In today's issue of the (somewhat) daily bad apple, we take a look at the widely circulated news reports of Kylie Jenner and her record breaking entry into the upper echelons of the world's richest people as defined by the milestone of becoming a billionaire at the age of 21.
"Self Made Billionaire"
Of all the outlets to run this news, it is Bloomberg which struck me with the most disdain as they lay the claim that her wealth was "self made."
What exactly does self made even mean nowadays? If we take the assumption that each and every one of us had to get some form of help from our parents, no matter how small or large, then no one is truly self made right? Semantics aside, insinuating that her wealth were efforts from her, and her alone are farfetched at best, and mostly naive.
It goes without saying that she came from a more than "affluent" family background, with more than enough wealth to help her get her foot in the door. Least not, examples of gold digging and sleezy socialite behaviour as exhibited by her various promiscuous and hypergamous family members served as the template to advance her "career" faster than your average "influencer."
But such is the state of the world right now, more specifically, the state of social media and the ever growing emphasis on becoming influential among as many people as possible while staring into a camera and pouting those Botox lips in the most sexually suggestive manner as possible whilst magically building a cosmetic billion dollar empire around it.
Even a cursory glance at her "break" into showbiz would reveal that without her spotlight in her family reality tv show (Keeping up with the Kardashians), it would be a tall order to attain 122 Million followers and leverage that following for financial gain.
The blame isn't on her..
It's on the growing populace of fame and clout chasing millennials who yearn for the kind of exuberant lifestyle she leads seemingly through providing regular updates to her mostly trivial life and then monetising it on instagram for utterly insane amounts of money.
Following in her footsteps are quite literally an army of influencer girls of various size followings who no longer strive to provide any substantiated value to society, but instead, expect to become wealthy through documenting their meaningless (but very much dazzling lives) and getting the rest of the real world pining over their lifestyle. It's sadly all been done before, but now it's being perpetuated by the ponzi social ladder.
We grew up dreaming of curing cancer, travelling to space, making quantum leaps, putting a computer on every desk in the world.. our children dream of getting millions of followers through covert sexualisation of themselves and then getting rich as a result.