people that have more money than they could ever spend trying to accumulate more money
When I go to poor countries I tip/donate well beyond what I’m told is normal, because $10 or $20 is nothing to me, but potentially more money than they’ll earn in days/weeks. It always makes them so happy.
What happiness I would make with a billion…
And that’s why you’ll never be a billionaire. See how that works out?
I don’t think that’s the reason. It is part of it, but the main reason you’ll never be a billionaire is that you would need to take from people.
Nah, that’s not why. A billionaire can give millions away without any impact on their life.
There are two paths to becoming a billionaire. The first is to hit the Goldilocks zone of a good product with mass appeal, good distribution and to have significant ownership of it. The second is to already BE rich. Most billionaires are the second one.
When I went to Puerto Rico (same country, poorer area) my wife and I went on a guided paddle boarding ride that included him teaching us how to paddle board, then paper boarding, we met a couple wild manatees who came right up to us, then we went snorkeling. I believe he did groups of up to 6, but there were 2 no shows and 2 empty spots so it was just my wife and I for a 2 - 3 hour trip and was an absolute blast. I don’t remember how much it cost, probably $60 - $100 each range. At the end we tipped him like $40 and it looked like he was going to cry. I honestly thought tipping that much on a guided tour like that was upper end of normal, but his reaction made me think he doesn’t usually get tips like that.
It’s not about the money; it’s about the power.
We stay hungry, we devour.
It’s an addiction for some. For others, it’s like a security blanket. For others, it’s a source of power.
Mr Crabs: I like money 💰
I think there’s a number of different aspects to this that could put it in context.
Yes there are a few obscenely wealthy people, like a dozen in the world, for whom it’s just a game and pretty meaningless. For the remaining merely wealthy people:
Your means increase as you move through life and your responsibilities, commitments, and tastes also increase. I might earn 6 times what I did when I was 20, but now I’m supporting a family et cetera. This same dynamic effects wealthy people in a similar but different way. People tend to live beyond their means. Someone making several million a year might end up with a few holiday homes, a mistress or something, a bunch of truly expensive hobbies (like… a horse stud farm or something). They might realise they’re “wealthy” but unless they earn a bunch more money they won’t be able to race their horse in qatar or whatever thing they desperately need to do to validate themselves.
Another aspect I’ve heard of, is that wealthy people are often anxious of losing everything. If you have a business that earns millions, it’s sensible to worry that the market might change and suddenly it’s worthless. This is the reality for the majority of businesses that are not publicly traded. As in, great grandpa formed a company that made squillions of dollars selling woollen socks during the first and second world war, but by the 80s it was really just ticking over paying wages and by the 90s it was insolvent. It’s natural to want to consolidate your position by buying some other company that makes hats or whatever.
The vast majority of people only accumulate enough wealth for their own lives. Once you’ve reached that point where you really couldn’t reasonably spend the wealth you’ve accumulated, then you’ve probably already switched over to accumulating wealth for your progeny. Lasting generational wealth is more or less impossible unless you own a country or something because your progeny increases exponentially, and their lavish tastes increase, and their ability to make sensible financial choices decreases.
Finally, you don’t end up with more money than you could ever spend by being satisfied with however much money.
Real life incremental game!
I think it’s easily understandable honestly. They got to this point a certain way and it’s become habit and a source of their power which they strive to increase. At a certain level of wealth it also just increases by itself.
There’s a lot of human behavior I don’t understand. Used to make me feel like an alien as a kid.
Like the super unhealthy parasocial relationships people think they have with famous people, and more appalling is the way the media feeds right into it. People acting like it’s normal to obsess over details about celebrities personal lives is very weird to me.
I don’t understand cheating… just break up and then you can fuck who you want. Why does deceiving someone and breaking their trust have to be a part of it? Why is that necessary?
I don’t understand how you can be the richest elongated muskrat in the world, so rich you just doubled your wealth, and not do anything to help people who need it. I don’t know how he can live with himself. And what I really don’t get is that he clearly wants the world to see him as some sort of important amazing brilliant person. So why not do the thing. DO THE THING AND HELP YOU SELFISH FUCK
Don’t even get me started with bigotry. It just does not make sense. Why does someone’s skin pigment effect people so drastically? Why does the gender or sexual orientation of strangers matter? People need to focus on themselves and mind their business. If someone would like to make minding your business the new fad of 2025 I’m here for it.
Top shelf response. I’d happily have a drink at a bar or Cafe with you, and chew the fat.
Wow thanks friend, that’s really nice to hear. I’d be up for it
Can I join?
Hell yeah you can, anyone whose up for noncombative conversation is welcome to hang out with me
I don’t know how he can live with himself.
There’s a thing our brains do when we have power like wealth, status, fame, etc. - the parts responsible for empathy are suppressed. The rich and powerful are neurologically less capable of considering the suffering of others.
Oh I’m aware, I meant the ‘I don’t know how’ more like the very idea of being ok with that is incomprehensible to me
I don’t understand cheating either, but I come at it from the perspective of a queer polyamorous person. I think many people are capable of loving more than one person, but society tells us monogamy is the only ethical/viable way. My partners are totally fine with me sleeping with other people, and that’s because we have clear and open communication and trust. Why cheat when you can be poly or open?
I don’t understand why relationships are portrayed as such a burden in media. Why do people who don’t trust one another even get into relationships? Why do so many couples seem to hate eachother? Why do so many romance books have such a creepy power imbalance, do people want that? It’s all so confusing, and I’m glad I’m not apart of it.
I think we truly are “alien” souls, being brought into this world for the first time. I can empathize with the people who allow themselves to be wrapped up in our modern society but I always wonder, when will we realize that our way of life is absolutely miserable and we need to change our society ASAP if we want to survive through the next 50-100 years.
Devil’s advocate/explainer here:
Parasocial relationships are real, just one-direcrional, and can lead to really unhealthy tendencies, but don’t have to.
Cheating isn’t cute, but can be hot. Hear me out. If cumming became entirely illegal, disallowed, and frowned upon, you can bet your bottom dollar at least ~40% of people would do it more often, just because taboo is the (often fun) flipside of social norms. And social norms suck ass, in a not fun way.
And mega-wealth isn’t a money thing. The pieces of shit get off on power over other people, and use it to generate, or further misery. There isn’t much they seem to care about outside of that.
I’m not about to make a case for bigots though… Fuck that shit lmao.
Celebrity gossip. I’m just not interested in who married who, who’s wearing what, who’s doing who.
And reality TV, but if ratings are any indication, I’m the weird one on that.
Can I add fashion to this?
100% willing to admit I’m the weird one here, or maybe I’m just old enough now, but holy cow some trends are just daft and make people look like absolute idiots.
I live in a regional / remote area where fashion tends to take several years to arrive… presently all the studly men are wearing their socks pulled up? It’s just silly.
… and don’t get me started on sunglasses and frames. IDK how to describe the current trend… it’s like a huge single piece of plastic instead of 2 discrete lenses.
Littering is one of those things I struggle the most to understand.
I can somewhat grasp it in extreme cases, like when you’re dealing with something really dirty and there’s nowhere to put it. But I’m talking about casual littering - things like throwing candy wrappers on the ground when you could just as easily put them in your pocket.
I don’t think anyone sees themselves as a bad person. Even when we engage in bad behavior, we usually have some story we tell ourselves to justify it. But I can’t put myself in the mindset of someone who casually throws trash on the ground for someone else to clean up. It’s kind of like walking around and cussing at random people - it just doesn’t make any sense. You have to know that you’re the problem.
Cigarettes are one that particularly bother me, because they’re so gross even compared to most other litter, but throwing them wherever is so normalised among smokers.
I’ve argued with litterers before and it goes along the lines of “it’s already messy, everyone’s doing it”. Same sort of excuses you get from cheaters and such. I don’t mean to go all edgy Joker but there’s probably things you and I do that are a problem but we don’t see it because everyone else does it too. Eating meat and emitting tons of co2 for example.
I feel this a lot. Many criminals who have done wretched things at least have a comprehensible motivation, but littering? Cigarette butts in a nature reserve? It’s nihilism, solipsism. That honestly scares me more. I can grasp that some people’s care is misguided or distorted, but a lack of care at all? How do you even contend with that?
I’ve put wrappers in my pocket on numerous occasions and lost them over the course of the next hour (usually depends on which clothes/pockets) so that might be part of what causes there to be so much litter but I have never intentionally thrown anything into nature besides a banana peel when I was a child. Throwing the banana peel into nature felt wrong but probably still is better than having walked a couple of hours with it to reach a mixed bin where it would rot and then maybe be burned.
Going to church by choice. That shit is boring.
Though I don’t go now non-Protestant or high church is significantly more personally and religiously entertaining. Garage band Protestantism is the bane of my existence
I’ve never understood why everyone has their phone out recording at large public events. Surely someone is going to post a video of the event and you don’t need to be recording it
The worst is when it’s a highly televised event (e.g. fireworks), so it’s already being recorded in 4k by pros, drones, etc.
Nobody will ever watch your crappy phone recording, including you.
Because I’m not paying $15 for access to the “professional cinematic experience” (aka access to their DRM-infested meh edited cut), or recording it on TV laced with ads and annoying people who love to hear their own opinions every 60 seconds. It’s the same reason people sneak food into movie theaters or steal music. Fucking the man.
People want to share their own perspective. And everyone thinks that maybe their video will end up being the one everyone else watches.
I recently went to a live event at night and I noticed how many people didn’t take the time to wipe their lens to avoid giant streaks in the image.
I have a theory that social media makes it hard to put time into just about anything that you might consider art. You get a constant feed of the best quality art that the internet has to offer, so when you do take the extra minute or two to figure out your settings, wipe their lens, and actually try and take a good picture, the chance of taking a good picture is still pretty low because phones still just aren’t that good at taking pictures.
I brought my DSLR to the event and even with the much larger lens, getting enough light was pretty tough. The few pictures I did take on my phone just didn’t really have a good sense of scale due to the lens’s fixed focal length. Don’t even get me started on aspect ratio.
If you spend those few extra minutes and it still doesn’t look like what your friends are posting to their social media because they’re loading it with filters, why not join the crowd and do exactly that. Put in zero effort and let the filter fill in the gap of making it look interesting, even if it doesn’t look good.
What you did do is show all your friends that you did something interesting, which a few hundred to ten thousand or so people might see that for a couple of second before scrolling into the next 400 things they’ll see that day in their feed.
Smoking. Let’s see, I could pay a ton of money for something that reeks and damages my health and the health of those around me, that once I start I’ll become addicted to so I’ll struggle to quit even if I want to, or I could, uh, not. Yeah let’s go with not.
Devil’s advocate. (I do not actually condone cigs, they smell like burnt butt).
As a non (extremely sparse) smoker who’s pretty sure he’s incapable of actually getting addicted, counterpoint: nicotine tingly tho. 😚
My uncle always said "he’s not addicted, he can stop at any time.
he knows because he’s done it a thousand times."
Also, vaping. Somehow, vaping seems even dumber than smoking.
Feeling some kind of national pride. You didn’t choose to be born where you were born. Borders change and move, etc. The place my grandparents were born in has changed countries at least 3 times since then.
We should take pride in our country in terms of making it a better place, and by that I mean making it better for everyone. Not turning it into a right wing hellscape which is what is happening to most countries.
If we could internalize the notion that real patriotism is the drive to create a better tomorrow for the people instead of blind conservative hatred of the unfamiliar we could do so much good.
Exactly. That’s a much better written version of what I was going for. Instead we have Musk spending money that could be used for good to make places worse. I’d love a leftist to have a sit down with him and pick his brain.
Tribalism in general
Not putting your fucking shopping cart away. There’s no better way for me to explain it than the shopping cart theory:
This is so true. The most basic every day test to judge your character
I have my own variant on this which I call the Neapolitan Ice Cream test
Neapolitan Ice Cream has three flavours.
Logically, everyone has a favourite and an un-favourite of the three.
No one will judge you if you dig out just the flavour you like… But the right thing to do. The one that is fair to everyone else who is eating the ice cream, is to scoop a straight line that gets a bit of each. Similarly, it’s not some great sacrifice to eat flavours you like a bit less. It’s just less nice.
This tests how fair people are when the stakes are low as shit. Which to me is the true proof of having principles. That you uphold them – Despite there being zero consequence to not doing so, and even a small punishment.
But if everyone has different favorites why should I take some of a flavor that I like less and is someone else’s favorite?
I prefer Strawberry, my wife prefers Chocolate, and we both enjoy vanilla with Syrups. There is no reason for me to deprive my wife of some of the chocolate when I don’t enjoy it as much.
You haven’t considered all the possible intended outcomes the participants envisage in the consumption of the icecream.
It may generally be agreed that strawberry is best, therefore, everyone takes strawberry as their first choice until it runs out, and then maybe vanilla is eaten, the final flavour, chocolate, is finally consumed because there is no other choice and by the time you reach the chocolate all the participants, while agreeing chocolate is the worst, also now have a mild sugar addiction that requires satiation.
In this case the work of consuming the worst flavour is postponed in favour of all participant’s greater enjoyment of earlier scoops, rather than endured as a necessary part of every scoop.
Also scooping across the flavours spreads the chocolate across everything.
Also chocolate doesn’t belong in icecream, it belongs in bars.
…
Why yes, chocolate is my least fav! How did you guess?
Thank goodness we got rid of the strawberry flavored first. The sacrifice of those people will not be in vain: I will remember them as I enjoy the good flavors
I’ll take your chocolate since you hate it so much.
Stealing…Saving thisA bit similar to this: leaving a table or waiting place and pushing your chair in.
Going to concerts. It’s too loud and it’s crowded, I just don’t see the appeal.
And while we’re at it, dancing. It’s unnatural, I tell you!
There’s something about going to an event with like-minded people, listening to a band you like live with (often, not always) optimized sound for the space, and 99% of folks uninhibitably jamming out and having a good time.
I can definitely see how the experience would be unappealing to some folks, though. And I should note I’m more of a gig goer than concert attendee - so sound optimization is hit or miss, and the jamming out % is lower. Still fun, still not everyone’s cup of tea.
Edit: Idle thought that came up reading this back: what is music, for you - as in, what is your relationship to it? Where does music live in your world? Is it something that comes out of a machine to fill silence in your space or block out noise? Is it something produced by humans, of which MP3s/FLACS/CDs/Vinyl/radio waves etc. are just imprints/simulacrum for wider dissemination?
Basically, is it an activity, or a product at its core? Not really expecting anyone to answer (though they can), just a reflection I personally found interesting. Many acceptable answers.
A happy-ish medium is a well-captured live performance or jam. Alive 2007 (Daft Punk) is a pretty good example of how that can be a thing, for me at least.
Music is so hecken different to everyone, talking about it feels odd. Even sound feels/sounds different to a lot of folks, in enjoyable (soft music for a nice vibe, or a loud af chest-rumbling show) and not-fun-at-all (jarring or unwanted sounds, near-total silence for some) ways.
But yeah, I tend to crave the decibels, because I still have the ability to hear, and must not value it lol… Skull rattling is better to me than unevenly-mixed-in-room jamming, but both can be great in different ways. A fun, more personal experience is nice, but I need sensory overload to recover from, or it’s almost not worth the outing.
Going to concerts. It’s too loud and it’s crowded,
I go to seated events and wear loudness-reducing earplugs, so that solves both issues. If it’s a standing-only concert, I stay at the side areas to avoid the crowd. As for the appeal, I just want see the artist perform the songs I like live. I listen to technical music so it’s awesome to see musical skill up close.
I’m not a fan of dancing. Love going to my local symphony concerts though. Never crowded; there’s no moshing at an orchestral concert. You get your seat and you sit in it, and you clap when the piece is done.
Plus the music’s just so much better.
You must be fun at parties.
Don’t know, never been :P
Hmmm I think I will go with “fandom”, or being a fan of something. Like, I enjoy concepts. But there’s no universe or product or franchise or sports team or whatever in particular I would consider myself a fan of.
edit hope this counts as behavior lol
I never got plastering logos for whatever brands you love to consume on everything you own. Like buying decals and stickers and shit to put all over your car, laptop, whatever else. Since when do we pay to advertise for brands…?
Being a fan can make you part of a group. Especially great for people without identity. Slap a sticker on that empty personality!
I mean fandom can be general. the world science fiction society or whatever its called is basically at its core about written science fiction and not about one in particular and comic con is about any comic and gen con is about any gaming and anime cons are about anime. I get ya though. I mean I went to these things and when I was there I was like. This is my people. All the same though I always felt like sorta the biggest hanger on. I loved all the stuff but I like was no good with dressing up or whatnot. I mostly like to look around, go to interesting panels, and then spent all the rest of the time in movie or game rooms or con suite.
The need some people have to be part of a group.
I’ve been “alone” for such a long time that it probably affects how I see things like this, but I just don’t get the need some people have. I’m thinking from things like worshipping a politician just to be part of a group to more simple things like needing to insert yourself into a group at work just to be “one of the guys.” I’ve always just done my own thing and never considered myself part of anything, whether friend groups, work “cliques,” or whatever. If it was “Tim, Tom, and Tina” I could be friends with all of them, but I never felt like I needed to be, or even ever was part of “their” group. I just come and go as the situation arises.
Some things like politics I obviously fall into one category or another based on my beliefs, but I don’t conform or alter my beliefs just to maintain a position within that group.
Sport hooligans
Watch Green Street. It’s a fun and entertaining hobby.
Shitting on weaker people. I mean I kinda do get it, because I had the instinct when I was little. But I very quickly got taught respect by people who refused to be bullied by me.
I guess what I don’t get is … how can people still be doing that as an adult? Have they literally never had someone stand up to them before? Or are they addicted to it, unable to control themselves?
I had the impulse toward evil, but it got beaten out of me really young. It really didn’t take much — just one kid being like “no I’m not doing that”.
Becoming very invested in watching strangers play games for money.
