner and saw him talk to the company many times. He was such a friendly guy. But we didn’t matter to him. This wasn’t a one-off either. I saw this time and time again throughout my life before and after that job.
I could write an entirely separate piece (possibly a book) about these stories. One would include the boss who let me get fired for unwittingly doing something shady for him.
Again, I’m not some hermit now who has no human connections. Aside from my girlfriend and close friends, plenty of you have talked to me regularly. I’m an extremely friendly person, and I keep my trust issues at bay so I can stay that way.
But when it comes to those with power and money, these people are not our friends and most likely won’t ever be. This is extremely important to learn because it’ll help you in the long run.
Parasocial relationships are risky
Yesterday, I told my son, “Just about every big company out there and extremely wealthy person is terrible.” Before you freak out and think I’m turning my son into some little future incel doomer, calm down.
I paused before saying this to him while we were having a conversation about a book that we’re reading together. He’s 13, and as parents, we have to refrain from passing our issues on to our kids. This one’s different though. This is a lesson he needs to learn because so many grown adults are getting manipulated and played for fools because of parasocial relationships.
We’re not just developing these relationships with individuals, either. We’re developing them with companies and brands.
I think the best way to showcase why it’s important for kids to learn this is through a piece that Melinda Wenner Moyer wrote yesterday on her fantastic substack. She wrote a piece titled The Allure of YouTube(rs), and I highly recommend you check it out. She interviewed someone who researches this topic, and there are some great aspects of this, but there’s a major downside as well.
I may write a more in-depth piece, but for now, you need to simply understand the downside of these parasocial relationships for kids. I stay involved in the social media and influencer world for work as well as my personal stuff with The Rewired Soul. Most adults and parents have no clue what’s going on.
These YouTubers build parasocial relationships with kids who truly think the YouTuber cares about them. From there, the kid wants to support the YouTuber in any way possible. They’ll buy merchandise, pay to go to events, and much more. They’ll beg their parents for this stuff because they believe this YouTuber, streamer, or influencer is a friend.
As they get older, this doesn’t leave. I don’t think people understand how this all works, and it’s really interesting. YouTubers make young adults as well as those who are older believe they want to interact with them.
I can’t tell you how many YouTubers start or end their video by asking you, the viewer, a question. Whatever the topic is, they ask you a question and tell you they want to know your thoughts and leave it in the comments below. It’s part of the game to get engagement for the algorithm, but at the same time, it’s a clear manipulation.
Hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people leave comments that the YouTube will never read. It’s a one-way relationship, and the unsuspecting viewer doesn’t realize it.
The comment thing isn’t a huge deal, but it’s part of an ongoing strategy to get the viewer to feel close to the YouTuber so the YouTuber can benefit. Not You.
Recently, due to the crypto speculation, YouTubers have been taking advantage of so many of their viewers through “pump and dump schemes” with NFTs and useless crypto coins.
For those who are unfamiliar, a pump and dump is when someone with massive influence hypes up a cryptocurrency, NFT, or stock (the pump) to inflate the price and then sell (dump). The result is that the viewers who got suckered into this are left “holding the bag”, which means they still have that asset that’s now worth much less while the pumper made a ton of money.
If you want to learn more about this, check out the channel Coffeezilla who makes videos on all this happening in crypto. There’s also a small YouTuber named Scott Shafer who is growing quickly because he’s exposing personal finance YouTubers who have been doing this with stocks.
Anywho, that’s why I have no problem telling my son about this while he’s young. I also told him there are a lot of really good people out there as well.
But I explained to him that we have to be conscious of this because it helps us make more ethical decisions as well. For example, there are many companies that are exploiting workers or harming the environment to increase their profits.
This way, he won’t become one of the millions of adults getting suckered by people who have more money than most of us will ever see.
So, let’s break it down real quick. On a daily basis, I see people defending the mega rich, and I really believe it’s because they just don’t know. Below are some examples.
The Revolution that Wasn’t
This entire piece was inspired by the book The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors by Spencer Jakab. I’m finishing the book today, and I really think everyone should read it.
You’ve probably heard of this story from 2021, but many don’t know all the details. I kept up with it quite a bit, but this book goes into much more detail. Something this book made me aware of is the fact that a lot of really rich people got way richer off ignorant people thinking they were “sticking it to the man.”
The entire GameStop short squeeze was the idea that the average person was either going to make money or at least take down some of the mega-rich.
When the dust settled, a lot of regular people lost tremendous amounts of money, and people on Wall Street profited like crazy. This was a massive L for retail investors, and many of them don’t even realize it. They’re completely oblivious to how they got played.
There are countless redditors who still believe the little guy came out on top.
The book explains how these people profited, but I wanted to highlight some insanely rich people who used the “I’m your friend” tactic to make more money.
AMC CEO Adam Aron
Aside from GameStop, AMC was another company in trouble that reddit latched onto. The CEO saw this happening and duped a bunch of people into making him much more money.
Check out this fun article titled How AMC CEO Adam Aron conquered Twitter, embraced the 'Apes' of Reddit, and won over a new generation of investors.
Adam Aron told the redditors that these big bad mean hedge funds were shorting AMC to put them out of business, and people fell for it. Since Aron couldn’t profit directly from this due to SEC laws, he got around it by gifting shares to his sons.
Here’s another story titled The CEO of AMC gifted his twin sons 500,000 shares in March. Now the holdings are worth more than $30 million after the stock's massive surge.
At the time he gifted them, they were worth $6.8 million. With the redditors making trades, those shares skyrocketed to $30 million. That’s a 3,325% gain.
And for making him $24 million dollars in a matter of days and millions more after? He was kind enough to give free popcorn to people who owned AMC shares…
Dave Portnoy
Dave Portnoy is the owner of Barstool Sports and has made himself into a brand. He speaks to the “everyman” and people eat that shit up. During the beginning of the pandemic, his rich self got bored and decided to gamble with stocks since sports weren’t going on.
He made it look super fun to gamble with your money by using scrabble letters pulled from a bag to decide which stocks to buy. Then, when the GameStop stuff happened, he decided he was going to take the side of all of his brand new followers.
He bought and bought GameStop and the other meme stocks. Due to his influence, others did the same. He told them he’d hold, and that’s what he did…until he didn’t.
Without warning, he sold when he could. He took a loss, but he’s still rich while his manipulated followers got screwed.
He did the same with a bullshit crypto called Safemoon, and his followers were left holding the bag once again.
Much like the next people we’ll talk about, his strategy seems to not be to make a direct profit. It’s to get loyalty and increase the parasocial relationship for future profits. Who do you think will defend him during the next sexual assault claims or will buy his shit when Barstool Sports sells a new pizza in stores?
Chamath Palihapitiya
Chamath is the one that really pisses me off. I didn’t lose any money from him, but I feel stupid.
I just started investing when all this meme stock stuff has happening. Fortunately, I didn’t buy any of those stocks, but I followed the story closely. At the time, Chamath went viral for “sticking up for the retail investors” and discussing how these funds were screwing people over.
Well, much like Portnoy, he wasn’t being completely transparent with everything he was doing. This is something else I learned in the book.
But, as a result of people thinking Chamath was their friend, he gained a loyal following who started buying his risky SPACs. Oh, and while he was trashing Robinhood for their involvement, did I mention that he owns 85% of a personal finance app that makes money off people who use it to trade?
Elon Musk deserves an award for grifting
I don’t know how this guy did it, but Elon Musk has tricked millions of people into thinking he’s a billionaire genius that actually cares about them. I don’t even need to go into detail about all the Twitter bullshit that’s happened in recent months. All I’ll say is that it’s been comical watching all the anti-woke grifters tag Elon “free speech” Musk daily over recent months like he gives a shit.
It’s simultaneously the funniest and saddest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Elon doesn’t give a shit about any of them or you.
Let’s run through a quick list of Elon pretending to be for the people. Feel free to look these stories up:
Elon said he was going to build a submarine to save the kids from the cave, but all he did was call someone helping a pedophile
Elon said he was going to donate a ton of money to fight world hunger if he saw the numbers and didn’t after the numbers were provided
He’s silenced critics of him
He canceled the Tesla order of a blogger critical of him
Tesla factories are regularly in trouble for worker’s rights, racism and more
He was recently accused of sexual harassment by offering a masseuse a horse in exchange for a handjob
He takes billions from the government in subsidies but doesn’t think struggling Americans deserve any help
You get the point. The guy fucking sucks.
Lastly, there’s the whole Dogecoin thing. This is a useless crypto, but Elon has the ability to make nerd culture think he cares about them. So, he pumped this coin for a while until he got bored with it. A lot of people lost a lot of money from this.
I remember following the Dogecoin story so closely, and it was awful. I saw people lose so damn much money. One guy became known as the “Dogecoin millionaire” because he took his life savings and sold his stuff to just buy dogecoin. He became a millionaire, but because of the Reddit idiocy, I can’t even imagine how much he lost by refusing to sell.
After the Dogecoin bubble busted the night of his SNL appearance, he placated people for a little while. He said he was going to start hiring developers to make Dogecoin into something amazing.
It’s been months, and he hasn’t said a damn thing. He mentions it every now and then, but that’s about it. All the people who thought Elon was their friend are stuck with a useless crypto, and many continue to support him like they’re in some fucked up abusive relationship.
Mark Cuban is an ass
Man, I used to love Mark Cuban. Shark Tank was my shit. I loved it. And Mark bums me out like Chamath, too, because I fell for his bullshit as well and thought he cared about the average person.
Nah. He just wants to sell more tickets for his basketball team.
Most recently, he’s caught up in the bankruptcy of the crypto lender Voyager. He blew Voyager’s name up saying how amazing they are and people should invest in them. As part of the partnership, Voyager gave Mavericks fans $100 in crypto if they deposited $100 in their app. Cuban also hopped on the Dogecoin train and said people could buy tickets using it.
If I’m not mistaken, he pumped NFTs as well.
Anyways, he’s still rich and a bunch of people are screwed.
Bill Gates isn’t saving the world
Bill Gates has fooled more people than anyone through his donations. I think he’s mastered this above everyone else because of the amount he gives. The spell is easier to be broken with all these other people we mentioned, but with Bill, it’s harder due to the donations.
Just yesterday, I tweeted how it should be concerning that Bill Gates has given so much money to media outlets:
NPR: $24,663,066
The Guardian: $12,951,391
Der Spiegel: $5,437,294
NBC: $4,373,500
Le Monde: $4,014,512
El País: $3,968,184
BBC: $3,668,657
CNN: $3,600,000
People can’t understand why this is a bad thing. If you don’t understand, I beg of you to read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. Or at least go watch some interviews with him.
Personally, I was indifferent about Bill Gates until COVID. I learned that he was opposed to lifting the patent on the COVID vaccine for countries that can’t afford to buy it from countries like ours.
Gates made billions from the vaccine. If you’d like to learn more, here are some articles:
There’s been a lot of misinformation and conspiracies like Bill Gates putting microchips in the vaccine. But, please understand that this isn’t purely out of the kindness of his hard. The dude is making bankoff of the vaccine.
This bring me to the last thing that really opened my eyes, and I hope it does for you as well. It’s called “philantrocapitalism”.
For years, I was of the mind that hey, as long as they’re giving money, they’re alright in my book.
The reality is that although it’s helping some, the mega-rich are not going to do anything that will solve the problems they’re donating to. Why? It’ll make them less rich.
The book that laid all of this out for me was Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas. I recently read it again, and I wish it was required reading. Anand covers the topic perfectly and from a multitude of angles. He explains the language the wealthy use while talking to each other to appear as though they’re saving the world, but it’s just to make more money.
Lastly, if none of this sold you on the idea that this isn’t good, I’ll make a final point that helped make it click for me.
We live in a democracy. Do we really want the ultra-rich to make decisions for all of us? Because that’s what we’re doing.
We’re saying, “Hey. Make alllllllllll the money you want. Take it all. You select few are smarter than anyone and are also the epitome of morality, so we trust you to decide who needs help, how that help should be given, and how much should be given.”
Do you know how insane that sounds?
I just don’t get how we’ve strayed so far into thinking these people care about us more than themselves and their lifestyle. Sure, there are billions of amazing people on this planet. I’m sure plenty of these rich people are great as well, and they may not even realize what they’re doing.
We’re all the heroes of our own story.
But regardless of whether it’s intentional or not, the fact is that you are not someone who pops in their mind as they make decisions. If you go bankrupt and lose everything, they will not lose an ounce of sleep. It’s not even because they don’t care, they just don’t know you exist.
As much as we want to believe these people know who we are and care about us they don’t. They’re able to give that appearance by retweeting a random person or commenting on their post, but it’s not a real relationship.
So, for the love of God, please stop thinking the ultra-wealthy are your friends. But, if you want to keep living in the fantasy land where Elon Musk knows who you are and will maybe come to your next birthday party, do your thing, boo.
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