I have a love hate relationship with being Flashy.
One the one hand, I feel a tingle rush down my spine when I see people look at me in my Aston Martin. Putting on a new watch, for a bright flash of a moment, genuinely elevates my sense of self. Getting ready to go out, I spend more time and money than I’d like to admit. This’s the first time I’m saying it out loud, but I love this stuff.
On the other hand, I also feel burdened with a big dose of protestant guilt. If someone asks me about any of these items, I feel an impulse to lie and say I got them on sale. My mood swings from one side to the other, some days I wear designer clothing, sometimes Amazon basics. All in all I downplay my interest in things that might make me seem too gauche. I keep my love of watches, sports cars, and luxury to myself.
For a long time I thought I was weird, alone in my bipolar feelings. I’ve come to realize, though, this is not my problem but an American problem.
We live in a culture obsessed with wealth, power, and social status. This is not just true for our time, but for most of human history. In this day and age it’s easier than ever to see and be seen, judge and be judged through social media. From Instagram to TikTok, it seems we live in a world populated by boobs, Ferraris, and yacht parties.
There’s, however, another side to the modern American experience.
#Riseandgrind is so common on social media it’s almost become a cliche. Warren Buffet has reached folk hero status for living in the same Omaha house for decades. Mark Zuckerberg wears identical outfits everyday. Just as much as people are racing to show off lavish hedonistic lifestyles, they’re putting humble porn on display.
There’s nothing wrong with being humble, but the entire idea becomes perverted when it’s used as a form of showing off. The statement is not that I’m so humble, it's that I am so cool and important I don’t care what anyone else thinks.
Humble displays are deeply rooted in American culture, especially among wasps.
WASP Culture Lives On
Why is every Martha’s Vineyard ocean front villa a “cottage”, and every Telluride chalet a cabin? The wasps are why.
This group pioneered excessive displays of humbleness. Protestant by faith they cannot escape the Calvinist notion that their fate, a trip to heaven or hell, is already predetermined. They must show they’re holy, part of Christ’s humble masses destined for salvation. The only problem is they’re loaded and want to show off. We arrive at the paradox of WASP cultural norms.
Let’s break down some of the more egregious examples. Land Rover Defenders, basically a piece of British farm equipment, regularly go for six figures. Yale graduates tell people at parties they went to college in New Haven, similarly Hamptons vacationers say they Summer on Long Island. Brands like Ralph Lauren have capitalized on the ethos, selling pre distressed clothing at a steep mark up to new rich looking to imitate wasp culture.
The hypocrisy is as real as Muffy’s grandmother’s pearls. Wasps love luxury but don’t want anyone to think they’re luxurious. They buy expensive suits but keep them oversized to display their lack of concern for the superficial.
You see the problem, they spend lots of money but the guilt keeps them from having a really excellent experience. Constantly hiding is taxing on the psyche. The inability to enjoy anything drives them into a pit of gin and tonic induced despair. They’re almost as bad as work wear hipsters.
Millionaire Motorcycle Mechanic
A few months ago I was at a party in New York. Heading South to Chinatown, everything pointed to a working class gathering. We met up in a crusty motorcycle garage with lots of greasy project bikes and parts strewn about. The drink of choice was Labat blue, an odd, yet affordable selection. The crowd had a scruffy air, wearing clearly old clothing and lounging with nonchalance. The atmosphere was creative, but no one was creating.
The thing is, this was not a real motorcycle shop and these were not real mechanics and struggling artists. Everything was an elaborate pose. You’ll hear them use the word “authentic” over and over again. Like when a used car salesman says “believe me”, you should do anything but.
Similar to wasps, these trust funded hipsters face a dilemma and must live in a world of hypocrisy. They hate that they’re rich in theory but love the freedom it brings in practice. Freedom allows them to live anyway they want, but the form is constrained by a chronic sense of guilt.
When these two forces meet, you get a pose that morphs into never ending performance art. The set is the motorcycle shop, on this stage they live out the fake drama of someone really trying to make it. Artificial struggle is written into the script to make up for real trials.
As you see in a Hollywood RomCom, the set and problems are often fancy and over dramatic. These people live in Friends apartment style lofts having constant melodramatic relationship problems that seem ripped from the sitcom. The clothing they wear is normcom, simple clothing that is ironically pulled off as high fashion.
It’s not a trench coat, it’s a Swedish army coat from the 30s bought at a flea market in Helsinki. The watch is a Rolex, but it’s a heavily scratched DateJust owned by a great grandfather. The scuffed up boots are 500 hundred dollar Alden’s.
To really understand these people, you must understand that they signal status through underground good taste and conspicuous free time.
When they want to relax they go to theater shows in abandoned warehouses where nude mud-covered Choate alumni roll around in leftover COVID hoarded toilet paper. Everything they enjoy is niche, you probably have never heard of it.
Back at the motorcycle garage the chief mechanic informed me his mother raised Arabian stallions and that he spoke French. In his view, the only two places in the world worth living are Manhattan’s Chinatown and a random neighborhood of Paris favored by skateboarders. My once cool neighborhood, Williamsburg Brooklyn, was consciously absent from his list.
There’s something dishonest about this. Everyone is allowed their own taste, but they use theirs as a weapon to wage cultural war on the bourgeoisie. A constant target is the tech bro.
Hoodie Tech Crew
Stewing in their Palo Alto lairs, the tech hoodie crew plots ways to change the world one casual Friday at a time. As I mentioned, Mark Zucherberg is their true god. The Facebook founder doesn’t even have the slightest taint of the corporate world because he started his company before he could legally buy beer.
Oddly, he makes me think of Bane in the third Batman trilogy when he says, as he is about to pummel the caped crusader: “But you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but BLINDING!” Imagine Mark talking to an upstart CEO whose company he’s about to crush: “But you merely adopted the hoodie: I was born in it! I did not see business casual until I was a man, by then it was nothing to me but AGONY!”
Tech bros love to posture with a DGAF attitude, they are rebels with a cause to game change and disrupt. They want to stick it to the man and never ever wear suits. Because they identify with the rebel hacker, they adopt many of his sensibilities. Instinctively they dislike anything flashy, because it signals that they care what anyone else thinks. Even showers go out the window.
Once again, we run into cognitive dissonance of a group obsessed with wealth and status but deeply afraid to outwardly show it. Most people who go into tech, unless your last name is Musk or Zuckerberg, or Spiegel, are pretty conventional. They like generic white people things like Labrador puppies and 10 dollar hot chocolates at ski resorts. They want stable, well remunerated jobs with the trappings of rebellion. In other words they want the new BMW Mini Cooper, not the classic British one.
This class of tech bros are just as obsessed with fitting in as the other professionals they look down on. They never want to be confused with finance bros, who they see as relics of the 20th century. The stock market is a symbol of the system they hope to disrupt but paradoxically their primary route to extreme financial reward.
Like Wasps, there is a sub code of status symbols. Lambos are out, Tesla is in. Gucci loafers no, plain white Common Project sneakers yes.
Sweet Relief in Miami
What I love about living in Miami is how honestly superficial it is. People literally wear their personality on their sleeve with no three level social code to deconstruct.
Speeds boats and Ferraris, probably rented, make this city what it is; a cotton candy puff of over the top extravagance. It’s about as subtle as a sledge hammer to the face. If you don’t get too wrapped up in it this it can be a hell of a ride.
People tend to be happier when they can just be who they want to be. Trying to hide behind webs of artifice hollows out the soul. Many of the previously mentioned groups maintain clout not through wealth, but through complex social networks. Unless you’re born or educated in this culture, it’s very difficult to penetrate.
In Miami, people display desires and aspirations with a passionate first level logic. What you see is what you get. On a social level this permits greater openness because they display status through materialism, not the rejection of others. The paradox is materialism trumps status anxiety, and in many ways materialism is more democratic.
There are some problems with this. Taken to its extreme, a desire for material consumption can be an all consuming monster of the soul. One day you wake up in last decades fashion, sitting malignantly with coiffed hair in the back of yesterday's favorite lounge as the next generation of punters roll in.
But, if you know when enough is enough, this does not have to be your fate. When the party’s over you can always transition to a career as a beach bum!