Logan Paul's Fetid GameBoy Table

Eh, I disagree with the two folks above me and agree with Joel. Commercial fetishism and brief outrage is nothing but clickbait. It's the reason the Paul brothers have as much as they do -- because they did a bunch of shit that made people angry and anger drives the algorithm. People being angry briefly may make them feel righteous but it's entirely hollow and does nothing but drive more views to Logan.

I actually think this read is sort of missing the point. The reaction comes from ways that rich people will flaunt this wealth in an absurd manner that reminds people how ridiculous their wealth is. Like, owning a factory is 100% worse and sizably more expensive, but it's so well-baked into society that it seems "normal." So when something like this happens people are reminded that, "oh yeah, these people aren't just really wealthy but extremely and ridiculously wealthy." The absurdity is what makes it sort of break the façade.

There may be plenty of gameboys in the world right now, but it's only been 20-30 years since their prime. I'm big into vintage clothing/technology and while the gameboy table doesn't make me rage it does evoke a "oh, that's too bad" kind of response because I have a certain reverence for old things and an awareness of their future scarcity. I also get bummed out when I hear about those wedding dress shows where someone takes an antique dress and alters it to something modern (typically beyond recognition). It's their property, and I'm not going to lose sleep about it, but it's a bummer to see something historical destroyed in the interest of a temporary style. Especially if an influencer does it thereby making it more popular and potentially more common.

I think it's kinda fine to envy having the money to casually buy and destroy functional things that people might love to own, or to go to a restaurant and not worry about being able to afford to buy drinks. I had an intense fantasy just today of being fabulously wealthy, almost a full on Tevye moment, and it lasted for hours. I'm okay now, but jeez it's easy to really, really want a tall house right in the middle of town with rooms by the dozen and three staircases of varying Euclidian quality.

I dunno, I've been dabbling in a bit of gameboy color modding and, like . . . you can get them used for $30-$60. I don't know what he paid, I don't know what condition they were in, but . . . even if they were in good condition, that's still probably a lower dollar count than the price of that mattress he set on fire that one time.

Been wanting to see you expand on these thoughts since the Chrissy Teigen thing

I feel like there's an aspect of "rubbing wealth in everyone's faces" that people are reacting to, which can speak to a genuine care about wealth inequality. It's one thing to know that people buy expensive houses all the time without ever having reason to think about that fact. It's another thing to see someone destroy something you've been saving for, and which is finite, even if it's not rare. I think this speaks to the reason why a lot of wealthy families avoid being flashy with their wealth, because it creates a wider awareness of (and emotional investment in) the degree of disparity in a way that pure numbers and statistics often don't.

I don't think that pointing out that people don't bully rich people across the board (a.k.a. that class consciousness hasn't progressed to that extent) demonstrates that those tweets weren't genuine. Even if individuals don't react consistently to all instances of some upsetting thing (e.g. wealth inequality), it doesn't mean that they aren't upset about that thing. It's human for people to react to things inconsistently and for multiple reasons at once.

This feels symbolic for a lot of the supposedly class-conscious discourse that goes on on social media.

That title lol