Social Media is the New Get Rich Quick Scheme
And I got some swamp land for ya.
The old system of making you think the system is legitimate by making it look like you can get rich any minute through a borderline get rich quick scheme nowadays has taken the form of “you can get rich on Instagram or YouTube or Tik Tok”. It’s like the Ralph Kramden effect. Stuck in a more or less miserable life, the only thing keeping people from tearing the shit down is a fantasy that somehow through some capitalist miracle you might be able to get rich. Like a lot of capitalist religious fantasy, like “the invisible hand”, it’s not the “practical” thing at all that it’s proponents fool you into believing it is.
Studies have shown that people are working more, getting paid less and spending less time with their families. The doldrums and the high stress of working life surely elicit dreams of getting rich doing something you love or at least doing something else. You keep hearing about people getting rich on Instagram showing off that booty or people making quirky videos on YouTube or people making even quirkier videos on Tik Tok; and they’re all cashing in, and you’re just thinking, “This is my way out!”
Just like with the actors who are actually all full-time waiters, that dream is unlikely to come true. Certainly it only happens for a fraction of a percent of those who try it.
Getting rich actually involves using your daddy’s capital or getting lucky and having someone with money and connections taking a liking to you.
But the capitalist dream of getting rich has kept people going and never questioning the validity of that now quickly dying scam.
All it took was a brief respite from the low-pay and grueling hours of work for people to realize — Hey, maybe I can actually demand a fair wage. The pandemic ironically brought that about. People stopped having to crawl and grovel and got their backs up and actually had enough of a sense of dignity to ask for what they need. But it took a global pandemic and emergency funds to the unemployed for that to happen. Make no mistake. The powers that be only offered that little bit of extra money for the unemployed because they know the consequences of not doing so. The powers that be were getting their asses kicked during the Depression of the 30s before the Government decided to finally help out with some programs for working people. They learned their lesson evidently. And the mood of the country isn’t such that people feel like acquiescing.
What would be nice is if this pandemic would further ironically completely rid us of this disease called wage slavery altogether and then maybe we could finally move on to living creative lives.
