The Role of Wealth & Class in Lifestyle Content | Internet Analysis

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30 minutes for her to say that people want to see what rich people are doing with their lives. Something that humans have been interested in since antiquity. Lots of fluff, zero substance.

👍︎︎ 36 👤︎︎ u/bloomblox 📅︎︎ Jun 26 2021 🗫︎ replies
👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/Blatinobae 📅︎︎ Jun 28 2021 🗫︎ replies
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- Today's video is sponsored by Care/of. Hello my dudes, my name is Tiffany. Welcome back to my series, Internet Analysis, where I like to research and discuss things relevant to social issues and media. Today, you are joining me on the floor of this hotel room, which I'm just now realizing is a gross place to be hanging out. And I just wanna chat about wealth and privilege, baby, class consciousness. Today's video is gonna feel a little bit more like a brainstorming session, like a little bit of a socratic seminar, and I'm excited for it. Basically, my thesis is that coming from a wealthy family gives you an advantage especially within the lifestyle sphere of social media. That may be obvious, but I think it's interesting. So let's fricking chat about it. First thing, is social media democratized? Can anyone make it online? We hear this sort of argument a lot where people will say, "Hey, with the internet and social media anyone can become famous or well known or popular with your smartphone." So first I do wanna touch on those tech limitations of being on social media. I mean, obviously those of us who have access to the internet regularly are very privileged. Oh, the light's gonna be a mess in this one. Anyway, there are basic tech limitations to being able to even just watch YouTube, but to actually create videos especially. You need fast accessible internet, you need a computer, you need a camera. Back in the day, like early YouTube when I joined in 2007, uploading a video used to take me so long, I'd have to go on like the kid's computer. We had dial up. And sometimes it would take like an entire day to upload like a five minute video. And then, sometimes my little cameras would break and I just literally would not be able to make videos until my next birthday or Christmas, whenever I would be able to get enough money together to buy a new one. And that is very different than these days where, again, most people have a smartphone and it's very easy to become popular on YouTube, even just using your phone's camera and you can edit on your phone but that just was not possible back in the day when our phones looked like this. So we can continue discussing that question is social media more democratized, especially these days. Maybe in those kinds of technological ways, it might be slightly easier than it was say 10 or 15 years ago, but still, I believe that your class, your class position, whether you are low income, middle class, upper class, whatever you would like to call it, I believe that your class can still have a very large impact on your ability to or your likelihood of becoming popular online. And especially again, as this video is going to focus on how appealing is your lifestyle? How many exciting things do you have going on or things that you can show to create content about? Do people want to live vicariously through you? Lifestyle content, baby. So in this video, I'm very excited because we get to do a little TBT and I love that. I'm gonna be focusing on, or at least jumping off from this point, I've been on YouTube a long time. And I remember the early OJ, beauty gurus. This was like the early 2010s were teenage girls in their bedrooms doing makeup looks, styling, lookbook kind of videos, get ready for school and lots of hauls, those sorts of things. And disclaimer as always, I'm gonna be referencing a lot of people via B-roll because we like to keep it visually interesting here. And that does not necessarily mean that everything I say applies to everyone that I happened to show in the video. Of course, I don't know the specific financial circumstances of any of these people beyond what they have already mentioned. But I guess my point of this video is that our collective judgments and perceptions as an audience depend on what they show us how are various elements of their lifestyle displayed and what judgments and perceptions can we make from that information. Aspirational lifestyles and indicators of wealth. Specifically, I am again focusing on teenage YouTubers because I want to discuss how your familial wealth, whatever environment you grew up in impacts your ability to be popular on YouTube. So I'm talking about what their circumstances were like before they were making enough YouTube money to like move out or have a more independent lifestyle. The first thing I thought of for this video in terms of the OG beauty gurus were the freaking room tours and the house tours. - I'm not trying to brag about what's in my room. I'm not trying to show off my house or my room or what I have, my stuff. I just wanna let you guys know that a lot of people requested this video. When you walk in and to the right is my coat rack And then I keep my purses and my bags. - But I remember being very jealous of the sorts of rooms and houses that these creators lived in. They would have their own room and they would show that they live in a pretty big, nice house. And those things on its own, I think are pretty likely indicators of wealth or at least a very comfortable middle-class lifestyle. I personally grew up, I have three siblings, so we had a lot of people in the house. I always shared a room with one or two of my siblings. And then even through my last year of high school and my gap year, my parents had to downsize. So I was living in the living room. So I had really internalized that jealousy and that desire to have a living space that was comfortable and enviable. Especially when it comes to being a YouTuber, that is your private space to film. So I often had to film in like a bathroom or anywhere where I could just try to get my own space and quiet long enough to film a video. I'm not trying to make this sound like it was horrific to not have my own room. I still had a roof over my head, things were fine. I would have liked a little more personal space, but, I'm just sharing my experiences for context. So I think it adds a little bit of a personal touch. What was my perspective as a viewer watching this kind of content. Other aspirational teenage lifestyle content can include, fancy family vacation Vlogs, getting a nice car for your 16th birthday and shopping. The hauls were truly endless, especially during this early beauty guru era. But a lot of this is still true for today. There's of course, back to school, shopping this massive, unbelievable amount of clothing, black Friday shopping, other holiday shopping. The, what I got for Christmas videos. When I saw the massive stacks of presents in these households, I was like, "Is this how people live?" Because again, it's not reflecting my experience. All of this content cumulatively across a lot of channels really made it seem like that was like a normal lifestyle. That it was normal to have so much stuff and constantly be shopping. And I knew that wasn't my experience, but I thought, okay, maybe I'm the exception. Maybe everyone else gets to live like this and enjoy this standard of teenage living, teenagers luxury. But these videos always had these classic disclaimers like, I'm not bragging, but, or, this was a highly requested video. Or, I bought this with my own money. I'm getting so petty, even with the repetition of it. I might still just a hurt, insecure, jealous 13 year old, maybe. But anyway, especially in that specific era of YouTube, a lot of these videos were material focused. I would say maybe initially they gained a lot of their following from what they had to show off. What makeup looks could you provide? What hauls could you post that were enticing to other people who love watching hauls. Looking back, it seems like the content was a little bit less personality focused especially because like early beauty content especially was very formal and there wasn't a lot of like humor. It was like, first I take my MAC benefit eyeshadow. And I put it on the lid and then I use my concealer. (upbeat music) I just sound like I hater through this whole video already but to be popular in this niche, you had to have things to show. If people could watch Bethany Mota, constantly doing hauls, why would they watch you if you don't have something to show? If you couldn't provide an aspirational lifestyle, it would be very hard for you to be successful in this niche in this era. My beauty videos would be like, here's how to take off mascara with conditioner because you don't have makeup remover. I did that for a longer than I would like to say, but again, I think the interesting thing about this content was like pre YouTube and pre social media we pretty much could only compare ourselves to other people within our communities who were the other people at our schools or in our neighborhoods. And I think for a lot of young people going online is one of the most significant ways to experience different lifestyles and start to understand how other people live. But at this time the vast majority of the representation was for this upper, middle class kind of lifestyle. So it really wasn't doing us any favors in terms of understanding what the average teenager goes through. Before we continue, let's give a shout out to today's sponsor, Care/of. Care/of delivers high quality vitamins and supplements to your door every month. And we know, I love vitamins. Take their quiz, answer questions about your diet, lifestyle and other needs and preferences so they can recommend a mix that works for you. Their products are high quality and frequently tested to ensure that they are safe and effective. You can check their website to see the research and information that they provide about any of your selections. So in the quiz, you're gonna identify your top health goals. I'm always pretty low energy, pretty tired. So I need some pep. This sun is really giving me something. I chose energy and brain as two of my main priorities. And they recommended Rhodiola and Astaxanthin. I did have to look up how to pronounce that. Plus I got magnesium to help with tiredness and period pains and B12, of course, because I'm vegan. I also got some patterns that are back at home, including this plant protein powder and Maca powder, which is one of their boosts. It can help with energy and stress levels. So I have some of my little vitamin packs here. And one of the things I really love about Care/of is that I don't have to deal with all the big clunky bottles of vitamins that used to be in my kitchen cabinet. They take up so much space. I would forget about the ones in the back. They would expire, it's a waste. So with the daily packs, I obviously never forget because everything is all in here altogether. And these are now made of a plant-based material. So they are compostable. I just save them and then I'm gonna take them to my little community compost place. Overall, the daily packs are so much more convenient and easy to use, which means I am much more likely to actually keep up with my vitamin routine, which is the whole freaking point. So I just keep my whole dispenser box in that same cabinet next to my like teas and coffees. So it's just a part of my morning routine and I get it done. It's easy. So if you're getting started on your health journey or you just wanna make it easier, a little more convenient, I would highly recommend that you guys check out Care/of. Just visit the link in my description to take the quiz and get your own personalized plan. Use my code TIFFFERG for 50% off your first order. Thanks Care/of. And we're back, I'm really struggling with the natural light in this video but that's fine, you can just watch it like a podcast. So let's discuss the advantages of coming from money on social media. If I had been born into a well-off wealthy family, I wouldn't have had to work a job in high school. So I would have had way more time to dedicate to my YouTubeing and I probably maybe could have been more successful early on. So for content creators that do come from a well-off family, they do get to focus on their hobbies, including social media. And even if they did work a another job or even their YouTube money, they can treat it as just extra spending money versus having to allocate it toward bills or household expenses. And again, as we know, especially in the lifestyle sphere, you can use a lot of things that you buy as business expenses, or at least be used to create more content. So anytime you go shopping, that's another video. I also think coming from money can help your appearance, obviously. As much as we don't want to think that we are shallow, I think it's pretty clear that a lot of people on social media are popular largely because of how they look and the aesthetic of the lifestyle that they have. Even just having a stylish aesthetic place to film your videos, having a beautiful well lit room or house that contributes to whether some viewers are gonna wanna watch you because some people don't wanna watch a video that's filmed in a dark hotel room for example. Really though, that was another thing that I was very self-conscious of growing up was like, I couldn't show off my bedroom because it had my other siblings stuff in it and it was messy and it was cramped and it didn't look like all the other YouTube girly's rooms looked. Other things include having enviable clothes. Obviously, if you have the money, you can dress better. As in buying more expensive things, the brands that are in style, the trends. And also pretty privilege, that's definitely a factor. And we know that often money can buy beauty, even just things like being able to pay to get your nails done. My nails look like right now, Getting your hair done. Even something like braces, which again, I was so jealous of. I wanted braces so badly in middle school. To a lot of people having nice teeth is a sign of not only maybe being middle-class or well off, but also like being clean. And it's associated with being smart. There's a lot of fucked up shit about teeth. And I actually have a video on my list about teeth and dentistry. I know that doesn't sound like my usual shit, but it's about like the affordability and accessibility of it all and how depending on your class, you either are able to have fucking good teeth or not. Anyway, generally most YouTube viewers are more likely to watch someone who has an aspirational lifestyle and a beautiful appearance than someone who is struggling and maybe does not look as whatever fits whatever beauty standards. And by the way, a lot of this can be very racist. It can be very white supremacist. But anyway, my point is there are a lot of implications to these beauty standards and viewership habits on YouTube. And unfortunately that tends to slant in a very homogenous kind of appearance. And this is still happening on TikTok. I'm not active on TikTok, but I hear it all the time that if you look to be poor, you're not gonna do well on TikTok or if you're not pretty enough or thin enough, to what extent does that come from the algorithm? To what extent is the algorithm racist, fat phobic? Again, these are all interesting questions to explore, but I think it's been pretty well proven that if you are hot, conventionally attractive, whatever, rich, and have an exciting enviable life, you're probably gonna be able to get a pretty good following online. Anyway, back to my point, these wealthier creators they can do their Vlogs and their lifestyle content which tends to look really easy and fun. You can feel productive watching someone run around town and do their errands versus the reality of someone who's lower income who's probably struggling and that content may not be as motivational because, hey, it's hard to be cheerly and happy and just focus on the next thing on your to-do list when you don't know if you're gonna be able to pay for your next meal or pay for your rent. Another advantage of coming from money is just constant content because you're always traveling, shopping and being able to Vlog interesting things that are going on. Again, if you're someone who is working pretty much all the spare time you have, when you're not in school, there's not a lot to Vlog. Let's discuss the lack of class consciousness. First, I wanna start with those assumptions about me videos, because so often almost every single YouTuber who did these got the assumption you come from money, your family's rich, your parents are rich. I always found their responses to be so interesting because you know the creators that like really do seem pretty rich. So when they say, "Oh, we're not rich, we're comfortable." I'm just like, wait, can we define what rich means? What does comfortable mean? What are we talking about? - You're loaded. You're really rich, you're rich. The answer to that is actually, wait, are you asking like me individually or my family? Because for my family, I don't know. I know there's times where we're like doing good, like we're stable, but no I've never been spoiled and we've always had a roof over our head food to eat. I've been blessed with a really good life. - You grew up rich F. - My parents moved out to America in their early 20s with one kid. When they first moved out here, they had nothing. But by the time I came around, both of my parents worked so hard to give us like a comfortable living. And I wouldn't say we were ever rich. It was never the sort of thing where my parents would get us everything that we wanted. - There's definitely a trend of downplaying how well off you are. And we use a lot of those euphemisms to discuss money because we're uncomfortable to talk about it I guess. I think calling yourself rich is a little bit tacky, a little nouveau riche, better to say comfortable or well off. We make good money. I hated all of those phrases growing up. Again, a lot of this does come from the bitterness of my experience. I would say I grew up low income. At one point I made a video and I talked about what it was like to grow up in Southern Orange county, California, which is a very expensive place to live but to be on the lower income end and to constantly be struggling especially with the comparison and being just so jealous of all of the people who looked so rich in comparison to me and how easy their lives must've been. Same thing, they got a free car for their 16th birthday. They didn't even have to pay for their gas, Our relationship with money is very deep rooted and you can carry a lot of that pain and trauma for your whole life. I think I've worked a lot on repairing my relationship with money, but honestly, a lot of that has come from just making more money. And I don't have as many problems as I did when I was like a broke college student. I don't know if it would have been so easy to heal my relationship with money or have a better money mindset if I were still struggling in that way. Anyway, let's get back to the lack of class consciousness. I was very aware of my position in the society that I lived in, but on YouTube, especially in this early beauty guru era, it was so classic to use those lines and downplay your wealth. I think the thing is like maybe they weren't the wealthiest family in their community, but being average in a rich community is still being rich. People will say things like, "Oh, we were comfortable. We couldn't have one ever we wanted." And the thing is like you can always find someone who is richer than you. Obviously we can't all be Jeff Bezos, but it's like, okay, did you ever like not be able to go to the doctor because your family was afraid it would bankrupt them? Or like, could you ever not afford back to school clothes? Putting these things in this context really does change the framing of this. Like what comfortable means, what rich or wealthy or well off means. And giving them the benefit of the doubt, It is possible that maybe they just did not know their family's income. Maybe they just really did not have a concept of class or class consciousness at that time. Because again, yeah, we're talking about the early 2010s and being a young teenager back then, things were different. I think we've gotten better about financial transparency in recent years, but a lot of people still believe that we shouldn't talk about money. That it's tacky, it's impolite, it's too personal. And a lot of parents don't discuss their income or their bills with kids. So their kids might not have an awareness of how much money their family makes outside of the context clues of like, what can we afford? What things do mom and dad usually say yes to? And what do they say no to. By the way, my friend, Megan Collins recommended the book "Uneasy Street" which is about the anxieties of affluence. And it had a little blurb that says, "The rich wish to be normal, describing their consumption as reasonable and basic and comparing themselves to those who have more than they do, rather than those with less." And I think that's the kicker is like, if you see people who are literal billionaires, you're like, no, I'm not rich. I can't buy it my own private plane, but it's like, of course, if the vast majority of people compare themselves to the mega mega rich, you're not gonna feel rich in comparison, but that's not a good standard. Let's get into how we label ourselves and the world range of what is considered middle-class. Most people claim to be middle-class in the United States. But what does middle-class really mean? It kind of depends where you're living. It depends if you're literally looking at the actual like median income of households in your area. And sometimes middle-class is just more about that a morphous feeling like sense of comfort insecurity. You've got it good, but you can't have everything I think you want. But really what I'm interested in is rich people who want to insist that they're middle-class. I'm like, come on, dude, you're lucky enough to be upper-class. You're wealthy, own it. You can't have this too. And I wonder why they underestimate their class? Like, do they really have no awareness or are they just trying to be humble in some way, 'cause it's actually kind of insulting. I found a few interesting articles about this. Most folks, even in the 1%, that is with incomes above 500,000, can't keep up with the Kardashians. They conclude that they are not wealthy. So they tied themselves middle-class maybe comparing yourselves to billionaire families isn't the right measurement. And this article blew my mind. Even the rich lived paycheck to paycheck. These financial planners discuss some of their clients, including this one, a client who makes 450,000 to $600,000 a year, but lives paycheck to paycheck. That massive income doesn't go a long way apparently because they have to pay their wife alimony, I guess, and for child support. And also their kids are in a private high school. Another advisor talks about a couple who ate out three times a day, every day, they worked long hours, but neither knew how to cook, not even how to make toast. I kind of liked this article because it's like, it's oddly satisfying to hear of rich people being just so out of touch and so incapable of doing ordinary things. By not distinguishing between what they need and want, it's easy for clients to spend 250,000 or more a year. All it takes is an expensive apartment, a nice car, maybe a small boat and tuition fees for private schools. And that it's really the kicker is like, you hear these rich ass people being like, well, it's hard to live this lifestyle. The money goes to so many different places. It's like, okay, but do you realize how rare and really unnecessary it is to have all of these luxury things? It's like I'm not gonna feel bad for you. You've got a lot of wiggle room actually. And I think the same thing happens in these influencer bubbles. You have these young social media content creators who are making, I don't know, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars a year. And so of course their spending is off the charts and they start to think that that's normal because that's what they're surrounded by. It's not just them, it's all their friends. It's everyone in their social circle, but that's not normal. Also though, I can say because our social safety net is so weak in the United States, you can be a high earner, have a good amount of savings and still feel precarious especially if you live in a major city where living expenses are crazy high, especially if you have kids or other dependents, but honestly, it's getting more expensive everywhere and we're all struggling and we can benefit from some social safety nets and some social programs paid for by taxes by taxing those richs, the billionaires and the corporations. Continuing on, for many, social media gives the rare opportunity for upward class mobility. I can certainly say for myself, again, I grew up in a lower income family. And for the last few years to have been earning an upper, middle-class, perhaps even upper class income is truly astounding to me. I remember the first time I realized I was experiencing that like comfortable financial position that I mentioned earlier and I was like, wow, this is what they mean when they say comfortable. You don't have to worry about paying your bills. You have a cushion. Experiencing that for the first time was incredible. And I really try to remind myself to not take it for granted, but I've also experienced a lot of weird guilt about money and earning more money than I ever expected to at this age. Some of that just comes from the knowledge of like wealth inequality and how fucking bullshit it is that so many people are struggling and it's like, why should a YouTuber or a fucking content creator be earning this much money when so many more hardworking people or people who put in more hours or more physical labor are earning so much less. That's hard to reckon with. I often feel undeserving. The luck and the privilege of becoming a full-time YouTuber in 2019, literally what was allowed me to graduate college in the time that it took me to finish my last two years and to not have to go part-time because I had to work more or to not have to take out extra student loans. I was also able to pay off all of the credit card debt that I built up from being a broke college student who had no safety net. I was able to pay off most of my student loans already. The way that we understand class mobility, it is so fucking unlikely and so hard to come from a lower income family and to ascend. There are endless barriers against that. You're not even starting from the bottom. You might be inheriting debt or inheriting generational trauma that prevents you from reaching higher levels of success for one reason or another, or you might have to help support your family. So then in comparison, when you're looking at creators who do come from wealthy families from well-off upbringings, they are starting at a completely different point. They likely don't have to take out much student loan debt, which helps them ascend faster. They're not bogged down by that. They're able to gain those opportunities and that wealth from social media work, but they're starting from a higher point. And even when it comes to something like taking the risk of moving to the big city, maybe going to LA to be a YouTuber, the classic move of all the OG beauty gurus, it's a lot easier to risk moving out and living on your own if you know you have that safety net of your parents who will help you if something goes wrong, or if you need help paying your bills versus when you move out on your own and you cannot rely on anyone to help you. That's a very, very different situation. Especially when you're looking at something like social media work, this income can be very unstable. It can be very volatile. There can be months where you don't get paychecks and then all of a sudden you get paid. So it can be really hard to manage your money. And especially if you're young and if you're coming from a lower income family maybe your parents didn't even really have strong financial management skills. There's so much that goes into it. Quickly, I wanna talk about the notion of being self-made, especially in comparison from being self-made as someone who came from a lower income family versus being self-made coming from a wealthy family like Kylie Jenner when she was on the Forbes list of billionaires. Is it possible that Kylie Jenner was truly self-made? Yes, she started all of these companies and she built up a brand surrounding herself in her image, but she was already a Kardashian. Her family was on a reality show and that was her jumping off point. So, we can argue about that in the comments. The thing that I've seen from YouTubers often when they're talking about, if they even do admit that their family was wealthy or well off or whatever, they'll say, "Yeah, I was privileged, I'll acknowledge that but I did earn this. I did the work, I made the videos, I made the content, I built up this following myself therefore I am self-made." They often don't acknowledge the luck or the privilege that allowed them to find that success and the opportunities that came to them because they were in a position to be able to take them. Because again, we assume that social media is a democratic space, a meritocracy, the people who are the most popular must be the most hardworking, which is not always the case. Now, yes, these influencers likely did build their own followings on their own, though, there are always situations of your initial followings being bought, or maybe your parents or your family have connections that help you in certain ways. These are the things behind the curtain that we the audience don't often see. We only see the results. And again, as I mentioned, even just your family wealth as literally the backdrop for your content can play a massive role in your success especially in this lifestyle sphere. Briefly, I wanna touch on a specific case, a case study, dare I say, oh, that's actually funny because I'm talking about wildflower cases. I did not mean to do that. This is not entirely relevant to the like beauty guru space that I'm, actually it's tangential. Let's just get into it. So wildflower cases, you've probably seen them promoted by your favorite YouTubers and influencers. You've probably seen them on Instagram. You may know the Carlson sisters, Sydney Carlson and Devon Carlson. They're beautiful, they're well known. They are popular on Instagram, especially. I think they have YouTube as well. The Carlson sisters are the co-founders of Wildflower cases, which is a brand that's been promoted by influencers from the start. So it's a very native social media company. They do claim to be self-made but their origin story is interesting because it shows the benefits that come with privilege. Basically, the story is that their moms started to design these phone cases for them because phone cases weren't cute enough (giggles) the ones that were available in stores. And they happened to be at a restaurant. They ran into Miley Cyrus, Miley complimented the phone case. They gave her one and then she like tweeted about it and tagged them, mentioned them and that chance encounter at some upscale restaurant gave them the jumping off point for this brand to start growing. So that story is interesting because it's like, it's not like they paid Miley Cyrus to do this, but they happen to be able to be in the right place at the right time. They were wealthy enough to be at the same restaurant as Miley Cyrus, and that allowed their brand to jump off from that point. So again, does that take away from the success that the Carlson sisters have had with building Wildflower? No, they've been great. They design great, beautiful cases that a lot of people love. They are clearly very talented at curating a social media brand and an image in Instagram lifestyle content. The girls are influencers in their own rights now, but this is an example of influencers who did come from money and that wealth and those opportunities and the luck and the privileges did help them with their business. Okay, so we're almost done. My last thing is just a question for us to discuss in the comments. I'm wondering, is there now more class consciousness on social media? As we've discussed through this whole video, I think there was a very, very limited class consciousness in the early 2010s. It just was not common to be like, yes, my parents, aren't rich and I understand the implications of my class and what am I going to do with my privilege? Privilege wasn't even the hot button word that it is today. Obviously for years now, it's been a trend to like check your privilege, your white privilege or your wealth privilege, any other privileges that you have. I think it's important for all creators, but especially lifestyle creators because their content is so closely tied to their lives. I think it's very important to not only acknowledge your class and your privilege, but like, what are you gonna do about it? 'Cause just saying, I know I'm privileged. I know not everyone else is in the same position doesn't really do anything to help though I mean, it's a start, it's a start. And again, and I myself can say I'm currently earning an upper level income, which is unreal to me, but it's still true. And I need to acknowledge that. I can't be like, oh, I'm broke. Do a little Shane Dawson, I'm broke. I'm in my mansion and I'm broke, I'm poor. That's embarrassing. For me, what's been really important is to obviously keep myself down to earth. I don't wanna be out of touch. I don't want to be a class traitor. If I'm in the upper class, I am not representing the upper class interests. I'm not going to fucking try to lobby for lower taxes. That's a classic problem. It's like the more money you make, suddenly people are like, oh, that's when you get one conservative, you get more conservative when you get older and you're making more money and you don't wanna be taxed as much. No, tax me. If I'm earning this much money, a high income, I deserve to be taxed. I want to be taxed. I would like my tax dollars to go toward social programs and safety nets for other people instead of worse. But anyway, yeah, it's like, what can I do in my personal life to have solidarity with working class people. Although I don't expect to be earning this much money forever, by the way. And what can I do in my content to not only acknowledge my class and my privilege, but I don't know, spread information, start discussions. What can we do? That's a good question. I asked my Instagram followers about this and they said that they don't think there's more class consciousness on social media these days but that it's more that people feel pressured to acknowledge it. Like you're kinda gonna get called out if you don't acknowledge your privilege. So I feel like are people just doing that to cover their ass? It's possible. Gone are the days where you could just show off your luxury shit and like not mention it. Well, actually some people still do that, but if you somehow wanna look humble and down to earth, you've got to give some sort of a disclaimer, but there's nothing really behind that. Again, if it's just a disclaimer and it's just a hollow repeated phrase, if you're still gonna be buying luxury goods or buying a ton of unethical products or whatever, then your disclaimers don't really do anything. Again, these empty disclaimers that become kind of the norm, just remind me of going back to the I'm not bragging, but, I bought this with my own money, my YouTube money. I'm rich and I'm 14 and I'm earning more money than your parents on youtube.com. Anyway, that is all for today's video. The lighting was chaotic, but I hope that my point got across and I hope that we have a really good discussion in the comments. Thank you guys so much for watching and listening. And again, if you were interested in trying out Care/of, please click the link in my description. Use code TIFFFERG for 50% off your first order. This week, I don't have my small channel shout outs, but they will return soon. I've been outside, I've been touching grass. I've not had time to look through my small channel entries, but they're on my list and I will resume. Okay, that's all. Thanks, bye.
Info
Channel: tiffanyferg
Views: 430,880
Rating: 4.9405046 out of 5
Keywords: Tiffany Ferguson, tiffanyferg, internet analysis, commentary, video essay, wealth, class, class consciousness, lifestyle, hauls, what I got for christmas, beauty gurus, juicystar07, privilege, rich, are you rich?
Id: 9DDjPzt6F-Y
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 32min 53sec (1973 seconds)
Published: Fri Jun 25 2021
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