Of the many ills of reality television, its most pernicious has been the endorsement of self-indulgence. It is often masked as a desire of comfort or luxurious consumption. With shows like Real Housewives, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, LoveNhiphop... to name a few, we have seen a boom in sales for items that are either luxury or luxury adjacent. However, the gap between rich and poor is larger than what it was during the The Great Depression. So either the wealthy have more than enough to spend or the regular working folk are living above their means.

Where did this all start? One of the most undercelebrated characters in American cinema is the slacker. These characters were often the most endearing in their films or shows but were sure to never take center stage: Kramer in SEINFELD, Joey and Phoebe in FRIENDS, Larry in the LARRY DAVID SHOW, The Dude in THE BIG LEBOWSKI, Izel in FRIDAY, Quentin in THE BEST MAN. Slackers are quite endearing and are meant to remind us to take a breather from the rat race every once in a while. In comedy, slackers are a breath of fresh air. But then in comes an innovation on the theme. The Rich Kid Slacker/ Talentless socialite.

Rich kids wanted in on the action. By the way, this whole thesis was solidified by the rich-kidification of the slacker scene. Rich kids have always been around but it was often common for them to downplay their opulence even if they were in fact slackers it was a notion you only got experience from up close while they sold themselves as rightful heirs or hardworking newcomers (Christian Bale, Maggie & Jake Gyllenhaal, Nicholas Cage). This schtick worked quite well for a lot of Hollywood celebs especially when most were eventually found to have come from wealthy or wealth-adjacent parents.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Paris Hilton showed everyone the era of pretense was over. She arrived on the scene the premier socialite of her day. Unlike the dainty mistresses of yesteryear, who were both arm candy and ambassadors of access, Paris Hilton promoted herself as a willing participant in debauchery or at least appeared to. The Hilton dynasty heiress flaunted her wealth while enjoying the scenes of Los Angeles, New York and Las Vegas while inundating the publications with her whereabouts. She was known to procure a certain disgust among culture curators but was seldom absent from the conversation. She eventually got her own TV show, a record deal and went on to have her own series of businesses. However, truth was Paris Hilton was never a slacker. She was hard worker who snagged the frustration of regular working people and instead of giving them something to dream about, chose to give a firsthand view on what living large actually was. It was an image. She worked hard at showing she barely worked while living large. Besides her, was a friend and protege who took copious notes and as it turns out was much easier on the eyes. She went on to make her appearance on the Hollywood scene by taking debauchery to the next level. Her name was KIM KARDASHIAN.

Keeping up with the Kardashians ended being a very long running show on the Entertainment network and subsequently Hulu where these women sat around making babies and doing pretty much nothing. They were paid millions to do NOTHING. While they did nothing they put a signature on the beauty aesthetic in much of the western countries. Ironically, most of it was pretty common in several Middle Eastern & South Asian countries but since it was coming out of Hollywood, it was NEW. They sat around making themselves look pretty while doing nothing. Or were they? One of the greatest legacies of The Kardashians, The Real Housewives and other shows has been the category of entertainer known as the influencer. Influencers are mainly an evolution of the commercial spokesperson. Usually, the spokesperson was the singular talent that had exclusive stage to sell or present a product largely due to either their theatrical talent or talent in something else that was quite significant like an athlete, singer or dancer. Influencers sold you on their subjective experience of consuming a product which then was supposed to trigger the envy/fear of missing out in onlookers. The influencers really got a foothold on the culture on platforms such as; YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Influencers can make a lot of money for pretty much being slackers. Now the influencers themselves are hardly slackers but they push out a lot of content that depicts them as such which makes it easy for them to showcase a lot of the products they are selling.

However, the influencer economy which really got its lift through reality television has pretty much sowed in a generation the notion that consumption can be hard work – or better yet, curated consumerism is hard work and deserves to be rewarded. In truth, this is not strictly a Hollywood issue as we see this on social media platforms as well. However, it seeds were planted through Hollywood productions. In seeking to create content outside of the collaboration of union writers and union actors who were fighting against exploitation, they gave rise to a genre of entertainment that exploits not just novice actors and entertainers but also exploits the American middle class. For years, people with average or diminishing salaries (as shown by the rising inflation but stagnating income) were lulled into purchasing goods and services which previous generations never sought to do regularly. When we look at people’s expenses in car notes, beauty routines, home design and fashion taste a lot of people upgraded their look before upgrading their pocketbooks all because they spent their leisure watching who upgraded their pocketbooks by making you look.

The case for SLOTH here is in how over time, most of us never really understood the true cost of the upgrades we were so quick to buy into. We were lulled into living above our means by watching people who just sat around doing nothing and thus we subconsciously fell into the trap of undermining the power of activity over passivity. I hope we all wake up from our slumber soon because from the looks of it, inflation seems to be getting worse.