Thursday, August 16, 2012

Why Rich Kids of Instagram surprises me

What surprises me about Rich Kids of Instagram is that there are enough people to sustain it.

These "rich kids" are a very narrow demographic. Economically, it's limited not just to people who are rich enough to afford luxury goods, but to people who are rich enough to let their teen/adult children play with these luxury goods. They don't just have a Ferrari and Dom Perignon, they have enough vehicles and alcohol that their kids can use the Ferrari and drink the Dom Perignon.

When I was growing up, my family had a car and usually had a few bottles of wine in the house. But I couldn't use the car recreationally because we had just the one car and usually someone else needed it, and I couldn't just grab a few bottles of wine to take to the bathtub or the lake because there wasn't that big a stash and my parents were likely planning to use them on a specific upcoming occasion. This wasn't parenting, this was simply because available resources were finite. We'd have had to be in a whole different socioeconomic demographic for me to have been able to play with the car and the wine, and, similarly, the rich kids of instagram have to be in a whole different - and most likely narrower - socioeconomic demographic than people who can "just" afford Ferraris and Dom Perignon for themselves.

But, at the same time, these "rich kids" must be sufficiently unaccustomed to this level of wealth that they feel the need to remark upon it. My parents drove a Honda Accord when I was growing up, so that's my baseline idea of "car". If I had access to a Honda Accord, I wouldn't feel the need to take a picture to commemorate the event. And it wouldn't even occur to me to tag it or caption it as "This is my Honda Accord". Because it is my baseline idea of "car", I'd just say "This is my car." This isn't noblesse oblige - we haven't even arrived at considering such advanced concepts as noblesse oblige. This is just my idea of what is remarkable and noteworthy, based on the baseline environment in which I grew up.

So the rich kids of instagram must be from the very specific and narrow socioeconomic demographic that has luxury goods in such abundance that not just the parents of the family but the teen and adult children can use them for recreational purposes, and must be new enough to this level of wealth that they aren't entirely accustomed to it and therefore feel it's worth photographing and commenting on. I'm rather surprised that there are enough people who meet these criteria to support a tumblr.

7 comments:

laura k said...

Now that I have some very rich kids in my extended family, I might have some insight into this (something I never would have had before).

Part of the culture of this demographic seems to be letting the kids partake and consume in all the excess, as a way of showing it off. "See, we have all this stuff, so much stuff that our kids can use it." Parents think kids each need their own car, and what kind of car the kids drive reflects on the family - it displays their wealth.

I don't think the kids show off the wealth because it's new to them and they are unaccustomed to it. They show it off because, in their world, that's what one does with wealth. One of the essential purposes or reasons for wealth is display.

impudent strumpet said...

So the parents must also be rather new to that degree of wealth, or it wouldn't even occur to them to show it off. If I was giving cars to my kids for the purpose of showing off (in an alternate universe where I have kids and the money to buy cars), it would never occur to me to give them Honda Accords. That's what I'm accustomed to, so it isn't show-off material.

laura k said...

"So the parents must also be rather new to that degree of wealth, or it wouldn't even occur to them to show it off."

You're making the assumption that only people who are newly wealthy have the desire to show off their wealth. I see no evidence of that. Lots of these people are quite accustomed to wealth and they take great pleasure in showing it off. They see wealth and display almost as one and the same.

impudent strumpet said...

For it to occur to you to show something off, it has to have some degree of novelty. If it's always been around since you were in diapers, it won't even cross your mind when trying to brainstorm things that are show-offable. (Which is why it took me so long to make the example below.)

For example, we always had computers when I was growing up. The first one was an Apple II, which my parents bought either before or shortly after I was born. I have no memory of life without a computer in the house, and as such, even though most of my friends didn't have computers, it would never occur to me that a computer is show-offable. For a brief period after we got a new one I might want to show off a new computer's new capabilities (Look, a colour monitor! Look, a GUI! Look, internet!) but the fact of a computer wouldn't even cross my mind as something I can gloat about to my friends.

And it turns out the computer was a luxury good. In adulthood, I asked my parents how much the first computer had cost, and they gave me a number that was close to $10,000. I don't remember if it was $10,000 in 1980 dollars or the equivalent of $10,000 in today's dollars, but either way that's a hella expensive computer! And yet the computer didn't cross my mind for days when trying to think of something relatively expensive that we had around when I was a kid.

laura k said...

For it to occur to you to show something off, it has to have some degree of novelty.

Not really. If you look around you and see that many people lack what you have, and you believe that having more stuff - and more expensive stuff - than other people makes you better than them, you might show it off to show you are better.

I realize that I can't convince you of this, but I know many very wealthy people who have been wealthy their entire lives and yet are still hugely into displaying their wealth - cars, homes, cameras, ski equipment, expensive health clubs, on and on.

Their self-worth is tied to materialism. They show off to show they are rich and therefore great.

In moments of candor, I've heard people say, "What's the point of having money if you can't flaunt it?" They enjoy being envied.

impudent strumpet said...

Weird. I know a few rich people, and they don't show off that way. They might show off "Look what my horse just learned to jump!" but they wouldn't be like "Look! I can buy a horse!"

They aren't particularly noblesse obligey or old money or super into the moral obligations brought about by their wealth either. They're just matter-of-fact, your typical distribution of people, to whom it doesn't occur to show off things they're perfectly accustomed to.

laura k said...

Those are rich people with a lot more class than the people I'm thinking of. (Heh, class, a pun maybe.)

Maybe it's an American thing, or a certain brand of American money. I knew a lot of people like this in university - and their parents were the same way. It's gross.